from Adam Vingan of The Tennessean,

Fighting has long been a fabric of hockey, a product of the sport's physicality. Players dropping the gloves still elicits excitement in NHL arenas, but the number of fights is drastically diminishing as the lumbering enforcers of past eras have been phased out in favor of skill.

There were 344 fights in the NHL last season, the fewest amount within the past 15 years, according to hockeyfights.com. That is a nearly 47 percent decrease from the 645 fights that occurred during the 2010-11 season.

This comes as good news to those who oppose fighting, which is an area of the game that has become heavily scrutinized, particularly for the negative health effects that could result from repeated blows to the head.

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