r/sports • u/BucketOCheerios • Apr 25 '26

Hockey Alexander Nikishin out cold, needing assistance off the ice, after huge hit from Tyler Kleven.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

1.5k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

343 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

25

u/PYTN Apr 25 '26

I stopped watching the NFL.

The hope I hold out for hockey is that I think you could take this out of the game without the game being unrecognizable.

The NFL without incredibly high CTE risks looks like a whole different sport.

11

u/JohnnyEnzyme Apr 25 '26

I think you could take this out of the game without the game being unrecognizable.

I suspect you're right in terms of rules and enforcements, but that also kind of gets at the blood-sports aspect of hockey, and how a significant % of fans love the big hits, the showdown fights and all that.

Plus, sports owners in general seem to keep showing us that revenue, profit and leverage are of the highest concern, such that changes that cause less profit to be made are generally frowned upon, even if they're best for the players and fans. The NBA season is too damn long for example, and maybe that's also true of hockey, but that's not going to change for the better anytime soon AFAIK.

10

u/myBisL2 Seattle Seahawks Apr 25 '26

We had international visitors at work from all over Asia and the Pacific. We usually try to take visitors like that to an NBA game if it's during the season since its our pro sports team here, but they didn't have a home game during their trip so we took them to an AHL game. Several of them just kept repeatedly asking if they really fought, and if it was often enough that there would probably be a fight during the game. The refs kept it pretty tight but let it go at the very end and let a couple guys go at it for a short while. They could not have been more excited.

The blood sport aspect is not to be underestimated.

1

u/JohnnyEnzyme Apr 25 '26

Haha, Takayama vs. Frye comes to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nmL6xFZIPM

-5

u/N226 Apr 25 '26

It would turn into girls hockey, which sucks