I could not agree more. The thing is, with these enforcers, is that they feel, and how can you argue against it, that they are actually engaging in the most dangerous occassion in sports.
Bare knuckle fighting is truly, the most offside thing going TODAY. At least, that we KNOW about. Trust ME, on that one. No protection on the hand, right into the nose,eyes and face itself? Pretty damaging stuff.
Damaging for sure, and dangerous? Yeah of course. I mean, if you think bare knuckle on nose and face is bad enough, think about the odd times you gotta fight a guy with his helmet, and worse - visor on. And then there's the hard ice surface in the case of a fall. People break their hands, their arms, and get concussion from fighting all the times. You can even die or suffer serious injury if you call back and knock your head on the ice.
But all that said, in the grand scheme of things, fighting is rather irrelevant to the outcome of a game, and enforcers are doing very little for the team if all they do is fight.
In the new NHL, fighting doesn't happen nearly as much as before, and enforcers don't fight every game ... heck, not even every week. The odd times they do fight, the 'momentum lift' that they supposedly give their team is arguable.
Many teams are going without enforcers these days, and honestly, if all an enforcer can do is fight, then they add little to no value to the team.
If you can fight AND agitate, then it is a different story. If you can agitate, get under the opponent's skin, make solid and legit hits, or maybe even play a decent checking role, and maybe kill penalties, then all of a sudden you're a valuable player.
Orr is a great fighter, but to justify his value to the team (and hence his icetime) he really needs to do other stuffs more. Agitating will be a good start.
