Fighting in hockey has been around for more than a century, as has the debate about its value in the game. Adam Proteau recalls what he heard from Brendan Shanahan, Kelly Chase and more in a 2014 feature.

It is no exaggeration to say that, for as long as hockey has been around, there has been fist-fighting in the sport. And for as long as hockey journalism has been around, there has been intense coverage of fighting’s role in the game.

The Hockey News, of course, has led the way in chronicling the impact and ramifications of fisticuffs in the sport. In some of the magazine’s early issues, fighting was glorified. As the years passed, fighting’s true worth to the game was questioned by writers such as myself, while others others have long argued in favor of it. But people who’ve read our work and subscribed to The Hockey News know that, regardless of what side of the fighting-in-hockey debate you’re on, we take great pains to give both sides an opportunity to make a strong argument in their favor.

To wit: nearly 10 years ago, in our Dec. 8, 2014 edition – branded as “The Fighting Issue” – the magazine examined the fighting element in great depth. For that issue, I wrote a four-part feature on the history of violence and the evolution of fighting, and I spoke with famous fighters Troy Crowder, Kelly Chase, Stu Grimson and current Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan to get their perspectives on the topic.

“If someone asked me about fighting in hockey, I’d say, ‘Yeah, it was really hard,’ ” Crowder said at the time. “But I wouldn’t change it. Hockey needs to be patrolled. If you were taking advantage of someone, my job was making sure you didn’t. In today’s hockey, a lot of that is lost. There are more concussions because guys run opponents’ heads into the boards, or elbow them as they skate by, than there ever were from fighting. Unless they change all the rules and make all the penalties extreme, the rats will take over.”

Chase went further than Crowder, telling The Hockey News suspensions or fines wouldn’t have stopped him from throwing down.

“If I hit Steve Yzerman from behind, (then-NHL chief disciplinarian) Brian Burke fining me was not what I concerned myself with,” Chase said. “The suspension or penalty was fighting (Bob) Probert and (Joey) Kocur, so I didn’t do that to Yzerman. A suspension or a fine wasn’t a deterrent. It didn’t deter me one time,” Chase said in 2014. “I did what I did because I knew the difference between right and wrong.”

Over the years, hockey has heard more and more about the mental and physical toll on players who fought for a living. But as one of those people, Chase said it’s something that was an accepted element of the game.

“The bulls--- about, ‘It’s caused guys to go drink’, or, ‘It’s caused guys to get into substance abuse’ is a bunch of crap,” Chase said. “Everybody’s got anxiety. I thought it was an honorable way to play, and I would never give it back, the days I had in the NHL. I would never change the way I played.”

That said, there have always been people who don’t see fighting as a necessary release valve. That was true of the first recorded hockey brawl, which took place March 13, 1875, in Montreal, after the first indoor hockey game ever played, when players of that game fought spectators and others who wanted to use the rink for skating (!), it was true in The Hockey News’ “Fighting Issue” of a decade ago, and it is true today.

For Shanahan, who finished his Hockey Hall of Fame playing career and then joined the NHL as head of player safety before taking the Maple Leafs president job, the game has changed from the time he was a 16-year-old kid playing for the Ontario League’s London Knights to the way the game is played in the modern age.

“It got me respect and room and space to score goals and be a better player,” Shanahan said of fighting in his playing days. “There was no advantage growing up to being a decent fighter, but I found that during my first trip through each (OHL) team, I got treated one way, and my second trip through each team, I got treated differently.”

Shanahan was a true power forward never afraid to fight, and he took on some of the most fearsome fighters of his era, including Probert, Donald Brashear, Eric Boulton and Marty McSorley. Shanahan shared a hotel room on the road with fighters who were teammates, including Chase in St. Louis and Crowder in New Jersey. But while Shanahan accepts the physical nature of the sport, he told The Hockey News fighting isn’t a facet of the game he would encourage up-and-coming players to focus on in their training.

“I would do everything I could to encourage a young player, if it’s his dream to make the NHL, to work on his skills,” Shanahan said in 2014. “There will always be intimidation in the game of hockey. There’s intimidation in baseball. But the answer is ‘No, I would not want to give anyone advice on how to be a fighter.’ I don’t think it’s a life I’d hope for for my children. The idea of teaching a young person how to develop that skill as a tactic is not something I would ever do in good conscience.

“For me, that’s not a condemnation of these men who have the protective gene. It’s me displaying my protective gene for them, if I could go back and grab them when they were 14 or 15 years old. For the people who spent a career and a lifetime protecting us, this is the responsible thing to say as far as protecting them.”