Adam Proteau agrees with Flyers coach John Tortorella's thoughts that fighting after clean, big hits is unnecessary. But returning the policing of the game to the players is where they see things differently.

Like most of us, John Tortorella is a complicated human being.

Over the years, he’s said things that this writer couldn’t have rolled his eyes harder at. But when he came out Thursday and went on a rant about a physical incident between Philadelphia Flyers forward Garnet Hathaway and New Jersey Devils defenseman Luke Hughes and the state of hitting in the game, he definitely made a few arguments we agree with.

“I think it’s a lost art in how you take hits,” Tortorella said of the run-in between Hughes and Hathaway, which was quickly followed up by Devils defenseman Jonas Siegenthaler taking on Hathaway in a fight. 

“I’m not trying to run down the league. I just think we’ve taken away the policing of the game from the players…Back in the day, and I’m not trying to go way back, but you’ve got to learn how to take a hit…And if you do have a big hit, you shouldn’t have to fight someone two seconds later because it’s a big hit. That’s what I don’t get. Not blaming anybody; I just don’t like where that part of the game is going.”

Hathaway was assessed a major penalty and a game misconduct for boarding on the play, and Tortorella made no bones about his displeasure with the officials’ ruling. But let’s break down his statement and separate the wheat from the chaff:

First thing’s first: there’s little that’s more tedious than somebody talking wistfully about the past and older generations. Every generation, on one level or another, finds comfort in convincing itself the good old days were more good than old. The truth is, the past becomes more attractive the further you move on from it, and that’s something people should always bear in mind when listening to a rant like Tortorella’s.

Next, this notion of the “policing” of the game needing to belong to the players is nonsense. As we’ve said many times, hockey is the only major pro sport where this notion of policing is painted as some noble pursuit. You can be absolutely certain that if, say, the NBA allowed its players to square off with fisticuffs every time there was a hard foul in the paint, we’d hear some segment of fans and media demand lengthy suspensions for them. We could go a little deeper on this angle, but for now, let’s just say that the policing of the game should be the dominion of officials, the way it is in every sport.

Now, let’s get to the part of the rant we agree with: for many years – decades, even – a massive hit has been followed up with a fight in the NHL. That’s hardly a new development. But we agree, in a game of physical contact, a major hit that’s clean and legal should never have to be followed up with a fight. Collisions are a part of the sport, and that physicality isn’t going to change.

Ultimately, what’s really changed about the NHL in recent years is the speed of the game, a factor that makes hits more explosive. But what’s the solution here? If you say the game has to be forcibly slowed down by the return of obstruction, we’ll take a hard pass on that suggestion. The league has benefited greatly from the reduction of obstruction, and allowing players to jam their sticks into opponents’ stomachs and water skiing down the ice would muddy up the entertainment product and result in the truly ugly hockey we saw in the 1990s and early 2000s. No thank you to that stuff.

Tortorella's comments aside, at the end of the day, there are always going to be borderline hits that referees will judge to be over the line. It’s on the officials to get those calls right and not the players to take matters into their own hands.

The next time there’s a big hit, and it’s a clean hit, the officials should punish the instigator of a retaliation fight and leave it at that. That’s where the league and the game should be, not the reintroduction of some archaic notion of frontier justice that sounds romantic but doesn’t hold up to the smell test.