Hockey Has an Instigator Problem

Blackhawks fans got an excellent demonstration Tuesday night as to why the instigator rule for fighting is complete bull-roar. First, the rule: It used to be that if you instigated a fight -- and you really had to go out of your way to get one of those calls in the day -- it was just two minutes tacked on to your fighting major. Now, you get those two minutes plus a 10-minute misconduct, putting a player off the ice for 17 minutes. On Tuesday, Jared Boll charged at Andrew Brunette as if he were invading Mordor. Thankfully he missed. But Steve Montador didn't like it and went to protect his teammate. He actually got 19 minutes in penalties, because if you instigate a fight and you wear a visor, it's an extra two. It happened again in the 2nd, except replace the name Brunette with Niklas Hjalmarsson and Montador with Jamal Mayers. Boll once again charged into a Hawks player, and even hit Hammer pretty high, and Mayers went to his defense. He got the requisite 17 minutes. While...