Jared Boll or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Goon

The discussion seems to come up every year. When is fighting going to go the way of the dinosaurs and become extinct? Most recently it has come up in a couple of prominent hockey circles. The first being on NBCSN and Mike Milbury, (he of the famous shoe beating incident) Milbury has stated his new found disdain for fighting and has stated it loudly. He has gotten into a verbal tussle with his compatriot Keith Jones and has brought up the valid point of player safety. Meanwhile on noted hockey podcast “Marek vs Wyshynski” they discussed the merits of staged fighting and impromptu fights. While all this discussion is all well and good, a key point hasn’t been made yet.

Let us enjoy it while we still can.

Clearly the writing is on the wall that fighting and goons are becoming relics of hockey. The Toronto Maple Leafs recently made the move to send down Colton Orr and Fraser Mclaren down to their AHL affiliate, which gave reason for pause for old school hockey minds. The Jackets though have gone the other way and decided to keep Jared Boll on the team, in fact last year they gave him a 3 year 5.1 million dollar contract. A head-scratcher to many, it proved that the Jackets even with their analytical approach still believed Boll to be valuable.

So what exactly is Jared Boll bringing to the table?

Depending on who you ask you can get numerous answers. You will hear about his strong forecheck, his leadership qualities and his ability to create momentum changing events, whether it be a fight or a bone crushing hit. While these qualities are a part of hockey many times these code words try to mask what he really is, a bad player.

Although Jared Boll won’t score you twenty goals or give you a strong corsi percentage, I appreciate him nonetheless. Fighting in hockey may be one of the most absurd ideas when you boil it all down. You try to use fighting as a deterrent for bad hits and protection for star players. You combat violence with more violence, an oafish way to view the sport but it all comes with one caveat, I actually truly enjoy it.

It can be compared to something straight from the Roman Colosseum, we want to be entertained in the most simplistic way possible. Violence for violence sake has been in our DNA for quite a while and we have seen it in so many different sports but why does it always remain so prevalent? I believe we inherently love the violence we see in contact sports. Why else do we celebrate players running into each other at such high velocities putting their well being on the line. The players go on to have their bodies broken down and we see these players deteriorate and for what, the glory of being a modern day gladiator? It is an archaic platform, to put our best athletes in these situations to get their bodies potentially mutilated over and over again. Yet we want a release and escape from our lives and these sports provide it.  You ask yourself the question “these players assume the risk when stepping onto the ice, why should I care?!” Well we should care about them that’s why these protective measures are becoming stricter and more absolute. All contact sports are becoming self aware to what they are, the last bastion of accepted violence.

Does this acceptance of violence make us a champion of other violence in our daily lives?

Simply, I would say no. It may be inane to support it but sometimes traditions die hard. Fighting will eventually die off, this I know is true. It however doesn’t mean I can’t watch with hushed glee.

I titled this article as an homage to a Stanley Kubrick film, the aforementioned film centers around the absurdity of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War and how the world’s biggest deterrent, the nuclear bomb, essentially ends all life. If it ends all life what exactly is it deterring? Take the same principle in hockey and we start to realize what exactly is this barbarity proving? Nothing. Jared Boll may not provide anything to the hockey team but that is okay. He is the last of a dying breed and an artifact of the game. An appreciation of a bygone era doesn’t make you a bad fan. You are just delaying the inevitable, the evolution of the game is happening before our very eyes. He can either go down with the other goons or evolve his game and become something more, the uncomfortable truth may hurt but often times it proves to be the most succinct. Is Boll going to ride the proverbial bomb to the ground or is he going to come to his senses and join the new NHL.