BREAKING | Major junior league in Canada officially bans fighting
Beginning this coming season, fighting will no longer be permitted in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
It announced via their social media accounts on this week that they've decided to ban fighting and if a fight is to take place within a game, there will be severe punishment, with both players being ejected, similar to IIHF rules.
The QMJHL's rules for fighting, effective for the 2023-24 season, are as follows:
In order to prevent physical and psychological violence that may result in minor or serious injury or, in extreme circumstances, death, the QMJHL is responsible for establishing rules of intervention when a fight occurs between two or more people during a game, regardless of whether they are players or other team members (coach, assistant coach, trainer, etc.).
Rule 47 of the Playing Rules, starting with the 2023-2024 season, provides for fights being prohibited with more restrictive and dissuasive sanctions in order to emphasize a safe quality of play conducive to the development of players participating in QMJHL activities.
The QMJHL will ensure that the sanctions mentioned in the following paragraphs are applied.
As soon as a fight occurs, those engaged must be systematically ejected from the game.
Any player found to have instigated the fight will also receive an automatic one-game suspension.
The person declared to be the aggressor during the fight will receive a minimum of two automatic games of suspension.
In addition to the game misconduct, an automatic game suspension is imposed starting with the player's 2nd fight of the season. This suspension is in addition to the sanctions described in the preceding paragraphs."
For safety reasons, it's understandable as to why they're doing it, but fighting will always be apart of the game of hockey. If there's a big, dangerous hit that injures a player, someone now can't come to the defence of their teammate without being ejected from the game.
It's going to be interesting to see how banning fighting will do for the league and if any other leagues across Canada and the United States follow them in the coming years.
The QMJHL has announced that fighting has been banned starting this upcoming season.
The rules now state that fighting will result in an automatic ejection with other supplemental discipline to follow.
(via @QMJHL) pic.twitter.com/Oaq2E4Knvm� B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) August 10, 2023
| POLL | ||
Do you agree with the QMJHL banning fighting? | ||
| Yes | 237 | 29.5 % |
| No | 438 | 54.5 % |
| Not sure how I feel about it | 98 | 12.2 % |
| See Results | 30 | 3.7 % |
| List of polls | ||
