Does Union Solidarity Decrease Fighting in the NHL?

Rival stars such as Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin
flank NHLPA Executive Director Donald Fehr during the lockout.

Recently, in a collective bargaining course at the ILR School, a labor official familiar with this season’s National Hockey League lockout gave his take on a number of issues. While it was easy to accept most of his opinions on collective bargaining in sports as expert testimony, one prediction would have to be tested by looking at data. The speaker claimed that because of the solidarity developed among players during the work stoppage, the NHL would experience fewer fights this season. He felt that the goodwill exhibited as union brothers off the ice would carry over on the ice. 

The argument seems to stem from the fact that NHL Players Association Director Donald Fehr effectively united workers who are normally paid to compete against each other. The NHLPA leadership effectively pitted players against management rather than against each other. There was actually more dissent among League leadership and owners, who arguably compete for much higher stakes in normal years. But while solidarity is always an important part of union strategy in collective bargaining, could it have unintentionally made players less pugilistic?

Unsurprisingly, the stats do not overwhelmingly support this theory.  According to hockeyfights.com, there have been .50 fights per game since the lockout, up from .44 per game last year. Though the four year period of 2008-2012 shows an average of .54 fights per game, it decreased in each of those years, dropping a total .16 fights per game. It doesn’t appear that the lockout had any immediate effect in reducing fisticuffs between players.  

But this was an unusual season in many regards. The shorter season could make this data less reliable in theory, but more importantly it could have affected how often players drop the gloves. Perhaps, because of the intra-conference schedule (to make scheduling easier, Eastern and Western Conference teams did not play) the familiarity of opponents increased tensions. Or maybe more fights take place closer to the playoffs in normal seasons, and with the entire season taking place in this timeframe, a whole season’s worth of scores got settled in less time. A whole season of post-lockout data might look different.  

Fortunately (actually unfortunately), there is another data set, as the NHL did experience a work stoppage lasting the entire 2004-05 season. In the previous 2003-04 campaign, fights reached a violent .64 per game, with the four year period of 2000-04 seeing nearly .60 fights per game. But with a contentious year of collective bargaining behind them, players engaged in a historically-low fights per game mark of just .38 in 2005-06, and then .40 in 2006-07, before rising to the levels previously described.  



Following the missed 2004-2005 season and subsequent rule changes, fights rose after a dramatic drop off, then trended downward into the most recent lockout. 



Overall, it’s not clear what conclusions can be drawn from this theory. Maybe coaches were aware of a pacifying effect this time, and changed their direction to players accordingly. More likely, there are many variables involved with hockey fights, and the differences in the yearly data are explained by other factors. Still, any time NHL players from different teams are united together, there’s a possibility that it could have an effect when they are inevitably turned against each other. Looking at post-Olympic and post-All-Star Game data may help provide an answer.

One thing is for sure though. Fans that love to see the gloves dropped had little to be disappointed coming out of this lockout. Our guest speaker was stuck on quotes from players like Pittsburgh Penguin Tanner Glass, who said he was “firmly behind what we are doing” in expressing his NHLPA solidarity. Only a few months later Glass would be a little more hostile to union brothers like New York Ranger Aaron Asham, as evidenced below.