NHL
Sergei Bobrovsky and Alex Nedeljkovic had the NHL's first goalie fight in almost six years last month. Bruce Bennett / Getty Images
Tampa Bay Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy and his Boston Bruins counterpart, Jeremy Swayman, discarded their masks and gloves, squaring up for a fight at center ice in the middle of Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium on Sunday.
The crowd of 64,000 roared, and skaters on both benches rose to their feet and smashed their sticks against the boards as the unlikely combatants traded punches. Vasilevskiy and Swayman couldn’t help but smile through their eye black as they made their way back to their nets after being separated by officials. The fans, players and the goalies loved every moment.
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“When we both fell, we both said nice words to each other,” Vasilevskiy told reporters after the game. “It was super nice. It was one of the biggest moments for me personally, because I had never fought in the NHL.”
Goalie fights have become increasingly rare in the NHL. The league had gone nearly six years (2,179 days) without one before it happened twice in a span of two weeks. On Jan. 19, Florida’s Sergei Bobrovsky fought San Jose’s Alex Nedeljkovic. Then Vasilevskiy and Swayman dropped the gloves on Feb. 1, six years to the day after Calgary’s Cam Talbot and Edmonton’s Mike Smith fought in 2020 in the most recent goalie fight before these two bouts.
“It’s great entertainment,” Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said. “We are in the entertainment business, and fighting is still legal in the NHL, so if they go after it, and fans are OK with it, and the players are, then have at it.”
It’s not in goalies’ nature to fight. They’re accustomed to standing and watching forwards and defensemen scrap when things get heated. So how do two goalies, who spend the game nearly 200 feet from each other, end up exchanging punches? Are there unwritten rules for when and how goalies fight?
Overall, the number of fights in the NHL has declined compared to generations past. But when fights between skaters occur, they come together quickly. One skater will mutter a few words and with the swiftest nod, gloves, sticks and helmets are sent flying.
Goalie fights are different. Because goalies are separated by so much distance, their fights are much slower to develop. They often start when one goalie becomes involved in a melee near his net. If the infraction is serious enough and emotions quickly rise, every skater on the ice will become involved in a scrum or separate fights. Eventually, the other goalie will make his way to the far end of the ice.
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“I feel like if the other goalie is involved, now there’s six of their guys and five of your guys,” said Vegas Golden Knights goalie Adin Hill, who has yet to fight in the NHL but has come close on multiple occasions. “That’s when it’s acceptable, I believe, to skate down the ice and make it six on six. That’s kind of the unwritten rule.”
As much as a goalie might want to fight a skater, there’s a code within the sport — the “unwritten rule” Hill referenced — that must be adhered to. Goalies wear extra layers of equipment and protection that would make a fight between them and skaters unfair. Plus, the code: goalies are seen as special players who must be protected by the skaters in front of them.
So when one goalie sees a brawl break out with every skater involved, he likely will skate toward center ice and verbally engage his counterpart. Seeing one goalie leave his crease will cause anticipation in the crowd. Fans often react with some of the loudest cheers as they watch a potential goalie fight unfold, which can give the other players an emotional spark.
“It was a great opportunity for Vasilevskiy, down 5-1, in a bit of a blender and it got his team going,” Flames goalie Dustin Wolf said. “You don’t want to see your guy get pummeled by a guy on the other end. So you can step up in some degree.”
Before his fight on Jan. 19, Bobrovsky saw Nedeljkovic go after Panthers forward Evan Rodrigues for hitting the Sharks’ Vincent Desharnais after the play was blown dead — which Nedeljkovic later called “kind of a bulls— play.” Bobrovsky saw Nedeljkovic throwing punches at Rodrigues and reacted quickly.
“I felt it was a little bit too much, and I wanted to get in and let him know,” he told reporters. “I felt like I made a decision and went straight into it.”
Bobrovsky has seen just about everything in his 16 seasons in the NHL, but even he was surprised by how the crowd erupted when he threw his gloves off.
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“It’s exciting, you know? It’s obviously not the thing I do for a living, but it is what it is,” he said. “The game dictates the emotions. You have to be smart (about) when to be in it and when not to. You have to play the game and feel what’s right in the moment.”
In terms of the unwritten rules, in this case, Nedeljkovic wasn’t anticipating a fight with Bobrovsky until the 37-year-old veteran already was in his face, throwing punches.
“I didn’t really see much of anything,” Nedeljkovic said. “I just kind of heard some of the guys yelling, ‘Ned!’ and I turned around, and Bob was right there. I was just trying not to get punched, tried to throw one of my own, and also tried not to look like too big of a fool doing it.”
“I just saw Sway was swinging the blocker a little bit, so it was just a reflex to run to the red line and challenge him,” Vasilevskiy said.
In both instances, the goalie who skated the length of the ice was having a rough night, which may have also played a factor. Bobrovsky let in nine goals against Carolina in the game before, and had already given up three in the same period that night against San Jose.
“I think it was an emotional outlet for him,” said Panthers coach Paul Maurice. “He felt he probably needed one. The goalies, you don’t want them hurting their hands and stuff like that, but sometimes goalie is a lonely position, and it has been for him for a bit.”
Similarly, Vasilevskiy gave up five goals in the first period and a half against Boston prior to his fight with Swayman. He stopped all nine shots he faced after the bout.
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“Vasi was pissed,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper said. “You could tell the game was starting to get a little bit of life to it, even though the score was out of hand.”
Far more often than not, though, when things get tense on the ice, goalies stop short of trading blows. Sometimes a goalie will skate all the way to center ice, only to return to his crease awkwardly after a fight doesn’t materialize. That was the case for Vegas goalie Akira Schmid when he was playing junior hockey.
He recalled one of his teammates crashing into the opposing goalie, sparking a line brawl. Schmid waded out of his crease, past the blue line and into the neutral zone, but then stopped.
“I was ready to go, but one of my teammates was already holding the other goalie,” Schmid explained, making the motion of a headlock. “I was just kind of waiting and hearing it from the other team’s bench. I wasn’t going to skate down there and fight another player. That’s stupid.”
As is the case for most goalies, fighting isn’t in Schmid’s nature. And because there isn’t a strict, hard rule for when a goalie fight is supposed to happen, a lot of it relies on reading the body language of the other goalie from a distance.
Once it’s been established that the goalies will indeed throw down, then there’s the question of the unwritten rules of engagement.
In some cases, such as in Vasilevskiy and Swayman’s fight, the combatants ceremoniously shed their gloves and masks in preparation for the bout. That gave both a chance to fairly square up and start on a level playing field. Vasilevskiy even gave Swayman time to remove a player’s stick that was wedged inside his leg pad.
In other instances, the fight begins more haphazardly and without chivalry, such as when Bobrovsky charged down the ice to fight Nedeljkovic. Both were still wearing their masks when the first punches were thrown, until they ripped them off each other’s heads.
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“I’m trying to get our masks off for sure,” Hill replied when asked which method he would prefer. “I think it’s better if you can square up to the guy where you’re both set. There’s no advantage, and it’s not like one goalie is involved with another player and you get on top of him, or whatever. If I were to get into one, I would rather have it where both guys square up, take our helmets off, and then go.”
“If he grabs my helmet, that could give him an advantage, so I would definitely take it off,” Schmid concurred.
Because the circumstances leading up to each fight vary so drastically, there’s no official consensus on whether the goalies should shed their masks prior to the fight beginning. History is littered with examples of each.
Smith and Talbot shed their masks and gloves before fighting in 2020, as did Carey Price and Tim Thomas in 2011. Ray Emery and Martin Biron did the same before their haymaker-filled brawl in 2007.
In a bloody bout between Patrick Roy and Mike Vernon in 1997, Roy’s helmet popped off his head when he charged into another player, and Vernon’s mask was ripped off by Roy mid-fight. When Roy fought Chris Osgood a year later, the two ceremoniously dropped their headwear before engaging.
There have only been 10 goalie fights in the last 19 years, according to Daniel Gallant of the website HockeyFights. In those fights, both goalies shed their masks prior to fighting eight times.
Rule 46.6 in the NHL rulebook states, “No player may remove his helmet prior to engaging in a fight. If he should do so, he shall be assessed a two-minute minor penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.”
Goalies appear to be exempt from this rule, perhaps because a mask is considered different from a helmet. Vasilevskiy and Swayman received no such penalty, and neither did Smith, Talbot, Price or Thomas. In each of those cases, the goalies were given five-minute majors for fighting, and additional two-minute minors for leaving their crease (another penalty that isn’t always enforced in these heated moments). Of course, none of them actually set foot in the penalty box to serve them, because NHL rules allow a penalty charged to a goalie to be served by a teammate.
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“I didn’t know that (after a goalie fight) the goalies go back in the net,” Woll said. “So that makes me way more pro (goalie fights). I wasn’t sure. So I was always like, ‘If I get in a fight and have to make the other goalie come in off the bench cold and this is a tight game, how stupid is that?’ But in the case that the goalies go back in in the neck, I kind of like it.”
The feeling of part-interest, part-apprehension expressed by goalies is shared by coaches. They know how difficult it is to win in the league, and how crucial it is to stay out of the penalty box.
“Why are they fighting? Why aren’t the players fighting? That’s the way I look at it. I don’t get it, to be honest with you,” Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube said.
And so the crux of future goalie fights might sit with how much a goalie wants to stay in his coach’s good books while balancing his desire to be part of any on-ice animosity.
Never was that more evident than when Flames coach Ryan Huska was asked about goalie fights during a Monday news conference. Huska paused to consider the question before deferring to longtime NHL goalie and current Sportsnet analyst Kelly Hrudey, who was sitting in the front row and who is credited with two fights in his career.
“On the record, I loved it,” Hrudey boasted.
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