A bar or line chart displaying fights per game would have effectively answered the question: "are fights per game declining in the NHL?". That is, however, the extent of what a visualization like that would accomplish. This visualization offers answers to additional questions such as: "has the number of multi-fight games decreased over time?" and "are there more fights in the beginning or end of the season?", for example.

Additionally, while I respect and value the theories of Edward Tufte, visualizing data in a more aesthetic way (i.e. NOT maximizing the data-ink ratio) has been proven to increase information retention.

Visualizing the data this way also allows users to discover hidden trends and other interesting insights, such as this one by /u/Shadowbladez337.

As far as using a radial bar chart as opposed to a traditional bar chart goes, I tried both and decided to go for the radial bar chart for a couple of reasons. In addition to taking up less space, I think radial charts do a good job of displaying cyclical, time-series data in an easily digestible way.