Watching fights between Patrick Roy and Mike Vernon, and Ron Hextall and Felix Potvin in the 1990s, Martin Biron said he always wanted to be the goaltender who could win a bout as the spunky underdog.
Then he got into one against Ray Emery and asked himself: “What were you thinking?”
Two decades since Robert Esche and Patrick Lalime went at it as part of the Philadelphia Flyers-Ottawa Senators brawl that set the NHL record for penalty minutes, goalie fighting has essentially disappeared from the league.
Photo: AP
That is because there are almost no team-wide slugfests anymore, prohibitive rules and fewer netminders willing to take the risks.
“I think goalies have gotten smarter and they’re like: ‘No, there’s no reason to get in a fight,’” Biron said. “Fighting is not as prevalent as it once was, and you don’t have the kind of brawls that we used to have sometimes where you’re like: ‘OK, I’m going to join in.’”
Biron and Emery in 2007 is one of just seven goalie versus goalie fights since the 2004-2005 lockout and 43 overall dating to 1954, according to HockeyFights.com (there are 141 other times where at least one goalie was involved in a tussle).
The vast majority of these unusual crowd favorites came between the late 1970s and late 1990s during an era when masked men with an edge were all over the place.
“There had to be at least 80 fights a year, so the opportunity was at least once a night for something to break out to extend beyond two guys fighting,” said retired goaltender Glen Hanlon, who got into five scraps in the NHL, including two against another goalie. “Back then, watching the two turtles race to center ice to have a fight didn’t seem that crazy and it was a lot of excitement.”
Not anymore. The most recent NHL goalie fight was between Edmonton’s Mike Smith and Calgary’s Cam Talbot on Feb. 1, 2020.
Stanley Cup winning-goalies Jordan Binnington and Marc-Andre Fleury, tried to throw down during a game between St. Louis and Minnesota in March last year, but officials prevented it from happening.
“If you’re going for it, you’re going for it,” said Binnington, who lost US$65,000 in salary as a result. “Last year was close, and I feel like the linesmen have been told to really not let it happen, which is understandable. They’re doing their job, and that’s what the NHL wants.”
It is an automatic ejection to cross the center red line for a fight along with the potential for fines and suspensions. No team wants to lose a goalie over a fight.
Esche, now president of the American Hockey League’s Utica Comets, said that plenty of goalies want to fight, if the opportunity existed.
So many of them grew up watching Don Cherry’s Rock’em Sock’em Hockey videos or have checked out goalie fights on YouTube.
In his younger days, Darcy Kuemper would watch those videos before games to get pumped up. Fellow Capitals goalie Charlie Lindgren can rattle off some of the classics like they are Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier.
“They’re very memorable when you see goalies go at it,” Lindgren said. “Even going back to juniors, my junior partner got into a fight with our rival team. That was a full-out line brawl, and obviously sitting and watching that close was really cool. Certainly something I’ll never forget. When it happens, it’s exciting, and I’m sure all the fans love it, too.”
Parents? Not so much. Biron’s son, Jacob Biron, is a 19-year-old goaltender who has worked on fighting techniques with teammates after practice — just in case — only to be met with a stern rebuke.
“I’m like: ‘Please don’t,’” Martin Biron said. “You’re going to get either hurt by taking a punch or hurt by giving out a punch, and he laughs, but I’m like: ‘Do as I say, not what I did. Don’t even think about it.’”
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