Fights and all-out brawls are a big part of hockey. It’s a tradition to have at least one big fight in any given series now, and fans will feel like the games are lacking without any instigating and fighting along the way. Of course, fighting should not exist in team sports, but hockey wouldn’t be how it is today without those entertaining brawls.
While it’s true that not all hockey games have fights, it’s not really that surprising if, at one point in the middle of the game, the players would just drop off their gloves and settle their dispute with their fists.
You can say that there have been a lot of fights in NHL history. There are too many to count, but some fights are different. Some fights are too big and even anticipated by fans that when it went down to it, they became one for history, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Here are the NHL’s most epic fights in history.
Tom Wilson vs. Wayne Simmonds
This fight isn’t even in the championship game. It’s just a regular season game at Wells Fargo Center, but the tensions are so high that it became one of the most epic fights in NHL history. The fight began with Simmonds pushing a Capitals player into the ground and shoving Wilson against the glass. It wasn’t a pretty sight, for sure. One could say that Simmonds did that to instigate a fight between him and Wilson. And with Wilson not backing down, both threw their gloves on the floor and took up their fighting stances.
That created a chain of fights, starting with Ray Emery barging up to his opposing goalie, Braden Holtby. The goalies then fight, and Holtby, seemingly unprepared to fight, is smoked by Emery. And after that, several other players started swinging the other team. The game had to be stopped for a significant amount of time just to dole out the punishments for each player.
Darren McCarty vs. Claude Lemieux
Dubbed the “Bloody Wednesday,” like any other big fights, this fight has a year’s backstory before the brawl started. Of course, for the sake of the length of this discussion, we don’t have to go into it too much, but long story short, Lemieux made a vicious check against the back of Kris Draper that resulted in him getting reconstructive surgery.
The next year, both of the teams met one another once again, and it was rocky. There were already a couple of fights in the first ten minutes; from then on, it would only worsen. The big fight started when McCarty delivered a right hook to Lemieux. Lemieux hit the ground, and McCarty then took him to the boards and kneed him in the head.
The goaltender rushed to Lemieux but was clotheslined by another player, and then an all-out brawl started. It was horrible, to say the least, so it’s called the “Bloody Wednesday.” You have to see it to believe it. Too bad, though, that the fights aren’t included in FanDuel’s NHL odds, or betting on hockey would’ve been much more fun.
Los Angeles Kings vs. Philadelphia Flyers
It was a game between the Los Angeles Kings and Philadelphia Flyers. Like the previous one, the game had a rocky start. Tempers started to flare up in the first period, but it wasn’t until the end that things started boiling over. However, this time, it wasn’t the players on the ice fighting but the benches.
It was one of the biggest fights in the NHL regarding the number of people involved. The worst part about this is that even the officials couldn’t stop it and had to call for backup. The game broke the NHL record of two teams having the most penalty minutes in a game.
Pierre Bouchard vs. Stan Jonathan
Some might disagree with this list, presenting this fight as the most epic one. However, most people would agree that this as one of the bloodiest fights in NHL history. So what happened? The fight began with Bouchard and Jonathan coming together after the linesman signals for a foul. Bouchard pulled on the stick of Jonathan twice before the 5 ‘8 Canadian had enough and began to give a flurry of blows to Bouchard’s unprotected head.
Bouchard tried to give punches of his own, but Jonathan’s helmet nullified most of the blows. However, this gave Jonathan the distance to continue beating Bouchard’s head. The fight only lasted seconds, but it ended with Bouchard collapsing to the floor and spewing blood everywhere. He even spurted out blood from his mouth towards an official’s face.
Final Words
Hockey wouldn’t be hockey if there was no fighting. There are hundreds of epic fights in the NHL, but the ones above probably are one of the best (or worst if you’re not a fan of violence, but if so, why are you reading this article?) fights in NHL history. Fighting in a team sport might be bad, but you must admit that these fights will be remembered for a long time.
