TROIS-RIVIÈRES, Quebec  In a dimly lighted corridor of the dingy, old arena, Donald Brashear, an N.H.L. enforcer for 16 years, said he was playing in the rough-and-tumble Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey because he still loved the game. And though this Quebec league is widely regarded as the world’s toughest, Brashear said he was not in it to fight, but “to play hockey the way I did when I started  making passes, scoring goals.”

Brashear, 39, the captain of 3L de Rivière-du-Loup, had indeed been playing it straight: he had 31 points in 27 games and a fairly reasonable 56 penalty minutes going into last Friday’s game here against Caron & Guay de Trois-Rivières. Sometimes, he said, things “get out of hand,” but that he had been in only one fight the entire season. “The guy just hung on to me for his life,” he said.

Three hours later, Brashear was not playing it straight at all. He was on the ice, slugging away, much as he did as one of the more feared players in the game for five N.H.L. teams, including the Rangers last season.

It started late in what turned into a 7-2 loss. The Trois-Rivières goalie slashed one of Brashear’s teammates, who was fighting someone else, in the back of the leg. Enter Brashear, who began pounding on the goalie with his gloved hands. Another Trois-Rivières player tried to restrain Brashear, but Brashear went after him as well, continuing to hit him after the player fell to the ice. Somewhere in there, he threw a gloved punch at a third player.