Well, this reporter sure feels that it’s more of a hotdog and beer extravaganza, which people turn up to while they wait for a fight to happen. “Blood on the ice!â€, plead the crowd when the simmering clear-sided saucepan of stubble and helmets boils into a frothing fracas. And under such circumstances, rather like a boxing match, the referee does nothing to restrain the combatants as they throw fist after fist into the snout of their opponent. Not unless one of them falls over. So in my mind, the Nottingham Panthers’ fist chucking supremo won the sport of London Knight bashing, in a game I witnessed last Friday. The Panther got my vote simply by punching him in the face until the Knight couldn’t support his own weight. But that’s where his true style showed through. The pugilistic Panther didn’t let the knackered Knight slump to the ice, a broken and fractured pulp unable to stand on his own two skates. No. That would have prompted the referee and linespeople to swarm in and end the beating. No. The Panther held up the Knight by the neck with one hand, so that he could punch him some more with the other.
Despite the official score of puck based goals being in favour of the London Knights last Friday, it was clear to me that the Panthers had won the fight, much to the chagrin of the London team’s supporters. So perhaps ice hockey is in fact two sports. The author was born in Nottingham.