Reading list: George Parros and the NHL fighting debate

The first game of the NHL season got off to a rather punchy start. The talk of the night was when a fight between Leafs enforcer Colton Orr and Canadiens forward George Parros took a terrifying turn - and he had to be stretchered off the ice. Parros, who was diagnosed with a concussion, lost his balance and fell face first onto the ice. Opening night, and the fighting debate starts all over again. Here is what the media had to say.

In Montreal, Gazette columnist Dave Stubbs sets the scene after Parros was taken to hospital - the incident cast a pall over the arena, and he compares the atompsphere to other serious injuries suffered by Lars Eller and Max Pacioretty.

The Parros incident drained the life out of the Bell Centre, not unlike the way the breath was sucked from the building after the grave injuries suffered by Pacioretty and Eller.

If the Canadiens at least weren't badly pushed around, Parros being pulled down and stretchered out cast a pall on what began as a celebration.

In the end, the joyful return of hockey proved to be anything but.

National Post columnist Bruce Arthur writes that while the Parros concussion will dominate the headlines for a few days, don't expect the league to follow through and pave the way for change.

Nobody questions the courage of the men who fight. But it seems so long ago that we were all worried after the deaths of Wade Belak, of Rick Rypien, of Derek Boogaard. Their deaths raised complex issues of depression, of whether depression was linked to fighting, of suicide, of the easy access to painkillers, of overdoses, of what this thing makes some men do. The discussion flared, and … vanished. Nothing was resolved.

ESPN's Pierre LeBrun believes we are just one game away from tragedy, and by the time the league learns its lesson, it could be too late.

Everyone who reads me understands that I believe the game could survive without fighting. My belief is simply based on my fear that one day a player will die in a fight on the ice. Pure and simple. I say that because Don Sanderson did die in a Senior A Ontario game fight in 2009. 

Am I concerned how the game would look if the "rats" in our game weren’t policed? Yes, I am. And I don’t have a good answer for that other than I’d hope the refs would police it as well as they could. 

The players do not seem to share the same opinion, according to the Globe and Mail. The newspaper points out that the night's events are sure to lead to debate about violence in hockey - except the people who are involved are not really asking for change. Even coach Michel Therrien seemed to brush the fight off.

At the risk of generalizing, this captures something very close to a prevailing consensus among NHL players.

There are many peculiarities in the way hockey players view each other and the game they play; in referring to Parros’ fight with Toronto’s Colton Orr, Montreal’s Travis Moen, himself no stranger to fisticuffs on the ice, referred to the latter as “Orrsy”.

Big surprise: CBC commentator Don Cherry agrees. Because of course he does. Cherry railed against Sabres winger John Scott for going after Phil Kessel, but did not have many feelings about Parros.

The never bashful Coach's Corner commentator described on Tuesday night why he wasn't too sympathetic towards Montreal Canadiens forward George Parros, who was knocked unconscious against the Toronto Maple Leafs and taken off the ice on a stretcher with a concussion. 

"Here's the name of the game: You fight, you get hurt," he said. "That's the name of the game."