this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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You seem to misunderstand how the penalties work out. 95% of the time after a fight happens, both teams get offsetting penalties, and so neither team is at a disadvantage because of the fight alone. There are instances where one team ends up with more penalties after a fight, but it's usually because of something that happened before the fight and prompted the fight (and should've been a penalty anyway)
They added the instigator penalty to cut down fights as well. The player deemed responsible for startibg the fight gets an extra penalty, and that does indeed give the other team an advantage.
Instigator penalties aren't given out every time people fight, they are only given in cases where one dude goes waaaaaaaay out his way to start a fight. The rest of the time the fighting penalties are even which doesn't result in a power play for either team.
As the other user commented, instigator is hardly ever actually used.
NHL reffing is... not great most of the time. Despite being a fan of the sport, I would like to see changes that would reduce the future rates of TBI among players. Refs actually enforcing the rules would probably help a bit there.