I hope there is no fighting tonight.....

Not because I am anti-fighting. Heck, I grew up in the era of the Broad Street Bullies and Big Bad Bruins.

But I am tired of the constant moral preening of the hockey journalists here in Canada over the whole issue of fighting.  All this week they have filled every waking moment of air time with discussion over fighting and the soon to be (they fervently hope) its eventual ban.

Whatever.

Back in the early 90's it was fashionable for those same journalists (or their forebears) to stick a microphone into every player's face and ask "Do you think fighting should be banned?" (although the tone of their quesition always suggested that they were really asking - "C'mon, you really want fighting to be banned, right?" )

Not a single player answered in the affirmative. And these were often stars like Mario Lemieux who were being asked.

Instead, every player said "We have to do something about all the hooking and holding that's creeping into the game".  Imagine that - the players had an idea that something was wrong but the media was too busy carping on fighting to even notice.

The dead-puck era was just beginning and it took almost 15 years since players started mentioning it was a problem for the league to do something about it.

Among the confusion displayed by the journalists this week was that they had heard that if put to a vote the players would not agree to banning fighting.

Guess they know something we don't.