GABRIEL WEIGHS IN ON NEW FIGHTING RULES
Oct 14, 2016By Tom Witosky | Follow @toskyAHLWild
The American Hockey League’s move to limit fighting this season is fine with Iowa Wild forward Kurtis Gabriel, the club’s most frequent battler, but he also thinks it may be creating a problem for players headed to the National Hockey League.
“Obviously they are trying to weed out fighting and this is a step in that direction,” the 23-year old Iowa Wild forward said. “But I don’t like it on the development level because when guys get to the NHL level it creates a problem. Yes, it is getting weeded out here, but then no one will know how to fight when they get up there.”
Gabriel was Iowa’s most penalized player during the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons with 125 penalty minutes and 137 penalty minutes respectively. He also ranked among the players with the most fights, logging 15 in the AHL and two in the NHL last season. Michael Liambas led the AHL with 20 fights while playing for Rockford and is on division rival Milwaukee’s roster this season.
AHL officials voted unanimously in July to impose a series of restrictions on fighting.
Those changes include:
-- Imposing an automatic game misconduct on any player who begins a fight prior to, at, or immediately following the drop of the puck.
--Imposing an automatic one game suspension on any player who receives his 10th fighting major during the regular season. Three subsequent fighting majors will also result in an automatic game suspension.
-- Imposing a two game suspension on any player receiving his 14th fighting major of the season. Subsequent fighting majors will result in an automatic two game suspension.
-- Discounting any instance where the opposing player was assessed an instigator penalty by not counting the fighting towards the player’s total for this rule.
Dave Andrews, the AHL president, told The Hockey News that the changes are intended to reduce fights by the players most likely to engage in one. Figures show that two percent of the AHL players were responsible for 20 percent of the fights last season.
“We still have what we would consider to be a far too high of an incidence of fighting in our league,” AHL president Dave Andrews told thn.com.
Fighting has long been a controversial aspect of professional hockey with complaints that it serves little purpose and only serves to entertain fans during games.
Derek Lalonde, the Iowa Wild’s head coach, said that he supports the new restrictions because the game has changed over the years.
“The day and age of the goon type player, who can’t stay with the five-on-five game, is outdated,” Lalonde said. “You aren’t going to see that anymore. Every player is going to have to prove they can play the game and not just fight.”
Lalonde also said that the restrictions will help to incentivize hard-hitting hockey as the means to protect players from cheap shots like boarding.
“Finishing a check and making big hits is how you send the same message,” Lalonde said. “That is becoming the way to send a message instead of the staged fight.”
At the same time, Lalonde and Gabriel agreed that moments do occur when dropping the gloves is a valid response to protecting a teammate.
“If they feel a fight is warranted, I want them to do it,” Lalonde said. “I don’t want them thinking about things down the road.”
Gabriel said that the new rules are similar to ones he played under in the Ontario Hockey League with Owen Sound Attack. If the new rules had been imposed last season, his 15 fights would have resulted in suspension for eight games.
“I dealt with the same kind of rules in the OHL, which also had a ten fight rule. I don’t think that it will affect me much because no one really fights too much anyway,” he said.
At the same time, Gabriel said that he doubts similar rules will be imposed on the NHL level.
“Personally, I don’t think it will ever be taken out of the NHL,” he said. “There will still be as many fights as you want off the face-off or whenever it is required. I just don’t think that will change and I don’t think it should change. You can change on the lower levels so there won’t be as many fighters coming into the league, but I think it should always be there.”
Gabriel said that the additional downside will be later in the season when opponents know that a player is facing a suspension with a fight. He said his experience during his OHL career included attempts to instigate fights against him.
“In juniors, I had 14 fights but after I got to 10, I found that guys were instigating against me so those didn’t count,” he said.
But Gabriel also said that a fight – no matter when it happens – generally is the result of something that has happened in the ice
“A fight means that something is going on in the game to cause it,” Gabriel said. “I don’t buy that there are staged fights. I have been involved for some time and my view is that there is generally a reason for it in terms what has happened during a game.”