Leaving the scrapping to the real players

I recently read in the March 30 issue of The Hockey News of ways to penalize pre-meditated fights.

I love a good scrap, but the fights between two guys who are "just doing their job" need to go.

 The worst roster spot in hockey is the guy who is 6-foot-5, 250-pounds, skates four minutes a game and has a scrap.

Best way to remove them from the game is to penalize the team and the organization for using them. If a player has a fight and has less than eight minutes of ice time, then the coach and team get fined.

If this happens repeatedly, we start mixing in suspensions and loss of picks. Hopefully, coaches and teams will stop dressing them and we can return to real fights between real players, led by my favourite, Jarome Iginla.

If a coach can't put a player on the ice for more than eight minutes a game, they don't belong on the bench.

Ryan Packer, Milton, Ont.