THE CANADIAN PRESS
Why didn’t Chicoutimi Sagueneens goaltender Bobby Nadeau fight back when Quebec Remparts goalie Jonathan Roy pulled off Nadeau’s mask and punched him several times during a March 22 playoff game brawl between Quebec and Chicoutimi?
Nadeau, now with the P.E.I. Rocket, has a simple answer: it would’ve hurt his team.
"My coach, Richard Martel, told me not to fight. (He said) ‘for any reason, you will not fight.’ The easiest thing I could do was to fight because it’s fun. It’s a show, it’s showtime. I could have been selfish and started a fight and maybe get a suspension and maybe injured. Then the backup goalie comes in and ‘oh, we lost the series,"’ said Nadeau, a four-year Quebec Major Junior Hockey League veteran. "It’s all about winning and losing. If we win that series, the playoff against Quebec, I did the right thing."
Blanket coverage of the brawl on television, print, radio and the Internet prompted calls by Quebec politicians to ban fighting in hockey. Roy, 19, was charged with one count of assault and appears in court next week. He could be fined up to $2,000 with six months in prison.
In May, QMJHL commissioner Gilles Courteau struck a committee to develop recommendations to curb fighting. It released 31 suggestions earlier this month. League governors voted in several of them at meetings earlier this week.
Among the changes for this season are a suspension up to 15 games for a player who is an aggressor in a fight, a player fighting a second time during the same pause gets an automatic five-game suspension and a player fighting a goaltender will receive a five-game suspension.
For Serge Savard Jr., Rocket president and governor, his experience as a former QMJHL player and scout, and team owner helped him see the brawl and the reaction a certain way.
"To tell you the truth, I didn’t think there was a problem in the league. I think (it was) a situation that happened last year between Chicoutimi and Quebec and it was blown out of proportion by media, by people that took that story to bring back stories in the 70s (when) lots of bad things happened in the Q. There were brawls every five games," he said.
Savard said the rules toughen penalties for "a goon on the other side who cannot play and just goes and give cheap shots the whole game."
He admits governors discussed eliminating fighting at meetings earlier this year, but said times have changed — he’s seen game ejections reduced from three fights per game in his day to two fights now — and predicts a time when hockey and fighting won’t mix.
"I don’t think we’re quite there yet. I think the game if you look at the past and you look at the future, the game is going towards that. I think that fighting will be banned from hockey like it is in any other sport, but I think it’s always going to happen," he said.
.All of it is good news to Nadeau, 20, whom the Rocket traded for in June.
"The key point is that I want everybody to know that a good fight between two players that want to fight is always, always, always better than a cheap shot from behind," said Nadeau, referring to an incident last season between Shawinigan’s Tommy Tremblay and Gatineau’s Ryan Mior.
"If the new rules can avoid those cheap shots or those plays when a player wants to get another one out of the game by what happened to me, you know, if the new rules can avoid that it will be really, really nice."
