is the nhl more violent than generations before?

[golfpuck 0]

only cause i dont remember hockey before the 80s

[Chadd 916]

No, the media just paid less attention to hockey and had fewer camera angles showing the play.

Aside from the teams who used bench learing brawls regularly for intimidation in the 70's, it doesn't appear to be significantly more violent.

[Adam91 0]

hockey back in the day might have had more fights but even players that fought each other respected each other. They didn't use sticks as weapons and they certainitly didn't have goons who could do nothing but fight

[Tricky4L 0]

Lack of media attention back in the day limits the incidents of the 70s to merely "folk tails" with the few exceptions of rare video. Keep in mind that the incidences in Slap Shot were taken from actual events and the broadstreet bullies are infamous for a reason. Pre 80s was without a doubt more "violent".

[ajd91187 0]

gotta be the 90's when you had probert and grimson running around pummeling everything in sight... the 90's is also when the stick work started.

[Dave 1]

hockey back in the day might have had more fights but even players that fought each other respected each other. They didn't use sticks as weapons and they certainitly didn't have goons who could do nothing but fight

I remember clips from the 70s in which groups of opposing players literally went at each other with their sticks. It was a nasty slashfest-brawl.

[jollygreen16 0]

i agree....those did get pretty intense...but fight will always be a part of hockey...wheaether its a littlie shoving between two players....or if both teams cleared the bench

[Bruin88 0]

i personally dont think its anywhere near as violent ,we just have a small amount of large incidents(bertuzzi ,Mcsorly(spelling?) that get we get over excited over

[MDE3 0]

As possibly the oldest member on this board....(I think I won that honor in a poll taken a while back)...I have watched NHL hockey live and on TV since about 1954....

Here's my perspective on how it has been...understanding this is just one person's viewpoint, who has had the opportunity to watch NHL hockey over a long period of time.

The "violence" that we think of in the movie Slap Shot actually seemed to start in the minors and move up, rather than the NHL and move down, in the early sixties....It moved on into the NHL in the seventies.

Two factors brought this about....one was the fact that the minor junior teams..Junior B etc. in Canada were having trouble getting more than a few hundred fans to a game. The owners of these teams figured out that if they began to create inter town rivalries where every game was a revenge bloodbath, they could raise the attendance to a few thousand high school kids instead of a few hundred...at least for a while until the novelty wore off. So from the early sixties, the minor levels of hockey got progressively more brutal, and many players figured out, that if they didn't have the talent to play at the Major junior levels, or above, they might still get "called up" if they could fight..so they set out to prove they could, and a whole goon subculture began to form. Eventually this "marketing model" got promoted up the food chain as a way of attracting fans in the US as the game began to expand slowly down here.

While there was some fighting in the fifties and sixties in the NHL, the fights were more memorable because they didn't happen all the time. The "brutal" version of the game really didn't become part of NHL hockey until the seventies...prior to that, stick work was usually more subtle....There were already plenty of opportunities for facial or head injury from accidents, as no facial or head protection was worn. Due to the fact that the faces and heads of the players were more exposed, it was considered a much more serious offence to take the stick deliberately to the head of another player..just as driving a player head first into the boards was considered a real "no no"...even your own team would ostracise you for doing this to an opponent. Players understood that "what's good for the goose is good for the gander"

The other major influence was the advent of the Russian series between the various NHL teams...where the Russian teams started to demonstrate their skill dominance over "our best"...begining in the late sixties and on through the seventies. Prior to this the party line was ..."hey the Russians can beat our amateur teams, but they aren't playing our NHL teams".

Once they began also beating our NHL teams, it was "Katie bar the door", and the real cheap stuff began to become part of the NHL game against the international teams..national pride was at stake in the Cold War..and pretty much anything went.

Due to the fact that several teams had success against the Russians by playing this cheap shot style of hockey....notably the Philadelphia Flyers who almost created a major international incident from their behaviour against the Russian Red Army team... the term and concept of "The Broad Street Bullies" became synonymous with success in the NHL..and the Flyers extended this success to the Stanley Cup Championship.

At this point "brutal hockey" really became established as sort of a system..and endured for a couple of years, until a blazingly fast Islanders team began to upset this theory...and led into the eighties.

In the eighties with the advent of Gretzky and the Oilers, the concept of having a "heavy" on the ice to protect your stars became more commonplace...before this the stars were as tough as anyone else..maybe more so. Over time the fighting became a bit more "ritualized" between "designated hitters"..and then occasionally you see the Betuzzi/McSorely stuff.