Pugilism has long been an important, if not necessarily crucial, component to the NHL game.
A well-timed fight can turn the tide of a contest that has begun to slip away. A fighter can drop the gloves in order to protect the best players on his team from being targeted by the opponent. A fight can be a statement, a demand for respect.
But is fighting on the verge of disappearing from the sport altogether?
Fights are still a relatively normal occurrence on a game-to-game basis - there are even players on NHL rosters whose presence is solely for fisticuff reasons. But those players and the idea of dropping the gloves in general have been slowly dissipating from the NHL consciousness, according to Pierre LeBrun of ESPN.com.
Through 135 games this year, fighting majors were down 20 percent from last season. If you go back to 2003, they're down 44 percent.
Franchises with long histories of tough play and menacing fighters, like the Toronto Maple Leafs and Philadelphia Flyers, no longer employ heavyweight enforcers.
The reason for this is three-fold.
Partially, it is the changing nature of the NHL. After the 2004-05 lockout, there was an increased focus on skill and speed league-wide. Lead-footed enforcers simply don't belong on the ice if they can't contribute.
The increased awareness of the dangers of head injuries and brain trauma has played a part as well. Concussions are a serious issue that every sport has looked to curb.
And salary-cap restrictions made carving out money and a roster spot for a fight specialist difficult and costly both from a monetary and an opportunity perspective - analytics have changed the way general managers operate and the way rosters are constructed.
"The games are so close," Flyers general manager Ron Hextall told ESPN.com. "I think we all rely on our top players a lot, and at points I think too much, so I think giving your so-called fourth line a couple of extra minutes, or maybe an extra three to four minutes, is becoming bigger and bigger. The guys there have to be good hockey players. I'm not saying our guy [Rosehill] that we demoted wasn't a good hockey player, but we were just looking for a few more minutes from those fourth-line guys."
Call it, "The Rise of The Fourth Line." Generating positive play from the bottom of the roster takes pressure off the rest of the team.
LeBrun points to the re-signing Stanley Cup Champion Los Angeles Kings as a prime example of a team that has removed the role of enforcer and yet managed to keep their physically imposing nature.
They have players who can fight, but those players are also versatile and skilled and can fill a variety of roles in the lineup, depending on in-game matchups and needs.
A team like Toronto and general manager Dave Nonis learned their lesson last season, when they were forced to operate almost as a three-line team because of the lack of skill and ability on a fourth line comprised predominantly of Colton Orr and Frazer McLaren - a pair of players known much more for their fighting ability than their hockey acumen.
"There are different options there for us now, different options for the third and fourth line and even the second line, for that matter," said Nonis. "You see a guy like [Daniel] Winnik play on the second line or the third or fourth line. Those options were not available to [Leafs coach] Randy [Carlyle] before.
"You look at a lot of the teams that have had success the last couple of years. They're getting minutes out of their fourth line, and they're not just two or three minutes; sometimes it's 10 or 12 minutes. And players are moving up and down the lineup. That's the direction I think the league is moving in."
Detroit Red Wings general manager Ken Holland was ahead of the curve in this aspect. His Cup-winning teams in 1997 and 1998 were able to roll four lines on a nightly basis, getting contributions from the bottom of the roster and taking pressure off their stars to constantly and consistently perform.
"The desire to have a fourth line who can chip in offensively in a secondary role, or kill penalties, or be able to check the other team's top six forwards to take pressure off your top offensive forwards, really that's been the driving force behind any decisions that we've made in putting together the Detroit Red Wings," Holland said.
The number of fights per game has fluctuated since the lockout. The 2005-06 season saw a dramatic drop in fights per game, to 0.38. It spiked to 0.60 per game in 2008-09, but last season the number again dropped to 0.38.
If the current trend continues, fighting could disappear from the NHL almost entirely.
