Fighting in the USHL? Do what the colleges do - Canadian colleges

CEDAR RAPIDS - The first thing I checked in the boxscore from last Thursday night's United States Hockey League game between the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders and Fargo Force was goal scorers. The second thing was fighters.

I cringed when I saw Jason Kalinowski of the Riders and Butrus Ghafari of Fargo had gone at it, though I'd later learn Ghafari more or less "jumped" Kalinowski, which led to an instigator penalty, game misconduct and one-game USHL suspension. That any RoughRider would want to drop the gloves in their first game after "the incident" was impossible to believe.

It's been over a week since Dylan Chanter of the Dubuque Fighting Saints was knocked unconscious in a fight with Corey Petrash of the RoughRiders. Chanter lost his balance and hit the back of his helmetless head on the ice, with Petrash landing on him to increase the impact.

I've seen my fair share of bad injuries in the almost 25 years I've been covering sports for The Gazette, but never anything like this. Chanter began convulsing and wouldn't stop. At one point, I honestly thought he could die.

It's remarkable the 18-year-old from British Columbia was sent home later that evening after checking out OK at a pair of hospitals. He's continuing to recover at his billet family's home in Dubuque.

"I couldn't believe it was me. I don't think it was as bad as the video looks," Chanter told Canada's TSN, about watching replays of the accident.

On the heels of Chanter's injury, the USHL said early last week it was engaging a panel of coaches, owners and league personnel to review fighting rules. The goal of the vast majority of USHL players is to move on to college hockey, which prohibits fighting. Actually, that's not completely true. If college players decide to scrap, they are automatically ejected and suspended for the following game.

Those who are pro fighting, if you will, say it is a way for the game to police itself. That if it is banned, the incidence of illegal hits and dangerous play will increase. The smaller, more-skilled player could be taken out of the game by on-ice bullying since there is no fear of retribution.

“Hockey is the only sport where you're basically carrying a weapon around while you're playing,” Sioux Falls Coach Cary Eades told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. “If you're not respectful of that and you play dirty, you can seriously injure someone. When you have fighting, players can't get away with dirty play. They can't hide behind the officials. They have to be responsible for their own play. I've spent the last several years in the college game, and I felt like it was a dirtier game with more injuries because of the lack of fighting.”

Dubuque Coach Matt Shaw also expressed his support for fighting to remain in the league, stunning considering what he saw a week and a half ago. The night of Chanter's injury, RoughRiders Coach Mark Carlson openly questioned whether the USHL should continue to allow fighting, though he has chosen not to publicly comment on the issue since and won't let his players talk about it, either.

To the league's credit, the number of fights have decreased significantly in recent years, to about one in every two and a half games. With automatic ejections and game suspensions, the instances of "staged fights" have all but gone away. Players are supposed to wear helmets during scraps (Chanter's came off accidentally), which is meant to prevent injuries like Chanter's.

Those are really good things, and the USHL should be applauded for them. Yet it's so very difficult to ever get over the fact that these are literally kids, in some cases 16 and 17-year-olds.  That they be allowed to bare-knuckle box seems ludicrous. We know so much more about the affects of head injures now, know that those affects are more pronounced on young people.

People will say Chanter's injury was a freak accident, and that's true. But if fighting was not allowed in the USHL, it never would have happened.

So what do I think the USHL should do? I have gone back and forth so many times on this issue, understand what both sides are saying. To me, the league should do what college hockey does. That's Canadian college hockey.

In a Canadian Interuniversity Sports game, if you fight, you're out of the game and suspended for the next one. You fight again, you're out of the game, suspended for the next two. You fight a third time, you're out of the game and subject to review by the conference.

If there is an instigator penalty doled out in one of those fights, the offender receives the above treatment, but the player forced into the fight gets only a game misconduct. As a result of these procedures, fighting has been curbed to the point of near nill: 21 scraps in 266 games last season.

Worth consideration for the USHL, right? Perhaps throw in there a rule that you have to be 18 to engage in a fight. Say the second a helmet comes off, the players must end their scrap or else be subject to a lengthy suspension.

In the end, I don't really think the league will change its fighting rules. I think things will stay as is. Just a hunch.

"This (injury) is not going to stop me from fighting again," Chanter told TSN.

That's OK, I guess. But when he does fight again, I really don't want to be there to see it.

Once was more than enough.