The 2000 Oscar-winning film Gladiator may have had its shaky moments, but it did capture the love-hate relationship the Romans had with their fighters. The gladiators were social outcasts; intellectuals hated them, and women loved them. Some became famous, but most had brutally short careers.

Welcome to the NHL, where two millennia later, nothing has changed. The ongoing debate over fighting in hockey is between two sides who cannot possibly agree: the rational people (Ken Dryden, for example) who condemn the violence for what it is, and the emotional people (Don Cherry, for example) who see the violence as part of the game they love. Better a fistfight than a stick-swinging incident, the second camp insists.

It all boils down to how civilized you like your hockey. Of course it’s possible to legislate fighting almost completely out of the game; it’s about putting the puck in the net, not your fist in someone’s face. But would fewer people watch?