On this day in 2004… Mike Bishai got into a fight in the Atlanta Thrashers’ bench

Mike Bishai was an undrafted free agent who played 14 games with the Edmonton Oilers and never scored a goal. Despite that, a lot of Oilers fans know his name.

It’s because of the incredible brawl that the Oilers had with the visiting Atlanta Thrashers on this day all the way back in 2004. If you haven’t heard about the legendary Mike Bishai vs. the Atlanta Thrashers, here’s the story…

It all started in the third period, with the Oilers up by a score of 4-1 and cruising to an easy victory. With under five minutes to go in the game, Thrashers defenceman Garnet Exelby speared Oilers forward Ethan Moreau, and the pair dropped the gloves. Play resumed as normal for a few minutes and then all hell broke loose as the Thrashers tossed all of their goons on the ice at once.

At centre ice, it looked like Jason Chimera is going to get into it with Jeff Cowan, so Georges Laraque stepped in to get in the middle of it. That brought defenceman Ivan Majesky into the picture and everybody else on the ice followed.

Laraque was looking for a fight with Andy Sutton, but the big, 6’6″ defender wouldn’t answer the bell. Instead, Sutton would find a dance partner in Eric Brewer, leading colour commentator Ray Ferarro, his former teammate in Atlanta, to basically call him a coward on the broadcast.

Brewer did a good job of holding his own with Sutton, considering the difference in size between the two players. Meanwhile, as the camera is focused solely on Sutton and Brewer, Kevin Quinn points out that Mike Bishai has been tossed into the Thrashers’ bench by Serge Aubin and the two are going at it from there.

The camera finally panned to a bird’s eye view of Bishai, standing up in Atlanta’s bench surrounded by white uniforms, feeding Aubin with right hooks. As that breaks up, goaltenders Ty Conklin and Pasi Nurminen get in on the action, meeting up at centre ice to complete the chaos. As that’s going on, Big Georges finally finds somebody to throw down with. It’s Francis Lessard, a fellow heavyweight who Laraque would have known well from the QMJHL.

When it’s all said and done, the Thrashers played out the final couple of minutes without a goaltender as Nurminen has been ejected and starter Byron Dafoe had left earlier with an injury. Ales Hemsky would bury a puck into the empty net for good measure and the charged-up Oilers would skate away with a 5-1 win.

Here’s a description of the melee from Joanne Ireland of the Edmonton Journal, the day after it happened…

This penalty summary from Hockey-Reference should also give you an idea of what kind of madness ensued that night…

The star of this whole thing was certainly Bishai, who made himself a cult hero in Edmonton for kicking Serge Aubin’s ass despite being thrown into the opposing team’s bench. The image of Bishai just wailing on Aubin as the Thrashers on the bench just stood around in complete confusion is absolutely hilarious.

After the game, head coach Craig MacTavish said he had never seen anything like it before, which is pretty impressive given the wild things that guy saw during his time in the league.

Bishai might not have had a very long career in the NHL, but he certainly made a name for himself…