Why Does Hockey Have More Contact Than In Soccer?

In February 2000, Vancouver Canucks enforcer Donald Brashear was knocked unconscious to the ice by a slashing stick to the side of his head wielded by Boston Bruin bad boy Marty McSorley. The result was a trip to court in Vancouver for McSorley, who was found guilty of assault with a weapon and sentenced to probation. McSorley's hit on Brashear, though illegal under hockey rules, was a logical outgrowth of contact and fighting tacitly permitted in the NHL. Soccer players face far greater constraints in terms of contact.

Definitions

Both hockey and soccer flow continuously through much of the game, with goals being scored by advancing a puck or ball respectively into a goal past a goalkeeper. Other goal sports include field hockey, basketball, lacrosse and polo. Among goal sports, soccer is classified as a contact sport, while hockey, like American football, is a collision sport. In contact sports, athletes frequently make contact with one another, but with less intensity than in a collision sport, explains Jason Spray, a college basketball trainer. In a collision sport, athletes purposely collide, often with great force.

History

The roots of hockey's collisions lie in its history and traditions as well as in its modern rules and their interpretation by referees. Like American football, hockey's history reflects violent collisions from its earliest organized origins in the late 19th century. In the early years of hockey, the game resembled rugby on skates, with rough play and dangerous stick work, writes Ross Bernstein in "The Code: The Unwritten Rules of Fighting and Retaliation in the NHL." In 1922, the NHL introduced Rule 56, which regulated but did not ban fighting. By contrast, soccer split from rugby in 1863, with soccer adherents objecting to carrying the ball, tripping and kicking of shins. Since then, soccer has allowed legal contact but penalized deliberate collisions.

20th Century

As for hockey, the physical yet graceful teams of the 1950s and 1960s, such as the Montreal Canadiens, and the 1970s finesse era of the Boston Bruins with Bobby Orr, gave way to a tougher style of play in the 1980s. Unwritten rules that permitted rough contact and fighting brought fans to professional hockey, Bernstein writes. Olympic hockey rules are quicker to eject a player for fighting, and women's hockey does not permit fighting or checking. Both feature a more graceful playing style.

Soccer Rules

Soccer allows contact shoulder to shoulder to move an opponent off the ball, as well as slide tackles to deflect the ball to a teammate or out of bounds. Contact that appears reckless or is directed at an opponent rather than the ball can result in a foul, a yellow card or even a red card, which ejects a player from the field. In soccer, after a player no longer has possession of the ball, no contact is allowed. In hockey, a player can still check an opponent two steps after the puck is released.

Hockey Rules

Hockey players are allowed to check one another as a disruptive move. Checking basically involves aggressive play, using the body or the stick, that stops short of fighting. It can include bumps that send an opponent against the boards or through the air. The referee can assess penalties for infractions, such as illegal checking from behind or tripping, that send a player to the penalty box or remove him from the game. "The NHL has been adapting the rules with players getting bigger and heavier," says Laura Masterson, manager of the Walpole Adult Women's Hockey League in Walpole, Massachusetts. "In the 2010-11 season, the NHL put a clampdown on checking from the blind spot of players due to an increased number of concussions. Whereas in soccer, there's not real need to clamp down with additional rules."