QMJHL planning to put a ban on fighting
The QMJHL may be looking to radically shift the game of hockey and put a ban on fighting, according to an article from the Hockey News earlier today.
The QMJHL’s board of governors are expected to meet in June, where they will vote on this potential rule change for the sport.
A QMJHL spokesperson clarified the plans for the rule change with The Hockey News.
“The QMJHL is planning to have a rule in place that will ban fighting, making it black and white that it is no longer a part of our game,” the spokesperson said on behalf of the league in The Hockey News’ report. “The punishments have not been decided as of yet.”
The QMJHL has been one of the more aggressive leagues in the sport for disciplining fighting, including an added 10-minute misconduct to the standard five-minute major that comes with the penalty in 2020.
Some reports indicated that the new rule change could institute a match ban for both players unless one was clearly an instigator, but the league’s source told the Hockey News that those reports were premature, and there were several options that they would explore.
While fighting has been on the decline in hockey for many years now, not much has been done from a major rules standpoint. The QMJHL has seen a decline in fighting from 0.78 fights per game in 2011-12 to 0.07 last season, while in that same span the NHL’s seen a decline from 0.44 to 0.25, reaching a low of 0.15 in 2019-20.
The optics of having teenagers and young adults fighting isn’t exactly a great one, especially when it could be a player as young as 15 or 16 fighting with a fully developed athlete as old as 19 or 20, so seeing one of them go for the change is less surprising than the more traditional stance of the NHL.