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Adam Pardy's favourite place to play is probably not Chicago.
A man reached over and snapped Pardy’s helmet off his head, and then placed it on his own, as a trophy. In some angles, someone can be seen pouring a beer on Pardy.
“It got over the side of my face, down to my jersey,” Pardy told reporters after the game. “I don’t know if you can still smell it in my clothes, but the bench was definitely smelling a little booze there for the last six minutes.”
He said he also lost his stick.
“A little insult to the injury, I guess,” Pardy told reporters. “It was a tough night for all of us. Tough enough to get put through the glass, but then to get a beer thrown at my head, too, it’s not a good thing.”
Hockey players are coming out against eliminating fighting from hockey.
Former NHL enforcer Jody Shelley knows getting rid of fighting is going to be discussed when incidents occur.
“I don’t think I could imagine it, but people have been trying to imagine it now for quite some time,” said Shelley, now a broadcast analyst for the Blue Jackets. “It’s something that’s unique about our game, it’s something that gets negative press way more than positive press and it’s only at times that negative stuff happens.”
It’s getting a lot of attention now, but many, including Watson, don’t think fighting will ever be eliminated.
“I honestly don’t think it’ll go away,” he said.
But some people think, based on equipment rules, it will phase out over time.
Emrick noted the grandfathering of helmets in 1979 caused the number of fights to decline dramatically in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and the implementation of visors could have the same effect.
“Eventually the knuckles on the helmets just wore guys down and made them less effective as fighters,” Emrick said. “Now that we’ve adopted the face shields for all guys coming in, and we had 73 per cent of the players wearing face shields a year ago, eventually that evolutionary process, I think, will continue to where there won’t be much fighting at all.”
Beginning this season, all incoming players and those with 25 or fewer games of NHL experience were forced to wear visors. Previously a player with a visor could be given an extra penalty for initiating a fight, but now it’s a two-minute minor if fighters remove their helmets before a fight.