W. Scanlan The Ottawa Citizen

Georges Laraque was lamenting the inevitable this week.

The decline of the fight game. No, he wasn't referring to the thin ranks of boxing's heavyweight class.

Laraque, the Phoenix Coyotes' winger and enforcer, was talking to Pierre LeBrun of The Canadian Press about the sun setting on the NHL tough guy.

"I know that within two years there won't be any fighters in the league anymore," Laraque said. "Within two years -- I'm serious -- because this is how it's going. More and more teams don't have fighters."

A nine-year veteran, Laraque has had a good run, but he frets over the future of his young "brothers," such as the Ottawa Senators' Brian McGrattan.

Laraque is no dummy. He certainly reads well enough to make out the writing on the wall. The NHL is moving away from its old ways, fighting included, and into a game of skill, style, speed and monster hits from the force of all these racing bodies colliding in open ice. (Continued below...)

Quite literally, enforcers are fighting for a way of life, more than they are fighting each other. They're battling to stay relevant. Watch the rival sluggers in warmups and you might catch them casually arranging a bout. "If we get on for a shift together in the first period...."

They need to artificially pump up the fight minutes so they can argue there is still a place for their role.

Pay attention and you'll notice most fights between hockey heavyweights no longer spring up from the heat of the game. They're pre-arranged, to the point of being a circus sideshow. With some exceptions, they tend to have little or no relevance to the type of game going on. "Hockey fights," where emotions spill over from legitimate, hard-nosed players getting testy, are a completely different animal, but watch for hockey to eventually join other pro sports in banning all fights.

When the heavyweights strut their stuff today, it's reminiscent of Buffalo Bill Cody and his travelling road show, long after the dust had settled on the Wild West. As happened to Buffalo Bill, enforcers have become caricatures of themselves. Hockey's wild days featured bench brawls, line brawls and hallway brawls. The NHL won't tolerate that behaviour anymore.

As Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Paul Maurice said a few weeks ago before a game with the Senators: "It has been a long time since we've seen a baseball moment in hockey."

A baseball moment. What a great line. Who imagined that baseball would become the sport known for periodic team brawls, sparked by pitcher-batter confrontations, while hockey moved away from them.

When the Buffalo Sabres were at SB Place last Saturday, they and the Senators were playing their typical skill game, trading chances and flying around in the early minutes, when Andrew Peters and Brian McGrattan had a chat and dropped the gloves. Out of the blue. Out of context. At the three-minute mark of the first period.

A payback? A fight to get the troops fired up?

No. It was a chance for two members of a diminishing breed to feel useful. Who could blame them? McGrattan received two shifts all night, for 59 seconds of work. Peters had five shifts for a total playing time of two minutes six seconds.

McGrattan was a healthy scratch for Monday's game against the Minnesota Wild, which didn't have its monster, 6-7, 270-pound Derek Boogaard, in the lineup. It's like the nuclear arms race. If one nation doesn't have nuclear capability, its fellow nation doesn't need it, either. LeBrun did a rough count to estimate that only 11 of 30 NHL teams regularly dress enforcers.

McGrattan earned a roster spot last season in part because Bryan Murray arrived as head coach with a mandate to ice a tougher team, especially against the rival Maple Leafs.

One night last fall, McGrattan busted up Tie Domi with a right hand, effectively ending Domi's career as a pugilist.

Domi finished his final NHL season as a stickhandler and a pacifist. Others are going to have to follow suit. Memo to heavyweights: Work on your skating and skills. Fast. As Laraque says, there is no place for the one-dimensional goon anymore. (He has improved his own usefulness, with 10 points and just 26 penalty minutes in 19 games).

Chris Neil saw this day coming. Now, he's the second-most important right-winger on the Senators. Murray said he doesn't want Neil getting mixed up with fighters such as Peters because it "isn't a fair trade." How's that for progression?

Hockey is getting crazy fast, faster even than it was a year ago. The short, intense shifts have coaches using four forward lines for pace, so they can't afford a heavyweight who can't play out there. They don't want the risk defensively, nor will coaches tolerate, except in message situations, a fighter taking an extra two minutes for instigating.

Hockey enforcers are some of the nicest people you'll meet in the game. They're humble because, unlike the honey-fed stars who expected this lifestyle, the heavyweights appreciate every day they have in the NHL.

Those unable to adapt may not have many days left.