OHL to crack down on serial fighters

The Ontario Hockey League is taking aggressive steps to curb fighting. Effective immediately, players who have been involved in 10 fights over the course of the season, will be suspended 2 games for each subsequent fight. If a player is instigated into a fight, it will not count against his season total.

After the 16th fight, the player's team will face a $1,000 fine for each subsequent fight.

There were 20 players last season who topped 10 fights. There were 4 players who had over 15 fights.

“We see this as part of the evolution of addressing needless fighting in our game,” OHL commissioner David Branch said. “It will be very interesting to see after this season what the results are in terms of hopefully the number (of fights) going down,” he added.