The Albany Devils And The Bridgeport Sound Tigers Put Up A Ho-Hum 200+ Penalty Minutes In Their Season Finale

You know what? As far as full-on line brawls go that seemed fairly casual. It resulted in damn near a quarter of a thousand penalty minutes and it somehow appeared to develop out of nowhere. It's almost like it was a melee that stemmed from boredom rather than frustration. Don't get me wrong, it had everything you would want out of an uncontrollable hockey fight. You had random camera cutaways to players that were already mid-punch.  The best players were smack dab in the middle of the action (shoutout to Damon Severson and his surprisingly heavy right hand). Shit, even the coaches had to be held back after having a water fight and pretending they had any interest in hand-to-hand combat. I suppose that the 12 minor penalties and 2 major penalties that happened prior made for quite the contentious environment, but things still seemed pretty calm, cool, and collected the moments that immediately preceded hell breaking loose.

I guess this is just the type of thing that happens during a game that means next to nothing. There will plenty of time for skillful hockey in the postseason, but a game that was relatively out of hand score-wise and had absolutely no implications is the perfect time to take out every one of your grievances on your opponent. Hell, the entire situation was basically a powder keg that was only a couple of beer bottles away away from resembling a good old fashioned bar room brawl. One post-whistle shove proved to be the match that this flammable compound needed. You know what they say, boys will be boys when silly things like playoff positioning aren't at stake.


​h/t BarDown