Tuesday, April 10, 2007 | 7:19 a.m.
Hockey players don't forget their first fights.
Las Vegas Wranglers left winger Steve Crampton was 16 when he answered the bell against a screaming older opponent in a camp.
"I gave him a pretty good shiner," he says. "My first one."
Wranglers teammate Shawn Limpright, then 14, all but closed his eyes as he swung. At 16, Ryan Donally decked the other team's captain.
Lance Galbraith, a left winger for the Idaho Steelheads, gave away four years in his first duel, against a 20-year-old tough guy.
"It was not pretty," he says.
Who won?
"Not me."
Fighting is as much a part of the fabric of hockey, the only professional sport in North America that does not eject players for duking it out, as ice and sticks are.
As a player, Glen Gulutzan never questioned the act. But during his four seasons as the Wranglers' coach, Gulutzan has pondered why the fight game is so prominently linked with the game.
"You watch other sports and it's not accepted," he says.
"What's gotten into the culture of the game? It has no place in the game, really."
Yabo
Jeremy Yablonski, the Steelheads' 6-foot-1, 235-pound resident heavyweight, won six Golden Gloves boxing championships in Canada and three provincial titles.
To skaters' chagrin, "Yabo" turned professional in hockey instead of the sweet science.
In a Triple-A Midget league, his first foe didn't respond until Yablonski had thrown three or four punches.
"Back then, I could fight like crazy," Yablonski says.
His neck muscles, pecs and biceps bulge. The elaborate Maori-like tattoo that winds from his right shoulder blade around his shoulder and covers his right biceps glistened with sweat after a recent game.
Once, in Johnstown, Pa., a heated group of about 100 fans waited for him in Cambria County War Memorial Arena, where the cult classic "Slap Shot" was filmed.
"There was just one old lady security guard," Yablonski, 27, says. "I said, 'No ... way I'm going out there.' They were waiting to kill me. I skated circles on the ice, something I'll never forget."
In 369 career games, he has had 16 goals and 14 assists. Yablonski has earned 1,426 penalty minutes.
In his lone NHL game, for the St. Louis Blues on Dec. 20, 2003, Yablonski challenged Todd Fedoruk. He says he clocked Fedoruk with one punch.
Hockeyfights.com, which charts players' brawls, reports that Fedoruk connected with two rights and two lefts, before Yablonski threw a wild right. Then the pair fell to the ice. We didn't challenge him.
"It just adds so much to the game," Yablonski says. "It gives your team toughness. They can go out and do their jobs and not worry about anything happening. If anything does, big guys on the bench are there to take care of business."
Wanna go?
Steve Crampton hears it from fans who line the tunnel at the Orleans Arena every time he enters the rink for a pregame skate.
Gonna go tonight? C'mon, Cramps. Let's go tonight!
Gloves do drop for the crowd.
"You want to show the fans something," Crampton says. "I don't see the problem with it."
The lucky punch, many players say, is the one that does the most damage. That's what happened when Colton Orr of the New York Rangers KO'd Todd Fedoruk of Philadelphia on March 21 at Madison Square Garden .
In a SportsCenter moment, replayed over and over, Fedoruk was carried off on a stretcher.
Glen Gulutzan always hears more of a bloodthirsty roar when a fight erupts than after the Wranglers, of the Double-A level ECHL, score a goal.
"And women like it more than men," he says. "Never met a girl who didn't like it."
A recent fight-filled night at the Orleans, between Las Vegas and Idaho, stemmed from an incident three games earlier between the teams, in Boise. Jeremy Yablonski earned a seven-game suspension for his actions March 21 against Alaska that were traced to a series in Anchorage before Christmas.
"No one ever knows the other side of the story," Lance Galbraith of Idaho says.
Or what makes hockey players tick.
"Not that my mom and dad like me fighting all the time," Galbraith says. "It's a job I do. If I'm not fighting I'm not doing my job because I didn't get under people's skin."
Uncle Mike
Las Vegas left winger Marco Peluso is shown a list of all-time enforcers, grunts, meatheads and thugs from hockeygoon.com.
It evaluates the top heavyweights of all time, with a formula that factors goals, assists, penalty minutes and career games. The lone requirement is 1,500 career NHL penalty minutes.
In fifth, tied with Gord Donnelly at 2.86, is Mike Peluso, Marco's uncle.
"Doesn't surprise me," Marco Peluso says. "I watched him do it for 10 years. He'd fight every game, if not twice."
Mike didn't tutor his nephew about fighting; Marco learned by observing. Most important is balance. Having a long reach and "being able to throw" also help.
According to Steve Crampton, defending yourself isn't taught. "You won't see 10-, 12- and 14-year-olds practicing fighting," he says. "You kind of learn the ins and outs."
At 5 feet 10 inches tall and 160 pounds, Peluso doesn't hesitate tangling with someone like 6-foot, 200-pound Alaska defenseman Peter Metcalf.
"If you got a guy who's being an idiot, running people out there and not playing by the rules," Peluso says, "you need a couple of guys, enforcers, who will handle that."
Turning turnstiles
The Hockey News titled an October cover story, "Death of the Goon." The Globe and Mail, based in Toronto and circulated throughout Canada, called for the elimination of fighting in a Feb. 13 editorial.
Both were premature.
In late March NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman announced that fighting is a part of hockey and he will not consider eliminating it.
Glen Gulutzan instructs his players that fighting must have a purpose. Often, they look to the bench at the boss for a nod of approval that never comes.
Las Vegas, atop the Pacific Division, has been one of the least-penalized teams in the ECHL this season. Alaska, in the fight-filled West Division, tops that list. Idaho, also in the wild West, is in the top quarter of the league.
"What we want is to win hockey games," Gulutzan says. "If that's fighting, we have guys who can do it. If it's backing away and swallowing your pride a little bit, you have to do that, too."
The European game is exciting, fast-paced and polished, Gulutzan says, and nearly fight free, because grunts are dealt with harshly. Hefty suspensions without pay would erase fighting from the North American game.
Gulutzan, though, knows that will not happen.
"Because," Gulutzan says, "it sells tickets."
Tickets: $12.50-$36.75 for adults, $7.50-$10.50 for kids; 471-7825, www.lasvegaswranglers.com, www.orleansarena.com
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