It’s been a while since I seen a good old fashioned bench clearing brawl in a Hockey game, but just when you would have expected it to come out of the bush leagues of North American, you can think again, for the latest bench clearing brawl you have to go into Europe, yes Europe, and to the Kontinental Hockey League of Russian. Staring ex-NHL legend, Jaromir Jagr. A number of brawls broke out early in the game between Avangard Omsk and Vityaz Chekhov that resulted in 691 penalty minutes being assessed to all players, enough that the game had to be abandoned because there was not enough players to continue. Brilliant.

I love how in that video the goaltenders just kind of go and stand beside one another. The two by the goal net are literally just chatting away. Then you have the end of the fight when everyone is kind of worn out. There isn’t enough officials to go around to stop it so everyone just kind of quits throwing punches at the same time and skates away from each other. In fact, the team in red all start heading towards the penalty box.

I’ve never been to a game where a bench clearance broke out though I have been close. I remember a couple of Giants games were at the end of a game when everyone was on the ice had a few brawls break out, but never to the extent were everyone squared off and started throwing ‘em. It’s not something you want to see week in week out, but once in a life-time it is something every hockey fan should get to experience … oh to have been going to hockey games in the 70’s!!