Fighting still has place in hockey

Wayne Gretzky had Dave Semenko beside him to discourage foolhardy souls from taking cheap shots at him.

NHL scoring leader Sidney Crosby got a personal protector Tuesday when the Pittsburgh Penguins acquired Georges Laraque, the league’s consensus heavyweight champion.

Although the NHL is building its future around talented kids such as Crosby and teammate Evgeni Malkin, several deadline-day trades proved that enforcers still have high value. By making it clear that anyone who tries to hurt Crosby will have to answer to Laraque, the Penguins pulled off possibly the smartest of Tuesday’s 25 deals.

It could have more impact than the formidable San Jose Sharks adding power forward Bill Guerin from St. Louis, the surprising New York Islanders stealing Ryan Smyth from the Edmonton Oilers, or the Detroit Red Wings taking a chance that Todd Bertuzzi’s injured back will heal swiftly enough for a playoff push.

League-wide, scoring is down slightly compared to last season and major fighting penalties are up. That should appease critics who said anti-obstruction guidelines had made the league too soft, but it won’t do much to lure the casual fans the league is eternally pursuing.

Despite adopting a series of rules that have minimized bench-clearing brawls, the NHL condones fighting as a natural and even desirable byproduct of big men skating fast on an 85-by-200-foot rink. Periodic efforts to ban fighting have fizzled, as did an anti-fighting editorial in the Globe and Mail, a Toronto newspaper that circulates throughout Canada.

The Feb. 13 editorial marveled that “sometimes, real punches are thrown, punches that occasionally cause serious injury,” and concluded by saying, “The goons and enforcers are already a dying breed in the new NHL. It’s time for the fighting to be buried with them.”

In truth, goons and enforcers are thriving and the league is considering a rule change that would promote fighting: general managers recently recommended that players be allowed to accumulate five penalties for instigating a fight before being suspended, instead of the current threshold of three.

Besides, last week’s knockdown, drag-out melee between the Buffalo Sabres and the Ottawa Senators, in which a grinning Ottawa goalie Ray Emery pummeled Buffalo goalie Martin Biron, brought the league more attention on ESPN and other media outlets than it had gotten in the previous four months combined.

The hostilities stemmed from a late, blindside hit by Ottawa’s Chris Neil that caught Buffalo’s Chris Drury on the head. Drury, a small and skillful player, suffered a deep cut on his head and a concussion. His blood was scraped off the ice and when play resumed, Sabres Coach Lindy Ruff sent out his tough guys. Predictably, general merriment ensued.

To quote the classic movie “Slap Shot,” it was old-time hockey, like Eddie Shore, eh?

“You notice how everybody paid attention and everybody loves it,” said Don Cherry, the cantankerous “Hockey Night in Canada” TV commentator.

Drury probably didn’t care much for it. And Ruff was fined $10,000, the only member of either team disciplined beyond three rulebook automatic ejections.

The unwritten rule in hockey is that grunts can try to intimidate stars but enforcers fight the stars’ battles for them and tango only with other enforcers. Crosby has been speared in the gut, butt-ended in the ribs, and taken dozens of high sticks to the face this season with no retribution. The Penguins got Laraque from the Phoenix Coyotes to be a nuclear deterrent, to keep Crosby alive.

“I won’t be the bodyguard for one guy, I’m going to have to look after pretty much the entire team,” Laraque told the Canadian TV network TSN. “You look at how much talent they have, you want guys to be able to flourish their talent, to have open ice and not worry about guys running them and taking liberties.”

That made perfect sense to Gretzky, now coaching the Coyotes.

“You have a guy like Georges Laraque on your team, you’re not going to get those extra liberties with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin,” Gretzky told TSN. “What Georges Laraque eliminates is guys who aren’t tough taking runs at Sidney Crosby.”

Similarly, Ducks General Manager Brian Burke, thwarted in his quest for the top-six forward he needs, added tough guy Brad May to a team that leads the NHL in penalty minutes. Burke loves rugged lineups and figured it can’t hurt to have more muscle to protect finesse players Andy McDonald, Teemu Selanne and Corey Perry.

Burke said the Ducks’ fourth line “looked a little small” but will be fortified by the 6-foot-1, 220-pound May, who has 2,027 penalty minutes in 868 games. Burke said May, acquired from the Colorado Avalanche, is upbeat and “is tougher than a night in jail.”

Tough enough, certainly, to sacrifice his knuckles and jaw for the cause. As long as the NHL permits fighting, Laraque, May and their brethren will always have jobs.

helene.elliott@latimes.com