Why Does Fighting Exist in Hockey? The Story of Hockey’s “Enforcers”

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Hockey is, and always has been, a sport steeped in a culture of violence. Players have learned, however, to navigate the escalating levels of physical contact by adhering to an honor system simply known as The Code. Ross Bernstein, author of The Code: The Unwritten Rules of Fighting and Retaliation in the NHL, spent two years for searching this story, and he’s here to share it with us.

Let’s take a listen.

I grew up in southern Minnesota, which is not hockey country. This is wrestling and basketball country, not like northern Minnesota where they pull the kids out of the wombs by their skate blades, as they say. But as a ten-year-old kid, I watched the Miracle on Ice, and this rock my world. I begged my parents to please let me go to the Herb Brooks hockey camp. He had a hockey camp that year for kids, and I went. I had to go buy skates, all the stuff. I was the worst guy there. I won the Most Improved Award for the guy who sucks the most. But it got me into hockey, and I wound up becoming the star of the Fairmont Cardinal slash Domino’s Pizza hockey team. We were so bad, our high school wouldn’t even sponsor us. We had to wear Domino’s Pizza jerseys. That’s how bad we were. But I got into hockey in a big way. And I had a choice to make as a high school senior: small college football, or I could be a Golden Gopher. I want to go to the University of Minnesota. That was my dream. My family bled Maroon and Gold. If you’re from Minnesota, you know this means everything. If you’re not, this is like Texas football, Indiana basketball, Rugby New Zealand. We love hockey, Minnesota. I got season tickets. It was incredible. Well, then I took this class. It was a one-credit fay ed course called Introduction to Ice Hockey 101. It was the class players taught to get their scholarships, allegedly, and I wanted becoming friends with a bunch of guys in the team, and I would invite them over to my fraternity parties, and we’d hang out. And eventually they said, “You know, Ross, you’re not that bad of a hockey player. You should try out. You should walk on to the varsity.” I said, “You know, you’re crazy,” but they wanted me to do it, and I did it, and I lasted about ten minutes. I made it through a while, and I was trying to impress the coaches one day, and I wound up taking out our star player, the team captain, Todd Richards, before going to be an NHL player and coach. And apparently that is not the thing you’re supposed to do. So I got cut. But they told me that I could become the team mascot, Goldie the Gopher. So I became the mascot. I had a blast. I was entertaining drunk fans, got in a lot of trouble, so much trouble that as a senior, a publisher approached me and asked me if they could write a book about all the trouble I had gotten into. Apparently it’s not appropriate to throw Kraft Cheese Singles at the Wisconsin hockey players. Who knew cheese heads? But this got me into hockey in a big way. And I wound up begging my mom and dad to use my graduate school money to write and publish my own book about the history of Gopher hockey from Goldie the Gopher’s point of view, and it became a cult bestseller. And I got to interview hundreds of hockey players who had tell me these amazing stories. And flash forward, you know, I’ve written almost fifty books since then. But along the way, I remember I was working on a hockey book, and I watched this fight where Marty McSorley and Todd Bertuzzi had gotten into this incident, and they kept referring to it as the Bertuzzi Incident, and I didn’t know why that was. And I said that Bertuzzi had broken The Code. And I fancied myself, as you know, as a big hockey guy, had written a lot of books at this point. I didn’t know what that meant. So I kind of went down this rabbit hole, and it launched this book called The Code, about the unwritten, unspoken rules and what leads to fighting and retaliation in hockey. And it was just fascinating. And I learned about these unwritten rules like All-Star Wrestling, like no one talked about these things. There is no fight club. No one talks about fight club. And I wound up interviewing all the players. And because I think I was a hockey guy, because I was, you know, a player at some level, and I was at all the charity golf tournaments, they trusted me, and they were sharing with me. And one would tell me a story in the next, and I want up interviewing hundreds of players about why fighting exists. I never understood. It’s the only sport that really allows fighting to exist. And it has been that way forever, going back, you know, years and years and years. The NHL always said they just allowed it. They said it was originally called fisticuffs. And they said it; whereas other sports you’ll get kicked out, in hockey, they give you a five-minute fighting major. It’s a part of the game. It’s part of the cl the game. There’s an honor code the players live by where the game polices itself. This honor code says that if you play like a jerk, you’ll be treated like a jerk. It’s The Golden Rule. Do something dirty, hit a guy from behind, take liberties as a smaller player, run a guy, do something stupid. The honor code says you must be held accountable. That’s why players really aren’t allowed to wear face masks once they become professionals, because you have to be held accountable. There’s a code. You can’t hit a guy when he’s down. You can’t turtle. You can’t dip your helmet as if to invite a guy to hit your helmet and break his knuckles. I mean, there’s all these rules within the rules that dictate how you and when you can fight. It has to be, you know, both guys acknowledging each other. You can’t jump a guy from behind. The linesmen have great liberties. The NHL has given them liberties as to how they can mitigate and make sure that no one gets hurt and make sure that once it’s over, it’s over. That if someone doesn’t want to be a willing participant, that they won’t be. But you’ll see, guys, you’ll see what it’s when you go on YouTube and see the audio when there is a fight, you’ll see that it’s, it’s very much professional.

Do. Okay. Good luckwords, luck, man. Good luck.

Then let’s go. He says, “That’s unbelievable.”

Look at him.

This smile on his face.

They’ll even give a, like, a flip flip the thumb up, like we’ll flip the lids, meaning, “Okay, you know what, I got a broken finger, take your helmet off.” That’s like a respect thing. Marty McSorley wound up writing one of the forwards for the book, along with Tony Twist. Would have had Bob Probert, but he wasn’t around. Sadly, we’d lost him, but sent me down another rabbit hole again of interviewing. I wrote many books. I wrote a book with Derek Boogaard. When he’s playing for the Minnesota Wild, he remember taking boxing lessons from this guy named Scott LaDoo. Scott was a heavyweight prize fight. He fought Muhammad Alib Holmes, so he understood hockey leverage, balance, but fighting, body blows, how to leverage reach. And it was so, these guys were very technical.

And you’re listening to Ross Bernstein, author of The Code: The Unwritten Rules of Fighting and Retaliation in the NHL. Who knew? When we come back, more of this fascinating story here on Our American Stories.

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Derek would go on YouTube every day and study tendencies, the poker tells, what other guys would do. He said, if you know, if this is your job and you’re not very good at it, you’re not going to be around very long. And back in those days he might have thirty-forty fights a year, not like today where it’s really changed. So going back in the history—I’m weaving around, I apologize—but going back in the history, you know, back in the old Madison Square Garden, the promoters there were boxing promoters, and they would rent an ambulance, and they would drive it around Madison Square Garden with the sirens blaring, saying, “The Boston Bruins are in town! It’s going to be a bloodbath!” There was always a story like in wrestling, like, you’d get heat and you’d build up this bad guy persona, and then everything would come to blows, and then the loser had to leave town, and he’d go to another territory. Well, that’s kind of how it was, but it was real. They knew the last time wasn’t found. You know, Tiger Williams got in a big fight and whoever. And they would dramatize it, and the newspaper reporters loved it. And, you know, the fans went crazy. If there was a fight, no one got up. They wouldn’t go into the bathroom. They weren’t buying a hot dog. They wanted to see it. And really, what’s fascinating is, is that it was a way to create momentum. You know, it’s hard in sports to create momentum. As a speaker, I talk about momentum and how businesses can create momentum. But in hockey, if your team’s down to it and nothing, and a coach taps a guy in the back, or gives him a wink, or just gives him a look, he knows to go out there and take on the other guy’s heavyweight. And if he wins, you know, the guys are going to bang their sticks on the boards, and that’s momentum. The crowd goes wild, or you silence the other team’s crowd. Either way, it creates momentum, and the players feed on that energy. It literally creates a home deal advantage, and it’s remarkable. They’ll rally, they’ll come back from two to nothing, then they’ll win three to two, and you can credit that fighter, that fourth-line guy and making the league minimum. You know, there’s a really interesting story that I thought was brought to light in my book by Howard Bloom that I think really explains a lot.

Jack Jackson with a couple of good left hands. Why is intimidation effective at changing the whole pace of a game? Because once somebody on your team gets hurt, that becomes a real preoccupation. Either makes you feel like a victim or makes you feel like it’s time for revenge. The adrenaline level goes up. It changes the very hormonal see on which hockey is played. Hockey’s not just played on ice, hockey’s played on hormones. How that game goes is going to determine whether for the next week or month they are winners, or hormonally and biologically they are losers.

Without him doing that role, they don’t win. So it’s really remarkable. So they’re the most respected players on the team. When I was getting to know Derek Boogaard when he was in the Minnesota Wild, you know, they sold more Boogaard jerseys than anyone else’s jerseys because those guys are, and they’re teddy bears. They’ve all got that Jekyll and Hyde persona. They’re all the nicest guys off the ice, but on the ice, they’re animals. Their job is to inflict pain, and it’s never personal. You know. Tony Twist said that he’d knocked out the forefront teeth of the best man in his wedding. It wasn’t personal. It’s just business, you know. That’s what they got to do. And it’s hard because, you know, those guys as they get older, Marty McSorley, we’d get together. You know, he could his hands barely worked because there’s so many, you know, they’re just, they were so much inflammation and arthritic. And, you know, he’d say, you know, during training camp, they dreaded it because you’d have to play with what they would call the football players, and those are the guys who are the tough kids from Medicine Hat, Moose Jaw, Moncton. They knew they were never going to make the team, so they gave him like their jersey numbers were like number 75. They were the football players. So these guys would come in, and they would, you know, “You want to be the man, you gotta beat the man!” They would say, very cordially, “You know, Mr. McSorley, I’m trying to make the team,” or, “You know, the minor league team, could I please have a fight with you, sir?” It’s like, “All right, you know what, kid, you’re, you’re, you’re okay. You know, we’ll do it tomorrow, you know, the end of the game.” “I’m okay, but I got to sore shoulders, so don’t, don’t, don’t come at me from this side, and we’re going to flip the lids because I got to,” you know. And it’s just amazing how it was very much just business; it wasn’t personal. And Tony Tony Twist described this. It was fascinating. He described going to work every day like, like I thought, something that every guy could relate to. He said, “It was like being in eighth grade, junior high, and the biggest bully in the school called you out, and they challenged you to fight, and they told everyone. So, when that bell rang at three o’clock, man, at three oh five, you had to be there.” And that stress of knowing that you had to fight this guy at the end of the day. And every guy’s been there, right, then, may have been in a fight in your life. You’ve been there, and you know what that’s like. And they have to do that every day. And they know that if you were going to Chicago, he had to fight Proby. And the last time he fought probably, he cut him. So now probably’s angry and he embarrassed him. So now he’s coming. He knows he’s coming for you, and he knows during pregame warmups it’s coming like first period, maybe first shift, right? And you’re going to get it out of the way. And then, and then there might be a rematch. Here’s Bob Probert.

“Yes, at a certain point in my career, you know, I had a reputation as being one of the tougher guys in the league. So he either had players that would, would come after you and try to make a name for themselves or would stay away. So you had a little bit of both. You know, it was a job that was. It wasn’t easy. You know, you didn’t have to, you know, if you’re a goal scorer, you just have to worry about going out there and keeping your stats up, going out and trying to score a goal. Right, a fighter, there’s a lot more to it. You got, you’re thinking. You’re constantly thinking, ‘Okay, well, who are we playing tomorrow? Who are we playing next week? Okay, next week, I’m going to have to fight this guy.’ Uh, you’re always, you’re thinking that. It takes a lot, a lot. It takes a soul on.”

Yeah, and then they got to get up, right? So they’re taking amphetamine to painkillers because they got to get up with this. But then afterwards they got to come down because they got to, they want to read stories to their kids to go to bed, and they got to do it all again the next day. So it’s this cycle. So, so many of these guys get addicted to painkillers, and it’s tragic, but a lot of these guys, that’s their ticket. And it was fascinating. A lot of guys I met, they were, you know, four-year college guys. These are smart guys. It wasn’t like it was hockey or else. A lot of these guys, like Boogaard, they left home when they were thirteen to go live with a billet family in Saskatchewan. And that’s your job. Like, if you don’t make it, there’s nothing else. You’re going to the back to the farm or the salt mine or whatever it is. So a lot of college guys said, “You know what, I’ll take that role.” The bottom line is you got to protect your skill players. And if other teams know they can take liberties skilled players, they’re going to come after them. I remember one of my, a real good friend of mine, Neil Sheehy, who played about ten years for Calgary. And this is a smart guy. This guy went to Harvard Law School. He’s an agent today for some of the best players in the league. But he learned that it’s chess. He said, “You know what, if I can go punch Gretzky, and McSorley or Samenko will come beat the crap out of me. My team will gladly scan exchange me for Gretzky.” So he’d do that all day, every day, and they figured out that they ultimately became the Instigator Rule. That they literally, they named it kind of after him because he figured out an arbitrage, a gray area where you could, you know, if you can get Gretzky to fight, will gladly take him off the ice because we got a chance to beat you. So it was really interesting learning about the history, the culture, the honor of sticking up for your teammates. It’s the toughest role in sports, in any sport, bar none. The fact that these guys typically don’t fight their own fights. They’re fighting for someone else. Someone takes out your star player knowing that they’re going to have to go out with two minutes in the game when they could just go home and go to bed, but now they’re going to go have to get stitched up. I remember interviewing the old team doctor for the Montreal Canadiens. He said, if a lot of times the team doctor, if they were traveling, they wouldn’t pay them in money. They didn’t money, they’d pay him in booze. So you hope that if you got cut, it was like in the first period, because by the third period you were getting those Frankenstein stitches, like, you know, cut six inches, might get four zippers. Right. So it’s a fascinating look into a really unique part of what I think is the greatest sport in the