The View from the Bleachers

To celebrate the end of the hockey season (congratulations Detroit) here’s the greatest game of hockey ever played - Ottawa Senators at Philadelphia Flyers on 5th March 2004. In case you don’t remember this game, the Flyers won the game 5-3, but the real fun was the constant fighting that erupted in the last two minutes of the game. The first 58 minutes and 15 seconds passed with no fights at all, then when the Flyers’ Donald Brashear pushed Rob Ray, chaos ensued, with four separate fights breaking out, including both goalies facing off.

When this was finally sorted out and the game could be restarted, it was just three seconds before fighting broke out again, this time between Radovan Somik vs Chris Neil, and Mattias Timander vs Zdeno Chara. Then, when play was restarted again, it was just three more seconds before Mike Fisher got it on with Michal Handzus. There was then a fourth set of fights featuring Mark Recchi vs Brian Smolinski, and John LeClair vs Wade Redden, before play was stopped one last time as Patrick Sharp and Jason Spezza traded blows, meaning there had been five fight stoppages in just thirty two seconds of play!

There were 21fighting majors handed out, including a double for Donald Brashear for instigating. The two teams shared an NHL record 419 penalty minutes, including a single team record of 413 for the Flyers. The bad blood between the two sides was probably due to the Senators’ Martin Havlat high-sticking two Flyers in previous games, ironically Havlat was not involved in the fighting as at the time he was sitting in the penalty box!

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