Fight game up for discussion

Last weekend's NHL All-Star weekend threw up some interesting issues, not least the current hot potato of fighting among players.
Following a meeting Saturday with the board, the NHL commissioner, Gary Bettman, showed no sign that the league's board of governors were ready to change hockey by eliminating fighting.
The recent death of a Canadian amateur and the hospitalization of an AHL player, who had a seizure after a bout Friday night, have raised concerns that fighting has become too dangerous to still be considered a useful part of the game.
"It's a fascinating question," Bettman said during a news conference. "I think it's become integral in terms of how the game is played. I think it acts as a bit of a thermostat, if you will, as to what takes place on the ice. And I believe that most of our fans enjoy that aspect of the game.
"I don't think it's the be-all and end all of our game. I always believed it is an incidental part of the game. But it is a part of the game."
Don Sanderson, was a 21-year-old Whitby Dunlops defenseman who hit his head on the ice after losing his helmet while fighting in December during an Ontario Hockey Association game, and died on January 2.
"We're not going to have any immediate knee-jerk reactions," Bettman said. "We're going to have to study things before we make changes, if we decide to make changes. I don't think that there's any appetite to abolish fighting from the game, and there are lots of reasons for that, including the fact that it's been a part of the game.
"I do think what we're going to have to take a good, hard look at is what I described to the board is, for lack of a better term, the rules of engagement, how a fight gets initiated, what happens with chin straps and helmets, what happens with takedowns."
In the big game itself, Alex Kovalev gave Montreal and Canadiens fans something new to cheer about after scoring two breakaway goals and then one in the shootout to help give the Eastern Conference All-Stars a wild 12-11 victory over the West on Sunday night.