Hazards of fighting

The dichotomies are getting harder and harder to figure out. Even for those of us who have never minded our hockey games salted with the odd scrap.

Arron Asham and Jay Beagle stand toe to toe at centre ice in front of 18,512 people, and tens of thousands more at home, watching on TV. They shed their gloves and go at it like gamers/Barbarians -- depending on which side of the debate you fall -- with Asham finally punching Beagle so hard in the cheek that Beagle is left lying near centre ice, semi-conscious and bleeding profusely.

It's not like we've come to watch an opera here. Or the Home and Garden Show. This is hockey, the ultimate blue-collar sport.

But when Asham emerges from the ring and acts like a professional wrestler, making a couple of gestures to the wildly cheering home crowd, he is unilaterally denounced for his lowbrow behaviour.

"It happens in fights," Washington defenseman Karl Alzner said of Asham's actions. "It's crappy to see. Have a little class, you know?"

"My gestures after it was done ... I was into the game, it was uncalled for," Asham admitted while speaking to reporters after the game. "Classless on my part. It was a big game; I wanted to get my bench going...

"Classless move on my part."

Whether due to appreciation, respect, or fear, no group of players are afforded more respect from their collective colleagues than those who show the courage to fight the way Beagle and Asham did. You won't find a Penguin who will mock Beagle today, and there is every chance that -- after his abject apology -- there will be a Capital who, when asked about Asham today, will begin with, "Well, it's the hardest job in hockey."

Said Washington's Mike Knuble after the game: "I played with Arron. He's an honest player."

In life, those who settle their differences in the parking lot are considered to be low-lifes. In hockey, they're held in high esteem.

But, as Asham said, "You want to win, but I don't want to go out there and hurt anyone."

Which brings us to hockey's second contradiction: How, in a sport that is infatuated with the elimination of concussion-causing head shots, can it be quasi-legal for two players to punch each other in the head repeatedly?

How can a fan base in Pittsburgh that rues daily the loss of Sidney Crosby to a brain injury stand and cheer while Beagle lies bleeding at centre ice, almost certainly concussed?

And how can a right-thinking person like myself still say that they're okay with fighting in hockey? We're asking that question more and more these days, but at least we're not alone.

Former NHL player Sheldon Kennedy, who roomed with the venerable Bob Probert while playing in Detroit, told a Vancouver psychiatric conference Thursday that the presence of fighting keeps concussions numbers down in the NHL. When Probert was on the ice, Kennedy said, the game was played in a cleaner and less dangerous fashion than when he wasn't in the lineup.

Of that, there is no doubt. And if Probert were here today, he would echo Asham's comments about not wanting to hurt anyone.

Which brings us to our final inconsistency: How do you win a bare-knuckle fight, yet not hurt anyone? How do you throw bombs at a man's temple, and claim afterwards that you never wanted him to be injured?

If there is a difference in fighting today -- a changing landscape that is pulling this old-time hockey guy back towards the lefties who see a game without fighting -- it is that the old axiom, "No one ever gets hurt in a hockey fight," is being disproven at an alarming rate.

We all knew that that old hockey standard wasn't completely true. That every now and again, a Stu Grimson would have his cheekbone shattered, or someone would bust a beak. But somehow, back when there was twice as much fighting as there is today, there were one-quarter as many serious injuries that came from fights.

Far too often now, scraps are ending the way the Asham-Beagle fight ended on Thursday night, or the way Steve MacIntyre-Raitis Ivanans did a year ago. We used to call them "tussles," but they are more than that now.

Then again, we used to defend the classic Scott Stevens headshot, because they were fewer and far less devastating. But today's bigger, faster and stronger player has shifted the responsibility from the skater -- "Well, he'd better keep his head up" -- to the player who is initiating the hit.

The more one-punch affairs we see, the more we'll admit: The fighting we've always defended isn't the fighting we're watching anymore.

Like the common open-ice hit, it has evolved into something far more dangerous.

Mark Spector is the senior columnist on sportsnet.ca