Curtis Douglas started his NHL career with a bang last week, dropping the gloves nine seconds into his first shift.
His opponent was no lightweight, the Ottawa Senators’ Kurtis MacDermid, a veteran and known bruiser with over 40 fights in his NHL career.
The Tampa Bay Lightning claimed Douglas, an Oakville, Ont., native, off waivers from the Utah Mammoth on Oct. 6. He is one of only three 6-foot-9 players to ever play in the NHL.
His message was clear from the very first puck drop: he’s not looking to blend in.
The fight was brief but a testament to what is to come. In an era where the enforcer role has seemed to cycle out of most lineups, Douglas’ debut seemed like a throwback to what hockey used to be. But what does his debut say about the modern NHL?
Before reaching The Show, Douglas carved out a steady AHL career using his size and presence on the ice. Over 261 games in the AHL, he spent most of his time with the Tucson Roadrunners, skating in 170 games along with brief stints in Toronto and Belleville. Last season, Douglas played in 63 games and recorded 10 goals, 23 points and 117 penalty minutes.
But Douglas’ penalty minutes only tell part of the story. He recorded nine fights last season and 32 in his AHL career, according to hockeyfights.com. Those numbers place him firmly among the league’s more active enforcers.
And Douglas is not alone in this approach.
In the 2023-24 season, New York Rangers left winger Matt Rempe similarly burst onto the scene, dropping the gloves nine times in his first two NHL seasons, including a memorable one during his NHL debut against Matt Martin in a 6-5 overtime win at MetLife Stadium in February 2024.
In three NHL games for Douglas so far, he has six hits, two shots and seven penalty minutes while averaging 5:39 of ice time. Rempe, meanwhile, has 22 hits, six shots and a goal in six games this season with 11:29 of ice time per game.
For years, fighting seemed to be fizzling out of the NHL. In the 2009-10 regular season, there were 714 fights in 1,230 games, according to hockeyfights.com. That comes out to about 0.58 fights per game.
By the 2019-20 season, cut short due to COVID-19, that number had fallen to 195 fights in 1,082 games for a rate of 0.18 fisticuffs per contest, a roughly 69-percent decrease from a decade prior.
But it seems the tide could be shifting. The 2024-25 season saw 297 fights in 1,312 games for 0.23 fights per match, a roughly 26 percent increase from five years earlier.
The rise suggests that the role of the enforcer may be evolving, not dying – and Curtis Douglas could be part of its next chapter.
Jacob Carabetta is an intern at The Hockey News.
Read the full article here
