NHL
The realization hit Nicolas Aube-Kubel like a punch. He was driving to the Westchester County Airport on this late-March day, having just been called up to the Rangers, which meant the 28-year-old winger was becoming teammates with a fellow NHL player he had long hated to face.
“Shoot,” Aube-Kubel thought to himself. “I have to meet Trocheck now.”
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Back in December, when Aube-Kubel was on the Sabres, he nailed Rangers center Vincent Trocheck with a reverse hit in his defensive zone, knocking Trocheck down. Trocheck took issue with the check, which caught him high, and charged at his opponent. The two dropped their gloves, and Aube-Kubel landed a couple of blows before Trocheck fell to the ice.
Three months later, on trade deadline day, the Rangers acquired Aube-Kubel from the Sabres for Erik Brännström. Since Aube-Kubel was in the minors at the time of the deal, he initially joined the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack. The Rangers recalled him before a West Coast road trip, setting up his first encounter with Trocheck since the fight. After arriving at the Westchester airport, Aube-Kubel approached his former foe on the team plane.
“I’m glad I have you on my side now,” he told Trocheck.
The pair shared a laugh, reminiscing about the fight; Trocheck brought up how Buffalo Bills offensive lineman Dion Dawkins, a four-time Pro Bowler, had been sitting in the front row that night and evidently loved what he saw, banging on the glass and pumping up the KeyBank Center crowd. Then they settled into being teammates.
“It’s not something you’re going to hold a grudge over,” Trocheck said later. “Part of the game.”
And it’s far from unique to Aube-Kubel and Trocheck. The continued existence of fighting in the NHL forces players to occasionally join forces with someone they’ve punched. Aube-Kubel, for example, has now skated alongside three of the seven players he’s fought in the NHL. Among them is Sabres defenseman Connor Clifton, with whom Aube-Kubel said he has since become “best buddies.”
When Rangers center Sam Carrick was with the Ducks’ AHL affiliate in 2021, for instance, he challenged Vincent Desharnais to a bout after Desharnais delivered a knee-on-knee hit to one of Carrick’s teammates. Then, after the Oilers acquired Carrick at the 2024 trade deadline, he and Desharnais became teammates themselves. They relitigated the hit, chuckling about Carrick finding it dirty.
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“Eventually you always laugh about it,” Carrick said. “It’s one of those things where maybe in the heat of the moment you’re mad, but I think there’s a mutual respect there.”
Players take different approaches to reuniting with former combatants on the same roster. Some address it as soon as possible. They discuss the plays that led to it, compare perspectives, and share a laugh.
“It’s just more of a ball-busting thing,” Rangers center J.T. Miller said.
Carrick illustrated as much. With Trocheck in earshot in the Rangers’ dressing room, Carrick loudly exclaimed, “I forgot about (Aube-Kubel) beating the wheels off Trocheck earlier in the year.” Carrick also mentioned Miller fighting his brother, Trevor Carrick, during their junior hockey days.
“Beat his ass,” Miller recalled.
But other players leave their previous encounters unaddressed. While with the Coyotes last season, defenseman J.J. Moser fought Mikey Eyssimont, who was playing for the Tampa Bay Lightning at the time. Then, over the summer, the Lightning traded for Moser. The defenseman said he could have made a joke when he met Eyssimont, but the right opportunity never came up.
“You probably are not talking about any other situation,” Moser said. “If you are playing against a guy and you take the puck away from him, you’re not going to go back and (say), ‘Oh, you remember when I took the puck away?’”
Eyssimont, meanwhile, fought multiple eventual Lightning teammates: Brayden Point in 2023, and Moser and Cam Atkinson last season. “You jumped me!” Atkinson recalled joking when they later met in Tampa. “That’s bulls—!” Atkinson had played more than 700 NHL games without a fight before taking on Eyssimont, and found it amusing that “the one guy I get into some sort of scrap with is my teammate the next year.”
To Atkinson, keeping the situation light was a way to show there was no bad blood. As if to further demonstrate this point, the winger referred to Eyssimont, who was traded to the Kraken at the deadline, as a great guy.
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“Nine times out of 10 there’s really no animosity,” Miller said. “Have a beer with a guy after. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
There are times when players who drop the gloves genuinely don’t like each other, Miller added, but it’s not common. For example, he had nothing against Carson Soucy when they fought in 2022-23. Miller was with the Canucks at the time, and Vancouver had gone winless through its first seven games of the season. Coach Bruce Boudreau had called his players out ahead of a game against the Kraken, Miller remembered, so he felt he needed to do something. Soucy, then with Seattle, just happened to be standing close to Miller early in the first period when Miller was looking to fight. There was nothing personal to it. Soucy respected Miller for trying to pump up his team.
Soucy signed with the Canucks ahead of the next season, and he and Miller were both traded to the Rangers in separate deals this year. The two teammates joked about their fight early on after Soucy joined Vancouver, but they haven’t really discussed it since.
“Guys don’t fight each other on the ice because they hate each other,” said Rangers winger Brennan Othmann, who fought eventual teammate Casey Fitzgerald in the AHL last season. “They fight each other to get momentum or they’re sticking up for a teammate after a hit or whatever it is.”
Unsurprisingly, league heavyweights are the most likely candidates to wind up playing with someone they once fought. When Ryan Reaves was traded from the Rangers to the Wild in November 2022, he found himself sharing a dressing room with Marcus Foligno — a player he had fought multiple times, including two months prior to the trade.
Foligno thought about their previous fights as soon as Minnesota acquired Reaves, particularly how the recent punches “stuck with me for about two more weeks on the top of my head.” Foligno, still with the Wild, said fans have since asked him to sign a photo that Reaves had posted on his Instagram page in the wake of one of their fights. The two even dropped the gloves again after Reaves left for the Maple Leafs, but they still talk. There are no hard feelings.
“Reavo was awesome and easy to get along with right away, despite having some run-ins with him,” Foligno said. “Usually those guys understand what it takes to win and what it takes to bring a team close.”
As is the case with Foligno and Reaves, there’s plenty of familiarity between frequent fighters. The Devils’ Kurtis MacDermid and the Flyers’ Nicolas Deslauriers, for example, once lived together as roommates during Kings development camp. The two have gone on to fight five times over their careers.
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“Nothing personal,” MacDermid said during the 2021-22 season, when he twice fought Deslauriers. “I respect him as a player and a person, and he’s a really great guy and good player. It’s just a part of the job.”
Rangers bruiser Matt Rempe has yet to become teammates with one of his past opponents, but he’s encountered plenty away from the rink: While playing junior hockey in the Western Hockey League, he sometimes palled around with them at bars over the summer in his native Calgary.
“You run into guys and (say) ‘oh, I fought you! Let me buy you a beer,’” he said.
But the longer Rempe’s career goes, the more likely it is that he’ll end up playing alongside someone he’s tried to beat to a pulp. His reaction then will probably be similar: share a laugh, enjoy a drink and proceed on good terms.
(Top photos: Jeff Vinnick / NHLI via Getty Images, Jeff Halstead / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Peter Baugh is a staff writer for The Athletic NHL based in New York. He has previously been published in the Columbia Missourian, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kansas City Star, Politico and the Washington Post. A St. Louis native, Peter graduated from the University of Missouri and previously covered the Missouri Tigers and the Colorado Avalanche for The Athletic. Follow Peter on Twitter @Peter_Baugh
