Abstract
This chapter tests the argument that fighting in minor league hockey is a profit-maximizing strategy, using the American Hockey League (AHL) as an example. It could be that hockey players in the AHL have differing motivations for aggressive play than players in the senior NHL. Players in the AHL earn much lower salaries than their NHL cousins, so being promoted to the NHL results in significant financial rewards. Some AHL players might use an aggressive style of play as the ticket to the NHL, believing that there is a role in the NHL for tough players to protect the more skilled players from intimidation by other teams. Alternatively, fighting in the AHL could be the result of owners and management encouraging aggressive, physical play to attract fans to games. This chapter attempts to determine why fighting is more commonplace in the AHL than the NHL using an econometric model.
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Notes
- 1.
Dave Schultz accumulated an astounding 472 penalty minutes to lead the team, an all-time NHL single season record. The league average number of penalty minutes per player was just 40 and only 37.9 min excluding the Flyers. Schultz nearly repeated the feat in the 1977–1978 season with 405 penalty minutes, however injuries prevented him from breaking his own record. Taken from www.hockey-reference.com accessed on September 12, 2014.
- 2.
Taken from www.dropyourgloves.com accessed on September 12, 2014.
- 3.
Most heavyweight championship fights were not televised on national cable networks, instead they were sold as “closed circuit” broadcasts that were shown in movie theaters or other venues. Some of the larger closed-circuit television networks included MSG, TVS and Sports Network Incorporated.
- 4.
See Whyno, NHL players bristle at fighting debate despite fan support for a ban, National Post, November 7, 2013. http://sports.nationalpost.com/2013/11/07/nhl-players-bristle-at-fighting-debate-despite-fan-support-for-ban/.
- 5.
The CHL is the umbrella organization for three minor hockey leagues in Canada: the Western Hockey League, the Ontario Hockey League and the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
- 6.
See AHL Average Ticket prices, http://www.coppernblue.com/2011/11/1/2518919/2011-12-ahl-ticket-prices sourced on September 3, 2014.
- 7.
Taken from Rod Fort’s Sports Business Data website on September 3, 2014.
- 8.
For instance, Chris Butler (NHL St. Louis Blues) earned $400,000 playing in the AHL in the 2013–2014 season.
- 9.
Players in the CHL are not paid salaries, but do receive monthly living stipends and are eligible for generous university scholarships. The ECHL has a minimum salary of $415 per week and $460 per week for returning players.
- 10.
The AHL Rulebook can be found at http://cdn.rapidmanager.com/ahl/files/13_14_AHLRuleBook.pdf.
- 11.
This rule was established in 1992.
- 12.
Established in 1977.
- 13.
The 2004–2005 NHL season was not played due to a player lockout.
- 14.
These include the Atlanta Thrashers, Colorado Rockies, Kansas City Scouts, Minnesota North Stars, Oakland Seals, Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets.
- 15.
The Oakland Seals relocated to become the Cleveland Barons in 1976, then merged with the Minnesota North Stars in 1978. The North Stars moved to Dallas in 1993 to become the Dallas Stars.
- 16.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/abbotsford-heat-leave-city-with-12m-in-losses-1.2610985. Referenced on September 10, 2014.
- 17.
See http://www.forbes.com/sites/monteburke/2012/12/07/average-player-salaries-in-the-four-major-american-sports-leagues/ accessed on September 24, 2014.
- 18.
See Peeters (2011) for examples.
- 19.
We maximize with respect to A it rather than P it due to the lack of availability of a time-series of AHL ticket prices.
- 20.
Lowel, Massachusetts lies in Middlesex County that contains an area of 2,196 km2 and a population of 1.5 million. The city of Lowell had a population of just 108,861 in 2013 (U.S. Census Bureau). For Lowell and two other cases, the county population was ratio-scaled with the 2013 city population and the county population growth rate was then applied to estimate city populations.
- 21.
Unfortunately for economists interested in economic data for Canada, Statistics Canada has discontinued the E-Stat web portal, although the main STATSCAN web portal is still active and much harder to use.
- 22.
Dropping the capacity variable and including fixed effects resulted in many of the statistically significant slope coefficients moving to statistical insignificance.
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Rockerbie, D.W. (2017). Fighting as a Profit-Maximizing Strategy: The American Hockey League. In: Frick, B. (eds) Breaking the Ice. Sports Economics, Management and Policy, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67922-8_2
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