No wonder NHL is eyeing Las Vegas: it is Fight Town, after all

The first thing you need to know is there’s a top prospect named Connor McDavid who plays for the Ontario Hockey League’s Erie Otters.

The second thing you need to know is that, not only has every NHL team (and fan) trained an eye toward his imminent arrival in the league, but the Canadian national team had him in mind to play a big role in the world junior U20 tournament – in which Canada has gone without a gold medal for five straight years.

The third thing you need to know is that McDavid got into a fight on Tuesday night, in a game against the Mississauga Steelheads. And in that fight, he managed to punch the glass surrounding the ice, in an errant attempt to lay one on Bryson Cianfrone. It looked like this:

Finally, you need to know that all this has caused a stir – on both sides of a deepening divide between those who feel fighting has an important place in hockey, and those who see it as unnecessarily damaging face-punching.

On the one hand, Damien Cox wrote on Wednesday at Sportsnet:

It is to be torn between the absurdity of it, and the sheer barbarity … Imagine what it says about a society that allows unpaid teenage boys to fight with their bare knuckles for the amusement of paying customers.

On the other, Mark Spencer argued, also at Sportsnet:

The fight was anything but staged, borne of passion and pride, two qualities we want in our players. You just can’t control how those characteristics manifest themselves.

There you have it, basically. Cox and Spector were far from the only ones commenting on Wednesday, but generally the argument for and against fighting falls somewhere along the lines they laid out: fighting in hockey is either absurdly barbaric, or it is the manifestation of the purest emotions of the noble warrior.

Perhaps the problem lies in this oft-repeated but fraudulent juxtaposition, for the two issues are not mutually exclusive. Plenty of barbarity has come from passion and pride. Whether fighting is unnecessarily violent, or the logical extension of heightened tensions in a physical game that is often mentally fueled by war analogies, is sort of immaterial.

The fact of the matter is: hockey is a much better sport when there is no fighting.

We’re well aware of the axiom that, well, if it weren’t for the people who just love a good on-ice dust-up and who cheer and holler at the spectacle, maybe there would be no need for fighting. It’s the crowd’s fault, right?

This is a silly argument. In fact, it’s so silly, that it’s promptly rebutted every year by another clichéd line – this one accurate – that is trotted out when the playoffs arrive, about how the quality of play is dialed up a notch.

Yes, it is. That heightened quality is a function of two things: first, that the players are more motivated by the promise of the championship, and second, that there are fewer penalties (generally) interrupting what is, left to itself, a masterfully flowing game. It is also a game, of course, that naturally comes with a hefty dose of physicality. For those searching for an example, I recommend tracking down games one-through-seven of the LA Kings v Chicago Blackhawks Western Conference final this past spring. Now that was a fight.

If the logic of uncontrollable and unpredictable passion and pride were correct, you wouldn’t watch that series to be in awe of the sport and the skill. You’d watch seven big brawls.

In other words, passion and pride are always present in sports. Rarely, however, in any other professional case, are they uncontrolled. So why on earth should we take it as a formal truism that it’s just different in hockey? If we’re looking for absurdity, that’s it.

The good news is eventually we won’t have to have this discussion anymore, or at least not as often. Fighting is on the decline, anyway. And, arguably, the game (aside from perhaps the shootout) has never been more entertaining.

Here comes Vegas (Or: Let’s make Quebec City mad)

If a report on Wednesday is to be believed, it looks like the NHL is indeed willing to take its chances in Las Vegas. According to the New York Post, the NHL has settled on an owner for a franchise in Nevada. And it’s only one of two western cities into which the league plans to expand.

Who might own this team? Apparently it will be shared between William Foley, the chairman of the Fidelity National Financial mortgage company (2012 net worth $600m, though Hockey News classifies him as a “billionaire”), and the Maloof family. According to a Hockey News report this summer, the NHL is said to have approved the ownership with the expectation that the Vegas team will start playing in 2017-18.

Wait a second; did I just say the Maloof family?

Yes. Yes I did.

The Maloofs are perhaps best known in Las Vegas for being the part-owners (and I do mean only a part) of the Palms casino, where the NHL awards are held every year. But they are perhaps best known in the sports world for being the former owners of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings. (The rest of planet Earth might know the Maloofs as being partly responsible for Lindsay Lohan’s reality TV show.)

About that basketball team: in short, a few years back, the Maloofs tried to fund a new stadium for the Kings through the public coffers. When that didn’t work, they threatened to move the team to Anaheim, prompting an intervention from the NBA to keep the team in Sacramento. Finally, the Maloofs decided to sell the team, and almost handed it off to Steve Ballmer, who also wanted to move the team, this time to Seattle. All this left Kings fans in the lurch. Finally, “software magnate” Vivek Ranadive bought (most of) the Kings and kept them in Sacramento where they have positively thrive … oh.

Anyway, people don’t like the Maloofs now. But let’s not read too much into it. There’s no way of telling whether a similar scenario might unfold in Las Vegas, or if it did, whether anyone would actually care.

Because here’s the thing: as far as we can tell, very few people in Las Vegas care about the NHL. At least, that’s what Nate Silver concluded in an analysis last year. While investigating why Canadian NHL teams have experienced a Stanley Cup drought, Silver’s data (based on Google search traffic) showed there were perhaps as few as around 90,000 NHL fans in Las Vegas. Compare that to, say, Seattle, with approximately 241,000 fans. Or Quebec City, where more than 500,000 NHL fans live.

So forget whether the league should expand or not, the question is if (when) it does, why would it incorporate Las Vegas? Aside from making the conferences more even, and the fact there’s actually a buyer in Vegas, perhaps it comes down to potential. Placing a team in Quebec City would generate immediate revenue, but there’s a known limit on it. A lot of people in QC like hockey, but not a lot more are going to suddenly take an interest if they haven’t already.

Las Vegas is an untapped market. Maybe there are thousands of NHL fans there now who just don’t know they are yet, and who just need a team to support before they have this revelation. Weirdly, commissioner Gary Bettman and the rest of the NHL owners seem prepared to be paid $400m in franchise fees to test the theory.

Unfortunately, the financial argument probably won’t win over hockey fans, many of whom like to pretend this isn’t a business. But maybe we’ll forgive them if they name the team the Las Vegas Lohans. Maybe.