A small line brawl broke out in a Russian amateur league following a questionable hit and turned incredibly violent when the two teams returned to their benches. Fighting turned to stick swinging which turned to spearing as the two teams combined for 790 penalty minutes in the third period alone.

The Hockey News

The post-game scrum between the Florida Panthers and Vancouver Canucks this past Monday was a rarity in today’s NHL. And while fans may have eaten it up, there were almost certainly a few at the league office who were none too pleased with the dustup. If the league was upset at all, though, maybe they can take solace in the fact the brawl didn’t get as out of hand as one between two Russian amateur league clubs.

This insane battle between two teams — a rough translation has the team in black called Hammer and team in white called Yugan — comes from Moscow’s Night Hockey League this past Friday. It all started thanks to a hit by Hammer’s Andrew Revkov on Yugan’s Vladimir Chernyshev that caused a line “brawl” consisting of gloved punches. Standard stuff, really, and nothing out of the ordinary. We see scrums like this at least once a week.

The two teams eventually relent and head to their benches. Brawl over, right? Not even close. Watch and wait for things to get out of control in a hurry around the 1:45 mark:

The brawl picks back up after a Yugan coach begins to wave Hammer’s Sergei Druzhinin away from the bench. After the two exchange words, Yugan’s Dmitry Vasiliev skates towards the Hammer bench and throws what appears to be stick tape at Revkov, who, you may recall, threw the hit that started this all. Vasiliev’s throwing of tape at Revkov was gasoline on the fire and turned the brawl from tame to violent.

Vasiliev gets tackled, players start leaving the benches and two players on the Hammer bench — No. 85, Sergei Salomatin, and No. 19, Alexander Egorov — start to swing their sticks wildly at Yugan’s bench. Salomatin goes even further as he begins to spear Vasiliev while he’s down on the ice. Amidst all the chaos, there is a somewhat funny moment when Salomatin goes to leave the bench and falls backwards into teammates, but the levity ends as soon as it started as Salomatin is helped up only to get back into the fray.

The brawl broke out 30 seconds into the third period and over the course of the frame the two teams amassed 790 penalty minutes, most of which came during the brawl. In total, the game had 802 penalty minutes.

Remember our friend Sergei Salomatin? He was slapped with an incredible 135 penalty minutes. That’s not a typo. Salomatin was given a 10-minute misconduct for unsportsmanlike conduct, four (!) major penalties for spearing that were paired with 20-minute match penalties, a major for fighting and one last match penalty for good measure. Suffice to say he probably won’t be suiting up in the Night Hockey League anytime soon.

(Video via Reddit/Aziznomarsa)