Friday Fights presented by HockeyFights

Week three of your recap brought to you by Hockeyfights.com. Another slow week by last year’s standards in the fight world. Only seven fights since last week’s installment of Friday fights. The stats over at Hockey Fights show that we’re at 19% of games that have had a fight (before last night’s outburst of fights, now up to 22% of games), and that puts the NHL on a pace of having fewer than 300 total fights for the first time since the stats were tracked.

In this week’s edition, we look at a massive Superman fist by Bieksa, the linesmen get criticized, and Gryba unloads on Roussel. Show me the tilts.

With this fight, Micheal Haley takes sole lead of 1st place on the fighting majors leaderboard and it was a spirited bout between two guys. Manson had to answer the bell for an earlier cross check to Barkov’s face and the result was some good old fashioned fisticuffs. Both scored some good punches here. Nice fight from two smaller, tough guys.

Roussel is finding himself as a constant in our Friday fights feature. Last week he had the finger wag fight and this week he is on the receiving end of a beating by Eric Gryba. Gryba had laid out Remi Elie a couple of shifts before with a clean hit so Roussel continued last year’s tradition of standing up for a teammate that gets hit cleanly and losing badly. Gryba has been doing some grilling recently and must have built up some energy that he used on Roussel’s face.

A Superman punch is a bold move. When you see Kevin’s smile, you know it’s coming. But if you miss, you run the risk of the massive miss and exposing yourself to a punch or three. This fight almost didn’t happen as the boys were trying to go before the refs interrupted them on the previous play and gave them two minutes in the box. All that served was to make the two more angry… and obviously, the aftermath ensued. Now Bieksa is on the IR with a hand injury (when he went down to the ice with his non-punch hand) and Radko is nursing some wounded ego.

Not much to say here except good old time hockey. Just two guys throwing bombs at each other.

This is where we feature the one fight that probably deserved two minutes for occurring, rather than a major.

Linesmen Steve Miller and Andrew Smith

Remember that superman punch from the number one fight this week? How could you forget? That punch was completely avoidable if not for the linesmen stepping in way before their time. These two , Gudas and Bieksa, wanted to go and the zebras decided they needed to think about what they wanted to do to each other for two more minutes. Nightmare for Gudas.

If you want to see all the fights from the week, and indeed the season, you have only to visit us over at HockeyFights.com

So that’s the fights that were the fights. What say you citizens of the Nation? Did you like my picks? Did I miss a fight you thought was better or worse? Do you have a suggestion for the classic fight you want to see next week? Hit me up on twitter @TheNationDan or send it in the comments below.

Square up and protect your head.