When Matthew Tkachuk and Brandon Hagel squared off at center ice two seconds into the Canada-USA game on Saturday, the hockey world went nuts. Fights don’t happen much in the current era of hockey so to see one at the beginning of a highly anticipated game in the 4 Nations Face-Off was exciting.
When Tkachuk’s brother, Brady Tkachuk, went at it with Sam Bennett just seconds later, it was even cooler. And when JT Miller and Colton Parayko dropped the gloves after the next whistle, it became one of those moments you’ll never forget.
That’s because fighting in hockey is more rare than the average person thinks.
The reasons differ from player to player and from one situation to the next. The three American forwards, for example, infamously had a group chat before the game in which they all pledged to get the crowd going by fighting in the game. Canada’s Brandon Hagel, on the other hand, had a different reason.
“I did it for the flag, not the cameras,” he said.
Brandon Hagel… CANADIAN!!! 🇨🇦😤 #4Nations pic.twitter.com/x0LKMxGuwK
I asked a handful of Utah Hockey Club players who have dropped the gloves this season why they fight. Though their personal reasons were all different, everyone agreed that it’s an integral part of the game.
“It stems from a good spot: guys trying to stand up for their teammate,” said veteran defenseman Ian Cole.
That was exactly the case in Cole’s sole fight as a Utah Hockey Clubber. He laid a hard hit on Vegas Golden Knights forward Tomáš Hertl, at which point Nicolas Roy fought Cole in defense of his teammate. It’s not that fighting will undo the hit that was already made, but it forces the opponent to consider the consequences before making the next hit.
Michael Kesselring has fought three times this season, though he doesn’t particularly enjoy doing it.
“I’m not that tough, but I’m big, so I can handle myself,” he said. “I’m not going to fight the real, real tough guys most of the time, but I think for me, sticking up for teammates … I think it’s part of my job to step in and protect teammates.”
Kesselring’s 6-foot-5 frame comes with an expectation of physicality, so when he gets hit hard, he sometimes fights to avoid getting a soft reputation. That’s what happened when he fought Buffalo Sabres forward Beck Malenstyn earlier this season.
“It’s a little scary, (but) it’s fine,” he said. “You get adrenaline. You feel great the rest of the game as long as you don’t bang up your hands too much.”
Liam “Spicy Tuna” O’Brien, of course, is known for his toughness. For him, fighting is a matter of providing value to his team. He’s not the guy that’s going to score every night. His job is to set the tone — and one way he can do that is by chucking knuckles.
“It’s not something you see on a stat sheet,” he said. “It’s more internal to within the room, within the guys.”
That job is not for everyone, but the players who do it are highly appreciated by their teammates.
“It’s a tough, tough job to have and he does it just as well as anyone,” Cole said of O’Brien.
Although there are exceptions, most NHL tough guys realize that their opponents are often in the same boat as them. They’re trying to protect their teammates and set the tone of the game. As such, there’s a lot of respect between them.
O’Brien recalls his battles with former bruiser Tom Sestito as an example. The two guys squared off three times in the 2015-16 season, including twice during a hard-fought seven-game playoff series. But even after all that, O’Brien still leaves the animosity on the ice.
“I’ve heard really good things about him off the ice, but on the ice we just didn’t like each other,” he said.
Cole had the same sentiment with the player who stands out to him as his toughest competitor: Matt Hendricks. Cole caught Hendricks in the cheek with the first punch and assumed he’d drop, but he didn’t. Instead, Hendricks came back with a shot that broke Cole’s nose.
Notwithstanding, when Cole got traded to the Minnesota Wild, where Hendricks was the assistant director of player development, he treated Cole like an old friend. They even reminisced about their fight from six years earlier.
“I have a ton of respect for him as a player and him as a person,” Cole said. “(He’s a) genuine, really nice, honest guy, honest player.”
Every player I talked to agreed that fighting belongs in hockey, but they all emphasized that it doesn’t happen as much as non-hockey fans assume.
The old Rodney Dangerfield quote (“I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out”), though comical, isn’t reality — at least in the current era of the NHL.
In 1,312 NHL regular-season games last season there were 311 fights, per HockeyFights.com. Less than 24% of the games had fights, and that’s not even accounting for games that had multiple tilts.
“I don’t know how many games they’ve seen, to be honest,” Cole said of people who think hockey and fighting are synonymous. “I don’t think there’s an inordinate amount of fighting.”
Kesselring agreed.
“I understand where people are coming from when they don’t want fighting in the game, but it’s too important, I think, to hockey culture and the way the sport is played and the integrity of the game. You can police the game a little bit within the two teams and not have to have the refs do everything.”
Perhaps the most important advice came from Cole:
“Don’t like the physical contact? OK. Watch baseball.”
