Grbavac feeling the pain of new rule

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
The evidence is right there as plain as, uhh, the nose on his face.
A four-stitch cut on the bridge of that nose. Cuts on his right hand. One knuckle that looks as though it has been through a deli’s meat-grinder.
If you’re thinking that forward Cole Grbavac of the Kamloops Blazers took a few shots to the nose and that he delivered a few blows the other night, well, you would be half right.
The WHL implemented some new rules regarding fighting this season. For starters, players who are about to engage in fisticuffs now are prohibited from removing their helmets.
“It’s a new rule. There’s nothing I can do about it,” Grbavac, an 18-year-old sophomore from Calgary, said after practice Tuesday at Interior Savings Centre. “There’s no sense complaining about it because I know I’m not going to change it. But right now I’m not liking it too much.”
On Friday, with the Blazers on their way to a 4-1 victory over the visiting Kelowna Rockets, Grbavac accepted defenceman Curt Gogol’s invitation to dance.
The Rockets were trailing 2-0 at the time, so Grbavac said he expected Gogol, also an 18-year-old Calgarian, to try to start something in an attempt to light a fire under the Rockets.
“He likes to yip at everyone,” Grbavac said. “I know him a bit from Calgary. We grew up playing minor hockey together. I knew he was looking to get something going.”
And so it was that immediately after a faceoff the two came together.
Grbavac went on to land at least 16 right-hand punches to Gogol’s helmet-protected noggin. Gogol delivered eight or nine blows himself, one of them landing squarely on Grbavac’s visor, causing it to fold inward and slice the bridge of his nose.
Shortly afterward, Grbavac’s helmet came off. By then, however, the damage was done and he was leaking. Gogol’s helmet stayed firmly in place through the entire bout.
Grbavac was involved in 13 fights last season and estimated that both fighters would have doffed their helmets in “probably more than half of those.”
Had both fighters been permitted to remove their helmets before Friday’s fight, Grbavac said, at the very least, the fight would have been shorter.
“It would have been a lot different . . . that’s how I feel,” Grbavac said. “It would have been a bit of a different fight if that was the case. But that’s the rule.”
And does he like the rule?
“Right now,” he said with a rueful chuckle, “I got a cut up nose because of it and my hand hurts because of it. But who knows? It could have been different if my helmet was off and I fell on my head. I don’t know.”
He added that he has never fallen on his head during or after a fight and has never been injured — at least not seriously — in a scrap.
And, prior to Friday, he said he had never been sliced open by his own visor.
The 6-foot-2, 190-pounder feels, like so many other players, that fighting is part of the game. This season, however, he now realizes that things are going to be different.
“Last season there were guys who were just taking off their helmets and squaring off,” he said. “That definitely separates players . . . you know a guy is pretty tough if he is going to square off and take off his helmet. That can be quite intimidating to other players on the ice when they see that. So I think a bit of the intimidation factor is gone now that guys can’t to that.”
He also wondered if the keep-your-helmet-on rule might lead to more fighting.
“More guys might be out to fight now that they know they have to leave their helmets on,” he said.
That definitely will be something worth watching as the season wears on.
“Obviously (fighting) is dying down,” Grbavac said. “But I still think it’s part of the game.”
The Blazers, who have been involved in five fights through their four games this season, play host to the Lethbridge Hurricanes tonight, 7 o’clock, at Interior Savings Centre.
Grbavac will be keeping his helmet and his gloves on . . . at least for now.

gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnan.blogspot.com