I like that they discussed it beforehand. One even went to ask his coach permission.

The reason hockey is the only sport that allows this is very simple, you cannot punch as forcefully on skates as on sturdy ground. So the risk of serious injury is far less. And if a bunch of people did try to join in it’d look more like a benny hill comedy than a brawl cuz everyone would be fallin on their asses.

It has nothing to do with culture or perception or any of that. You cant fight in soccer, you cant fight in golf. Hockey is the exception because theyre on skates. It’s more of a novelty interlude than straight up bare knuckle combat. Even in basketball when dudes used to throw punches in disputes, even before people were thinking anything about public perception, fights would get broken up quickly because fights can escalate too quickly on a standard surface. On skates it’s just less threatening.

The other thing is in hockey, unlike most other sports, there is a degree to which you can legally hit people, or check them. This inevitably fosters a lot of back and forth, tit for tat, and that can lead to an official having a hard time determining when exactly it goes over the line of a foul and whom to call it on. So you basically just let it escalate to a fight and throw em both in the penalty box when it’s over. But again this mainly works bc of ice skates.