Line Brawl Fight, it happened!

I can't think of another sport where this happens. Do you know of any? Is this why a lot of Americans don't take hockey all that seriously? As a Canadian I'm not always sure where the rest of the world stands on hockey.

I live in Vancouver, and given our history with the Flames it's not too surprising, but still.

It's a line brawl!

EDIT: In case it wasn't clear, this was the very start of the game!

I remember seeing the highlights for this! There has been some real brawls this season.

I think it's a great part of the game. I remember last year when Dallas played Calgary. The Stars were down by a couple and they started a fight off a face off. Then another off the next face off. Then another off the next. It brought the pace of the game to a stand still and the Flames momentum died. They managed to come back and win off that turning point.

A big number of people.in the northern US are really into hockey. Even where I am in Philadelphia Pennsylvania on the east coast there are a lot of hockey fans. I consider it kind of the third of the big three sports that general Americans give a shit about about. (The two others being curling and Canadian football, obviously).

Personally, I'm not interested in general for whatever reason, but seeing fights like that just makes me want to keep away even more. It seems like when the players do that they care more about proving their stereotypical jock superiority than focusing on the sport they're playing.

That seems pretty mischaracterized. Fighting in hockey is directly tied to what is happening on the ice. It is often the result of a player backing up their teammate from a cheap hit or used as a way of shifting the pace of a game.

Saw the highlights of this and it was pretty amazing. The last brawl I saw on this level was the Malice in the Palace between the NBA teams the Pacers and the Pistons which eventually went over board with the fans. I always felt that something like this is always good, you could tell they were just trying to put up a show and not trying to murder the other person. You can see nearing the end the other players embracing in good sportsmanship.

It can also be used tactically. Say you've got an all star scorer that isn't scoring because he's being tightly covered by a top tier defenseman. If you send an enforcer to fight the defensemen then they'll both be in the penalty box for 5 minutes. That's 5 minutes where your all star scorer faces second tier defense.

Your perspective might also be skewed because you live in Philly. Philly has had one of the most fight friendly teams since the Broad Street Bullies in the 70s. The rest of the league isn't as ready to fight as Philly teams are.

The Flames and Canucks are two shitty teams who're simply doing the only thing they can do: start shit since they lack playing skills.

I totally support fighting in Hockey. It's a physical sport and tension can build really easily. A fight can relieve that tension so players don't end up taking out their aggression via illegal hits or really nasty slashes and stuff. I remember hearing from a view NHL players who also played in Euro leagues where fighting is strictly not allowed and that often ended up with players hacking guys really bad or running them into the boards more often.

Should there be players who's role is to fight, such as your typical good? I would say no but fighting itself should stick around.

Did you guys see this? During that game Tortorella who is the headcoach of Canucks had a little scrum in front of Calgary Flames locker room after the first period.

EDIT: Tortorella is the pissed off looking guy getting pushed off on the lower left.

@mozzle: On the topic of other sports with fighting, last year during the World Baseball Classic Mexico and Canada had a benches cleared brawl. Since it was Mexico's last game of the tournament and Canada still had one game to play they decided not to suspend anybody because it would only penalize Canada.

Haha, I love the packed penalty boxes.

The UK has its main sport as Football/Soccer. Were there is a rare chance that fouls go the way of the fouler. There is an ever constant fake injuries to try and get a penalty of a free kick or better penalty kick *just you and the goalkeeper* .

So when I started to play NBA 2k12 It was an alien concept to me that there are "good" foul's. That there is a strategy to foul's. Now that I find Hockey uses's fights like they are time out's in Basketball. My mind hurts.

All the Sports in UK are focused on fair play, yet America (I know Canada as well) has so many sports that have tricks and tactics that involve "wrong doing". Certainly show's our different coulters eh?

Torts has, and always will be, a giant douche.

So Torts has been suspended 15 days/6 games for the intermission incident. Now that Glen Gultzan is in charge I look forward to the Canucks having a late season collapse that he made so trendy among Dallas area teams.

@vrikk He's the douche that Vancouver needed though. When AV was the coach the media second guessed all his decisions to the point that he was second guessing his decisions. The goalie controversy only happened because the media created it and AV took them seriously. Torts is the kind of guy who would tell the media to fuck off. It's his team and his decisions and he doesn't care what anybody says.

YES!

Football or soccer (or futbol if you're feeling nasty) has the exact same concept of "good fouls" as basketball. Seeing players take the risk of a booking over the risk of a successful counter attack is fairly common, its the same in basketball except for the late game situations.

The fighting in hockey is the type of thing that is keeping the NHL from growing. Its bush league stuff and the only reason the NHL allows it, is because of "tradition." Every other professional league has banned it, the Olympics don't allow it, college hockey doesn't allow it, yet for some reason the NHL marches on ignoring all medical evidence. You would think seeing Crosby struggle with head trauma would make them rethink their stance on the matter.

Hopefully seeing how ridiculous the league looks with this fight pushes them to revisit the subject.

@joshwent: That is because you don't understand the game. Fighting in hockey has absolutely nothing to do with jock superiority, or anything along those lines.

There are many reasons for fighting in hockey. Sticking up for your team when your opponents are taking liberties on your team mates, wake your team up when they are playing like shit (riles up the guys on the bench, gets the crowd going), and sometimes the emotions just run so high that two players just have enough of one another and they drop the gloves.

In this particular game, Calgary's coach sent out their grinders to start the game. An obvious sign that you aren't there to play hockey off the bat, and are looking for a fight to get your team in the game off of the get go. In this case it was a dumb move that shouldn't happen in the game, and Vancouver's coach lost his shit. He was suspended for 15 days without pay, and Calgary's coach was fined $25,000 for being a douche.

This was all on Calgary's coach. The players on the ice were just doing what they were put on the ice to do at the time. Nothing to do with proving they could kick anyone's ass. Just a cheap attempt to get the team riled up for the game.

Edit: I mean no disrespect by saying you don't know the game. Was just pointing out some of the reasons hockey players do fight based on my 20+ years of watching lol.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight...

@mozzle said:

In football (soccer) it's actually the crowd that fights, not the players. Football riotsare hard to beat when it comes to fighting (outside of pugilistic sports of course). I was trying to find a Polish riot video in a stadium, not a street riot, but couldn't easily find one.

Oh yea, I remembered, they fight in baseball too sometimes.

It probably happens more often in baseball than it does in hockey.

It's kind of funny how you talk about one guy not understanding hockey when you clearly don't either. Bob Hartley did nothing wrong. Tortorella is just a crazy person. There are numerous reasons to start your fourth line and chances are he wasn't planning on starting a line brawl. It's not that uncommon and he may even have simply been sending a message to his own team. Nobody else has been scoring and the fourth line had scored the night before (they scored tonight as well). Tortorella is the one who decided a line brawl was imminent and had Bieksa take the faceoff. If Tortorella hadn't freaked out and decided they needed to fight they would have had their shift and nothing would have happened. Hartley was only fined because the NHL didn't have another choice and it's a pretty slippery slope to go down if starting your fourth line is a fine worthy offence.

The fact that the Flames' 4th line got a goal tonight was a soild "well fuck you too!" To the NHL.

That looked fucking ridiculous.

I love hockey. I hate this.

90% of hockey fighting is a waste of time. A couple of talentless, meatheaded goons partaking in what Herb Brooks eloquently described as looking like "two monkeys trying to fuck a football." This line brawl crap is not hockey.

Thankfully, this stuff is relatively rare and fighting in general has been on the decline, and waste of blood and organs types like Trevor Gillies are out of the league.

And while I'm at it, John Tortorella is a boorish, whiny, surly, arrogant, hypocritical prick. I can't wait for the day he becomes unemployable. Of course, then they'll just stick his idiot face on television like that other boorish, whiny, surly, arrogant, hypocritical prick Mike Milbury when he became unemployable in the NHL.

I'm British myself and an avid fan of both football (soccer) and Ice hockey. I do think from the outside fighting can seem like nothing more than juvenile but it is part of the sport. How it's used however can be real hit and miss, starting with your 4th line is a bit crazy regardless.

Yeah, because Calgary's goons going after the Canuck players was nothing more than a coincidence and wasn't part of the plan for that game going in at all. That line was put out there to fight. How anyone can not see that is delusional. It's one thing to put the grinders out there to crash and bang and give the team energy. They were out there to drop the gloves.

What was Torts to do, put out his star players when the Flames were sent out there to start gooning it up?

Could you imagine if this happened in American football? The guy who started it would get penalties up the ass, would probably be unable to play for a few games as punishment, and would be heavily fined. It's very interesting to see other sports where this sort of behavior is not only tolerated, but from comments here, seems to be encouraged.

That is so idiotic.... yeah it may be strat and all but really??? Sheesh

I love hockey fights, but that was sad. Just starting the game out with all the bum players fighting is not strategy, it's pathetic.

I love how the other team members suddenly search out other players to fight. :D

That Vancouver coach seems a bit of a dick though.

don't see this happen in golf, just sayin'

Man I love hockey. Closest thing to a gladiator match these days.

If the physical nature of ice hockey scares you, then stay the F out and do roller hockey.

Negatively comparing it to football doesn't do much for me. The reason I like hockey is because it isn't football, and (once upon a time) it involved creativity and vision on the players behalf rather than absolute dogmatic adherence to strategy and set plays. Fighting was a part of that, aggression and truculence was part of those intangibles, part of specific player personalities, and not merely a strategy teams follow.

I want to appreciate the boys talents and not the coach's ingenuity.

I love hockey because shit like this can happen (also because I played it when I was a kid). It'll be a sad day if they ever start giving harsher penalties for it.

Every sport doesn't have to be every other sport.