That said, they still had opportunities to make all of their games closer than they were. In the wake of the Marty McSorley incident, and another accident where a player was blinded by an errant stick, the P.C. crowd is out in full force calling for an end to fighting, and in some cases, checking in hockey. That, my friends, is idiotic. It's like trying to fix a cold with a bandage. Without sanitizing a game I think is amazing, hockey is a sport of math and science.
Players attack the offensive zone, trying to spread the defense out to attack a weaker area.
It's like chess, only it's played careening at high speed on thin metal blades. And there is a fundamental difference between the concept of checking and the despicable act propagated by a washed-up hack like McSorley. Checking is the act of physically separating a player from his control of the puck. It's not to knock another player out of the game, but it sure as hell can. When a player drives another into the boards at one end of the ice, most fans take note and watch wherever the puck happens to end up.