Thing is, how about being aware of the consequences that your gestures might provoke? We all joke about Chara not knowing about Emelin,s plate, and frankly, I love those "but Chara didn't know..." jokes. But if Chara had to know.....do we ALSO have to know that if you go after their players, chances are some of them will lose it and come after you to beat you? Same with the Bourque-Orr incident...we all know who Colton freakin Orr is, if you go at him and grab him, don't you know that in the heat of a moment, he migth very well punch you? Does that excuse the gestures? Absolutely not. But will those gestures stop? Absolutely not either so try to protect yourself better and know who's out there.
I mean, you walk in the middle of the night on a road where you know there's a repeat drinking and driving offender....Even if we know that you can't drink and drive, instead of just hoping it doesn't happen, wouldn't you protect yourself and try to walk with facing cars instead of having them in your back?
My problem though with all those "having to fight" is that whenever a player hits you legally but hard, you suddenly have to fight somebody else for some ****ing stupid reasons. Whenever it's legal, you shouldn't have to fight. I'd be EXTREMELY hard if I was a referee on the guys that starts a scrum after a legal hit. But if you hit somebody and it's borderline....AND it's against a star player...AND the player stays down....you HAVE to know that somebody is looking for you....ESPECIALLY when it,s against the Bruins.
But one thing has to stop. Can people understand that fighting is an art? That guys that hits hard, are not essentially great fighters. And it's not because you can't fight, that you shouldn't hit hard. Makes no sense to me.