Russian Hockey Fight


If you haven’t seen the Russian Hockey Fight that is the longest clip of hockey on ESPN currently playing, you have to check this thing out.

Just an insane bench clearing brawl. The teams involved are the Kazan Ak-Bars and Traktor. And who won the game? Who cares?

More info from Slap Shot, the New York Times hockey blog:

This fight simply would not end. It all began with white-clad Ak Bars ahead by 7-5 with about 30 seconds left in the game …

… but down two men and Traktor with six attackers, when Traktor’s Aleksei Zavarukhin seemed to score on a scramble near the Ak Bars net. But referee A. Semenov waved off the goal — and when Zavarukhin turned to appeal, for some reason Ak Bars defenceman Aleksei Emelin flew in and leveled him. Traktor’s Andrei Nikolishin then flew in to level Emelin, and the donnybrook was on.

Greg from the Post Pessimist Assc tells me that the goalie that gets bloodied is none other than Mika Noronen, who left the NHL because he wasn’t going to sit on a bench behind Roberto Luongo. I would say that getting punched in the face in Russia is better than sitting on the Canucks bench.

After it was all said and done, 378 penalty minutes were handed out, and ESPN had something they thought was interesting about hockey. They even showed it to Barry Melrose for his reaction on ESPNews. What kind of reaction are we going to see from the hockey fans towards ESPN for this one? Does it really matter? Fight! Fight! Fight!


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