Mike Milbury Feels Very Strongly About Fighting In NHL
NHL on NBC’s Mike Milbury and TSN’s Bob McKenzie feel quite differently about fights in the NHL today
The big story in the NHL community today has been whether fighting still has a place in the game, as former NHL bruiser Mike Milbury has very publicly gone on record insisting the fighting needs to stop.
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During Rivalry night Wednesday night on NHL on NBC, the intermission report focused almost exclusively on the controversy. Mike Milbury duked it out (verbally, of course, because he hates fighting now) with TSN’s Bob McKenzie over the issue- and things got pretty personal.
The first intermission report saw a lengthy discussion over the issue, in which Milbury insisted that the only way to truly eliminate head hits is to simply nip it in the bud- and get rid of fighting altogether.
McKenzie, in contrast, thinks that fighting still has an entertainment value to it, and most likely won’t be completely eliminated from the game until this generation either phases out or suffers some sort of fatality (he cites a brain-dead injury or death) occurs. He believes that some of the hits should be penalized, but showed an example of Dallas Stars captain Jamie Benn fighting in last week’s game against the Columbus Blue Jackets as a good example of a safe, entertaining fight. He suggested that it pumps players up and gives the game momentum as much as it excites the crowd.
Milbury was having none of this, though, suggesting that the NHL should make good on their promise to seriously look at reducing concussions by banning fights altogether. By the second intermission, things got really real- Milbury and McKenzie got into a heated argument over it, which ended with a near fight between the two announcers- and, of course, a quick cut to commercial.
Regardless of where spectators and players stand on the issue, it seems clear- this topic of conversation is going away no time soon.
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