Heads Up to All NHL Players: Legal Checks Are Allowed in Hockey

Fighting should always be a part of hockey.

From the early days of the game, players have dropped the gloves to settle scores or send messages that the refs or rules couldn't.

Fights can change momentum.

Fights can inspire hope.

However, as the NHL has become more a league built on skill and speed than pugnacity and truculence (Brian Burke, did you get that?), it seems that players have become confused as to what actions are "drop the gloves worthy," and what aren't.

Case in point: Last night, a little more than five minutes into the third period, the visiting Vancouver Canucks were down by a goal to the Chicago Blackhawks.

Vancouver defenseman Willie Mitchell came out of the penalty box after serving a two-minute hooking penalty.

He spots Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews busting up the middle towards the red line and delivers a beautiful and legal body check into Toews' chest, which drops him like a bag of bricks.

The hit, as I mentioned, was legal.

Shoulder down, skates on the ice, stick away from the body—Scott Stevens himself would have been proud.

However, second-year forward Kris Versteeg, seeing his captain dazed and wobbly, decided that this was a job for fisticuffs.

He drops his gloves and goes after Mitchell to settle the score.

Versteeg was hit with a four-minute roughing minor and Mitchell got two minutes, also for roughing, but this was for his dust-up with Versteeg, not the hit. 

The resulting power play didn't yield a goal but, after that hit, the Canucks were inspired and went on to score two straight to win the game.

But let's get back to Versteeg.

Since when did legal body checks in full-contact hockey become infractions necessitating a fight?

Last night's display is not new or unique in recent NHL history.

For the past couple of seasons, it seems any major contact, whether legal or illegal, is going to incite a player to drop the gloves and go after someone.

This is just stupid.

There are certain actions that do call for some on-ice, vigilante justice: running a star player, hacking at a goalie, cheap shots that go unnoticed by refs, hits from behind, and hits to the head.

But legal, open ice hits, finished checks, and well-executed hip checks are as essential to competitive hockey as goal scoring and passing.

I've played hockey for many years, I understand the emotions that a team goes through when one of your players gets caught with their head down and gets laid out.

The response to this, however, is not to pick a fight with the offending checker, but to do your damnedest to do the same thing to one of his guys as soon as possible.

Eye for an eye.

Legal hit for legal hit.

I'm not sure when NHL players decided that playing a solid, physical game is identical to playing dirty and worthy of a beat-down, but I'd wish someone told them that they were wrong.

Hockey is a game of skill, speed, grace, and beauty.

But it is also a game of strength and (controlled) brutality.

That's what makes it great.

To quote longtime hockey lover Cuba Gooding Jr., hockey is "a combination of ballet and football".

Somewhere along the line, NHL players forgot about the football part.