Do you miss the psychopaths in the NHL?

[Nick Hansen]

Like a Messier who'd just completely carelessly throw out an elbow on a young Mike Modano, or Terry O'Reilly who was up for any fight or Dale Hunter or McSorley?

The league is very much cleaned up today. Is it for the better or worse?

Click to read more...

 

[Albatros]

No. Those were bad old times.

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

 

[ImporterExporter]

Nope.

Fighting has a place in hockey.

The pyscho stuff like Bertuzzi and McSorely are a disgrace.

 

[frisco]

We still have Wilson...

My Best-Carey

 

[GMR]

Yes, we need more Steve Durbanos nowadays.

 

[seventieslord]

My god, this was the playoffs....

 

[BenchBrawl]

I miss Sprague Cleghorn and the likes (Joe Hall, Newsy Lalonde, etc)—generalized bench-clearing brawls that includes the crowd and the police from the 1910s and 1920s

 

[Artorius Horus T]

Hell no.

 

[The Panther]

No, but I wish there were more tough, aggressive types among high-skill players.

 

[sr edler]

Psychopathy is not synonymous with violence, not even careless over-the-top violence, at least not necessarily, and certainly not in front of a 15,000 audience because then you would blow your cover which is essential to your thing. Manipulating is also key.

Psychopaths I think are more prone to holding different personas depending on situation and circumstances. Messier could qualify here because he played smiling elder statesman besides various on-ice assault.

Keenan probably qualifies as a mild one. His soft media voice is characteristic of someone trying to cater to a specific audience.

 

[The Panther]

Psychopaths I think are more prone to holding different personas depending on situation and circumstances. Messier could qualify here because he played smiling elder statesman besides various on-ice assault.

Keenan probably qualifies as a mild one. His soft media voice is characteristic of someone trying to cater to a specific audience.

It's shocking to see a Canucks' fan positing Messier and Keenan as psychopaths...

 

[Midnight Judges]

No.

I rather enjoy watching some of the best athletes in the world play the game in its purest form - skating, passing, hitting, shooting, defending, goaltending, etc. These things are enough for me.

 

[JackSlater]

Yes actually. Not that I think such players are psychopaths but a few Messiers or even Tom Wilsons would make things more interesting.

 

[Filthy Dangles]

Dale Purinton was about as useless of a hockey player as you get, only good for random acts of violence. And his mug shot for burglary from a few years ago looks like he's suffering from psychosis

But no, I don't really miss players like that.

 

[sr edler]

It's shocking to see a Canucks' fan positing Messier and Keenan as psychopaths...

What can I say, it's only two guys. 94 Rangers team had some players I like, like Tikkanen, et cetera. Kovalev and Larmer or Leetch hardly strikes me as psychopaths either.

Gino Odjick against the Blues posted above strikes me more as a lunatic than a psychopath.

 

[Sheppy]

Absolutely, give me a Link Gaetz over a bland 4th liner any day of the week.

 

[Legionnaire11]

Yes I miss it, but knowing much more now about the long-term effects of head injuries I totally accept the decline of goons and over the top "psychopath" physical play.

 

[Tarantula]

I miss how intense the rivalries were, and how ingrained they used to be with the players themselves, but I really do not miss the goonery I used to see, especially some of those Junior D games during the late 70's..........

 

[vadim sharifijanov]

My god, this was the playoffs....

here's the context. glenn anderson had just high sticked rookie mark wotton in the eye. according to wikipedia, his season was ended on a vicious high-stick from St. Louis Blues winger Glenn Anderson which detached his retina.

then after that he has the audacity to take a swipe at a covered puck under our backup goalie kay whitmore, in a game where st louis was running up the score and mclean had already been chased. it's late in the third, st louis is 100% going to win this game and tie the series 3-3. what do you expect gino to do?

keep in mind this is also glenn anderson, of the '94 ringers. and he knows, and the bench knows, that pat quinn should have let momesso on the ice at the end of game six in '94 to go after messier after the linden cheap shot. and mike keenan is behind the blues bench, armed with his other ringers tikkanen, greg gilbert, and doug lidster. plus this ferland-esque kid denis chasse has been running around all series. so gino goes off.

and the canucks easily won game seven.

that series is famous, at least in vancouver, for two other things: first was the unbelievably speedy PK pair of bure and russ courtnall, who torched al friggin macinnis for FOUR shorthanded goals (out of six total for vancouver in that series) while holding the blues to only four PP goals.


second was this hit in game 4—

 

[Hanji]

Players make too much $$ nowadays for goons to exist. Owners are just protecting their million dollar assets from wonton acts of violence.

Good thing too. Not only did goons lack hockey skill, most didn't possess quality fighting ability either, at least compared to real fighters (boxers or MMA). Hockey violence is akin to a bar brawl more than a display of skillful fighting ability. Kind of meat-headed if you ask me. Jmho

 

[seventieslord]

Players make too much $$ nowadays for goons to exist. Owners are just protecting their million dollar assets from wonton acts of violence.

Good thing too. Not only did goons lack hockey skill, most didn't possess quality fighting ability either, at least compared to real fighters (boxers or MMA). Hockey violence is akin to a bar brawl more than a display of skillful fighting ability. Kind of meat-headed if you ask me. Jmho

 

[sr edler]

Like a Messier who'd just completely carelessly throw out an elbow on a young Mike Modano

Carelessly, I would say a better word to describe it is probably casually.

And the most peculiar thing with that whole sequence/incident isn't the actual elbow, or Modano's golden hair sweeping the ice more effectively than an actual resurfacing machine, or even the paramedics dropping the stretcher in front of the camera....

The most peculiar thing is how Messier's skating around with a "I have no idea what just happened" look and body language.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I miss Sprague Cleghorn and the likes (Joe Hall, Newsy Lalonde, etc)—generalized bench-clearing brawls that includes the crowd and the police from the 1910s and 1920s

See, this kind of stuff has some actual entertainment value for me. Part of the fun of hockey is that slow boil of annoyance that leads up to hatred, and spills over into a total circus.

But from the moment that a Hart winner went after a scoring champion and nearly killed him dead on the ice, there should have been an understanding that this stuff is a sideshow for entertainment and not a serious, intrinsic part of the game. Somehow that seems to have been lost in translation, much to the misfortune of people attempting to play the game at its highest level.

 

[YEM]

I admit that I do, call me a dinosaur
I liked hockey better when it was 95% hockey, 5% wrasslin'

Not only did goons lack hockey skill, most didn't possess quality fighting ability either, at least compared to real fighters (boxers or MMA). Hockey violence is akin to a bar brawl more than a display of skillful fighting ability.

I disagree
It takes a lot of skill to fight while on skates, any sort of traditional balance or leverage is completely off while on skates