By Al Campbell
VANCOUVER, (PNA/Xinhua) — A high-profile concussion suffered by Montreal Canadiens enforcer George Parros on the opening night of the NHL season Tuesday, has drawn little support from players around the league to ban fighting from the game.
During a third-period scrap with Toronto Maple Leaf forward Colton Orr, the second time the two players had fought in the game, the 33-year-old Parros lost his balance and fell face first to the ice and was knocked unconscious. After laying motionless for a couple of minutes, he was carried off the ice on a stretcher and taken to hospital.
The 1.96-meters Parros, a graduate of Princeton University, has played 452 NHL games scoring 18 goals and 35 points while amassing 1,007 penalty minutes. The Pennsylvania native was released from hospital Wednesday but remains out “indefinitely,” according to the Canadiens.
“It was a scary situation, I just hope he’s all right,” Orr said after Toronto’s 4-3 win in Montreal. Both players in their roles as their respective team’s enforcer had fought each other several time previously. Orr, who suffered a concussion two years ago during a fight with Parros, then with the Anaheim Ducks, added he never wanted to see player hurt like that.
“It happened fast. I slipped and he came on top of me. The ice isn’t going to give.”
Vancouver Canucks defencemen Kevin Bieksa who watched the game on TV, called the incident “unfortunate” and the “last thing you want to see.”
“It’s on everybody’s mind who fights when you are going to the ice, and I think you’ve seen in the last five, six, seven years guys actually try to protect other guys while falling and you don’t see guys throwing punches on the ground like they used to,” he said.
“So we’re cautious of it but it’s part of the game. Fighting’s not going anywhere in the game. It will always be a part of the game.”
Parros’ teammate Josh Gorges didn’t see any need to ban fighting from the NHL, adding more players got hurt from hits, collisions and pucks than from fights.
“I don’t think saying because a player got hurt in a fight that now we have to talk about taking fighting away,” said the defenseman following his team’s loss. “I bet that if you ask George (Parros) he’ll be the first to agree with me on that one too.”
Currently, fighting in the NHL warrants a five-minute penalty, with an extra two minutes given to the player who instigates the fight.
In the wake of the Parros incident, Steve Yzerman, one of the NHL greats as a player with Detroit and now the general manager of Tampa Bay Lightning, told Canadian TV station TSN that the time had come for the NHL to start talking about raising the penalty for fighting to a game misconduct.
Carolina Hurricanes general manager Jim Rutherford, himself a former goalie, went a step further telling TSN, “We’ve got to get rid of fighting, it has to go.”
Last year, at the minor hockey league level, teams in the Pacific Coast Amateur Hockey Association in metro Vancouver, covering players aged five to 19, banned body checking in games. The controversial decision, which has also been attempted in Ontario and other provinces, was implemented primarily to safeguard against concussion.
Dale Weise, a Canucks winger who got to the NHL mainly on his ability to grind and answer the bell to fight when needed, said he was against staged fights where players are sent on to the ice scrap. However, he felt by taking body checking out of the game “then all of a sudden we’re playing a different sport.”
The 25-year-old Manitoba native noted ice hockey is a rough, physical sport where people who fight are usually willing combatants.
Weiss added by taking fighting out of the game it would only lead to more stick infractions.
“You got to hold some guys accountable. If there’s no fighting, me coming up to you and saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to lay a big hit on you next shift,’ isn’t going to scare anybody,” he said. “You need to keep that in the game just to keep some kind of level playing field out there.”