Ice Guardians Page #9

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We like to watch that happen.

That's what sports are.

It's high-risk / high-reward.

My risk is fighting and getting injured,

but my reward -

I got to play in the NHL.

It's such a fine line between

having that choice and decision

to be made by a grown adult

and having that basically taken away

because people disagree with that.

What is the atmosphere like in an arena

when a fight breaks out?

What is the crowd like?

It's electric!

Honestly I think that's

one of the reasons

why people go to hockey games.

You don't see that in baseball.

Maybe a little bit in football.

That's... why I... come...

To enjoy the games.

It's an uproar and it's like hoo-wee!

And I'm like...

Yeah.

I don't know.

I never look at the other people.

I kind of focus on the fight more.

Bonkers!

It gets super exciting.

Oh, yeah. People love it.

That's when the crowd's

gonna pay the most attention

to anything that's goin' on

at any point in time.

Those minute and a half

that everybody's on the edge

everybody in the beer line

turns around and looks.

The old saying, "I came to a fight

and a hockey game broke out...?"

There's two times when the people

stand up in a hockey game.

It's when there's a goal scored

and when there's a fight.

And when there's a fight,

everybody stands up.

One of the most

intriguing emotional moments

in a hockey game

for me, has always been

the tiny little slice of time

right before they first engage.

Where it's about to happen

and that tension is built-up

like the ketchup is so

full in that bottle

that, when you finally hit it,

it just sort of explodes.

And the crowd... roars

Outta nowhere...

Just... two players drop the gloves.

Maybe you caught it, maybe you didn't

It doesn't really matter how it started.

If you didn't see it before,

you see where the heads are all pointed.

You look where they're looking -

And you feel this energy that

sort of overtakes you.

It's kind of collective, guttural

sort of, sort of a roar.

Y'know, it's a different...

It's a different sound

coming out of the crowd

than when a goal is scored.

There was this constant noise and

chatter and everything goin' on...

But it elevated to the point

where it was just like...

Oh my God.

Like, I was in the Rocky movie.

Even if they don't want

two people to fight,

they're gonna watch.

It's almost instinctive in us.

It hearkens back to... the schoolyard.

"Hey there's a fight!"

What does everybody do?

Circle.

Whoa! Way to go, baby.

They don't like it at all here!

If there was no response from the fans,

a lot of the intensity of

the fight would sort of - leave.

21,273 people and uh,

and a fight's happening.

You tell me you don't feel it

in the pit of your stomach.

And you tell me there's not...

f***in' hairs...

standin' up on your arm.

I'd say, if not,

check your f***in' pulse.

They're on their feet

at First Niagara Centre

as Kane races down the tunnel.

His night is done.

6-3 Panthers in the third.

I'm not sure how I can rationalize

something as emotional

as a hockey fight.

There's, I dunno, What is it?

Monkey-DNA in me, and all of us as well,

which produces this disconnect between

what my head knows

and what my heart feels.

I can't explain it logically.

Because logically, it makes no sense.

It's a sport.

Where does this violence come from?

Why is there such a great disparity

in our attitudes toward violence?

We've gone from tribes of 35 people

to groups of 1.4 billion people.

The bigger your group gets,

the more differentiation you get.

And every subculture represents

a different hypothesis,

a different guess about

the way the world works.

There is no denying that,

rightly or wrongly,

you do get an emotional jolt from it.

It may turn into disgust, that's fine.

It may turn into, y'know adoration.

But there is no denying

that something happens to us emotionally

when we're about to see a fight.

There's an element

where you kind of

have to look at whether -

the pugilistic idea

that people are used to

finding a physical outlet

for their emotions

is appealing to people.

In us humans, we don't

want those instincts to fight

to manifest themselves in daily life.

We do not want fights

in major corporations

in the accounting room.

We simply don't want that.

The entertainments are exercises

for the animal instincts within us.

What we can learn about human nature

from the role of the enforcer in hockey

is this sense of an innate

desire to see justice being done

whatever form that might be.

And that's something

we like to see played out

in all society, not just in hockey.

It's conflict.

That's what contact sport is all about.

A hero and a villain,

they're essentially

mirror images of each other

they just have different jerseys on.

And you care about one

more than the other.

If there's not someone hecklin' you,

and telling you 'you suck'

and you, you're a bag of sh*t

and that you're a p*ssy,

then you haven't done your job.

Toronto, like when there'd be Tie Domi,

we'd come in and

I was getting booed there.

It was kinda cool.

Like finally, I grew up a Leaf fan,

and I'm gettin' booed by 'em.

I think that's the beauty of sports

is you can go watch the

pride of your city,

or the pride of your home,

be built up...

in the safety of an $80-a-night seat.

We have taken that instinct

for groups to battle to the death

and we've found an outlet

for those instincts in a whole new way.

It's called "Sports."

It's called the kinds of

massively-organized sports

that only things like television

or radio make possible.

And through sports,

we can exercise those instincts

without killing each other.

But the old instincts are still there.

In violence we find our identity.

In violence we find our unity.

And those who are on

the outskirts of society -

those are our heroes.

And that's something

that's constantly shifting

with the public's attitude.

How the media frame things

and what events are

happening at the time.

Fundamental tribalisms.

The tribalism that exists

in your gut and my gut.

Whether we want to

acknowledge it or not,

it is always there.

It is heart and soul and breath of us.

How does "etiquette" come out of

the chaos of hockey?

It's gotta sound so odd and just crazy

to be so... civil when you're,

y'know, being so violent.

They call it "the code."

Everybody knows what it is

but nobody knows what "it" is.

It's basically a kind of list of

informally agreed-upon rules.

You agree that something's been unfair.

You agree that the best way to settle it

is to have a fight.

You agree to the rules by

which that fight will happen.

Wanna go or no?

Want to? OK.

Square up?

OK, good luck man.

The first one that comes to mind is that

y'know, when a player

goes down to the ice,

you try not to punch their head

through the ice.

You never jumped somebody from behind.

You never sucker-punched anybody.

No biting, no eye-gouging.

Simple things like that.

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