Violence in Hockey

Violence in sports is probably going to stay the same because it brings in an audience. That is much to the displeasure of the public that still wants to separate the sport from the violence that goes with the package. Today it seems that sports is sold as a package with violence much as a travel package has hotel and plane travel included: you can’t go very far if you just get the hotel, you need to know where to go once you get the destination, right? Similarly the way that hockey is played today, it seems that the sport cannot go very far if the public doesn’t get their thrill in seeing vengeance on the ice. They follow the conflicts as avidly as they follow the goal records and shots on goal, it seems.

The difference between Europe and Canada is that in Europe violence is still restricted to where the public sits; spectators do not take their ire out on the ice, nor do players pull gloves off and swing wildly. Here by contrast, violence does not appear among spectators and one almost expects a fight to occur especially when two rival team members have a history of picking fights with one another. Violence has also extended to hockey club owners at least at the verbal level where one will taunt another and the other will challenge the first to fight. Is violence going to escalate from there? I don’t think so.

I think that sport was meant for a certain amount of violence to be vented. If one goes back to gladiators, our sports are terribly docile. If one goes back to early game sports such as one practiced in Mayan times, where a ball had to pass through a loop attached to a rock wall, there was plenty of violence too. Perhaps then one can only expect a certain amount of violence. I would think thought there has to be a limit to this, because the object of the game is sportsmanship and there is little if feelings are vented as aggressively as they are in hockey.