1. America might tolerate fights in hockey (although that’s debatable in itself) but—and here’s the part to pay some attention to, Charles—fights are tolerated within the rules of the game. It is acknowledged and penalized in the rule book, and those rules are occasionally broken to create an advantage for the participants. As is true in every sport, I dare say.

Now, whether you personally find those rules and resultant penalties upsetting to your sensitive soul is an issue for another day. But hockey fighting? ‘Tis a bit different than a fight in a game that does not allow fighting by any measure.

Moreover, I’d also like to point out that the basketball game in question did NOT feature just the players on the court at the time having a smack down in the game… it cleared the benches, including some of the suits, for godsakes. When that happens in hockey (and please note, I’ve yet to see the coaching staff of a hockey team hit the ice and shove their way into the melee) heads will roll there, too. 10 game unpaid vacations, for starters, not to mention fines.

2. How is hockey even relevant to your basketball world? Fans of every major league sport who don’t like hockey always love to point out how irrelevant hockey is to the American sports scene. Well fine, then. But I guess that means that basketball, baseball and football are the ones that have the responsibility for this Mom & Apple Pie persona you cherish so deeply.

If hockey doesn’t matter to y’all the rest of the time, why does it suddenly matter to you every time some “real” American athlete pops another one?

And for the record, I agree with you that media reaction to this basketball brawl is over-inflated nonsense. But then again, I could care less about the mom & apple pie image that hockey apparently violates for you.

3. You are a douche.

(Sorry, that last part was pretty immature of me, but hell, he started it…)

Seriously, I get so tired of non-hockey fans dragging up hockey “violence” only when another sport features some dumbassed thing on the ESPN highlight reels. Sure, hockey has plenty of issues, but at least hockey fans don’t whine about other sports every time we have an issue within our own game.