As it should have been.
What had sparked such a perverse response from Gaustad and the waterfall of boos to reign down on Lucic was in the previous game Lucic leveled Sabers goalie Ryan Miller when the Bruins were down a goal. In the NHL, a hit against a goalie had been a penalty since the birth of hockey; and teammates who watched their goal stopper get cleaned out were always obligated to respond as one of the unwritten rules of the game.
At the end of the game, the final score was irrelevant due to the amount of games left in the season. But what could we have taken away from the game last night was what should and should not be considered proper fighting etiquette in the game of hockey.
The first and most important rule of fighting in the NHL: Stay above the belt.
You would not kick a man in the engine room in a regular fight, and players in the fight last night did a very good job of keeping their potential children out of danger. Even when the scrum broke out behind the net between Gaustad, Brad Marchand, Zedeno Chara, Robyn Regehr, Adam McQuaid, and Corey Tropp, none of the aforementioned players attempted to make someone else's voice increase dramatically in pitch. Sots below the crotch had been and always will be regarded as the most unethical tactic in a fight, and the fewer groin shots in the NHL the better.
The next rule for NHL fisticuffs: Pick on somebody your own size.
The battle that ensued last evening between Lucic and Gaustad had this very important element of size matters. Gaustad and Lucic were both over six foot three, and both weighed more than 215 pounds. They were very evenly matched in terms of size, and as close in weight as a fight could hope for. Lucic clearly won the fight, but it was due to superior fighting skill that won the bout, not a discrepancy in size. If a person as big as Zedeno Chara picked on a guy the size of Brian Gionta of the New Jersey Devils, Chara would have been able to step on Gionta and win the fight. If two players were to drop the gloves and they were the same size, it would likely lead to the best possible NHL fight.
Another rule of NHL fighting: Do not utilize your stick as a weapon in a fight.
Suppose that a player in the NHL went out of their way and hit somebody over the back or in the face with a hockey stick, there would be two kinds of punishments. The first type of punishment would be handed out by the league. If a player hit somebody else with a stick he would receive an immediate game ejection, a fine that would be the size of a bailout, and a season long suspension. The other type of punishment that player would receive would be assault charges from a court of law, and those never end well for anybody. Look at baseball player Jose Offerman taking a bat to the mound during a minor league game. He got arrested, and so would anyone charging another player with a hockey stick.
Next rule of fighting in hockey: Do not have your entire team gang up on one person.
In the Lucic and Gaustad fight, the teammates of Gaustad did not try and assist him in the battle. Even though Lucic won the fight with ease, his teammates did not participate either. The primary reason for this was because the Sabers wanted to send their message with only one player getting penalty minutes as a result. But again just like in a real fight, it would be very unfair to have your team rush one dude. In hockey fights, either man up and have it be one on one or don't fight, plain and simple.
All in all, the fights that broke out in last nights game cleared the air, temporarily, because every fight that went down last night was a good clean fight. The Lucic-Gaustad, Chara-Regehr, and McQuaid-Tropp fights all followed these very important guidelines to NHL fighting, and most importantly, nobody got hurt for the rest of the game. And although these NHL fights can be overplayed at times, the brawls in the last two games will make the Boston Bruins and Buffalo Sabers games more compelling the rest of the way.
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