A Canadian Plan to Tax Hockey Violence Right Off the Ice

A new plan to tax hockey violence has been floated by a Canadian hockey player, coach, fan and occasional sports columnist. "Set team fines equivalent to the amount of time a player is suspended and tax discretionary fighting right out of the game," David Lettner says.

Writing in the Globe and Mail, Canada's oldest national newspaper, Lettner claimed "No player would be willing to give up almost 40 percent of his season's salary for three such fights."

"And in this salary-cap era, no team would be willing to keep a player who missed 30 games and obliged the team to pay," he added.

Apply the same penalties to flagrant stick fouls and they, too, would disappear, he said.

Canada is preparing to host the 2010 Winter Olympics and members of the National Hockey League's board of governors used their annual March meetings to debate the place of fighting in the world's top professional league.

Fights have increased 64 percent over the past three seasons and hockey players were on pace to drop the gloves 763 times in the 2008-2009 season.

The standard response from players, coaches, general managers, owners and even the current commissioner is that fighting "has always been a part of our game."

Fighting is entrenched in NHL culture but not in other hockey leagues.

The greatest myth about the need for fighting, and those who fight, is that it is a self-regulating aspect of the game that keeps stick violence in check.

Former NHL tough guy Marty McSorley restated the familiar argument during a recent CBC fifth estate documentary exploring this issue.

"The NHL should adopt the same fighting policies as other professional sports leagues: If you fight, you're out of the game," the Globe and Mail article concluded.

Lettner also offered this solution: Hand out five-, 10- and 15-game suspensions for any player's first, second, and third staged or retaliatory fighting offences.