KHL legalizes and regulates fighting (Photo © khl.ru)

The KHL just released the set of rules for the 2010-11 season, and it contains an interesting part, how the KHL will regulate fights. Until the 2009-10 season it just followed the IIHF rules, which had a five minutes major plus game misconduct for any fight. But from the next season it’s going to change.

All that follows is coming from the official KHL rulebook, which can be found here (Russian only).

Firstly the KHL gives a definition of a fight, which says that “it’s a situation in which more than a player or a goalkeeper fight another with or without gloves, or two players start fighting and the refs can’t break the fight.”

So the refs have a wide selection of penalties to punish the players who participated in the fight:

a) the player or goalie who participates in the fight can get a minor, double minor or major penalty according to the player’s activity during the fight itself
b) if the player or the goalie will get a second major penalty, it will automatically be a game misconduct
c) if any player joins a fight as third man, it will automatically be a game misconduct penalty
d) if any staff member fight on or off the ice any other staff member or player, it will automatically be a game misconduct penalty
e) if any player starts a fight or participates in a fight during the intermissions, it will automatically be a game misconduct penalty
f) for any fight in the latest five minutes of a game or during the OT, the refs will give to the players involved a minor penalty, a major penalty and a game misconduct penalty
g) if any player fights another player who isn’t fighting and injures him, it will automatically be a game misconduct penalty
h) if a goalie removes his blocker to hit a player on the head or helmet, it will automatically be a game misconduct penalty

Then the KHL rulesbook goes on with the instigators, who are “any player or goalie who hits first, who drops the glove or behaves threateningly.” And also in this case the refs will have to keep in mind that they can give different penalties:

a) the player or goalie who provokes a fight dropping the gloves will be assessed a 10 minutes, misconduct penalty
b) the refs can raise such penalties to 2+10 or 2+5+10 in serious cases
c) for the second fight the refs will assess a 2+5+game misconduct penalty
d) if a player wears a full mask and doesn’t remove it before a fight, he will be assessed a further 2 minutes penalty

The third role the KHL rulesbook takes into consideration is the aggressor. He’s “a player who keeps on beating another player who can’t defend himself or fight a player who doesn’t want to fight.” In this case the refs will assess to the aggressor a major+game misconduct penalty or a 2+5+10+game misconduct in the more serious cases.

Nikita Filatov knocked down by Darcy Verot (Photo © boeboda.ru)

NHL Blue Jackets forward Nikita Filatov, playing on a loan basis for CSKA of the KHL, was knocked down by Darcy Verot of Vityaz Chekhov in Monday’s game between Vityaz and CSKA.

After the famous bench-clearing fight Vityaz, a team having an enormous for the KHL amount of tough guys, didn’t fight at all. There were rumors that players were told not to fight in order to calm down fans. The KHL even warned Vityaz to exclude the team from the league in case of another cancelled game.

The peace didn’t last long as on Monday Darcy Verot knocked down youngster Nikita Filatov with a cheap shot to the head and got a game misconduct.

Here is the video of Verot’s cheap shot on Filatov:

Ovechkin drops the gloves, Bradley fights instead (Photo © AP Photo)

Russian superstar Alexander Ovechkin was really close to battle in another NHL fight, but Matt Bradley stole him the scene and fought instead of him during the third period of the Tuesday’s match between the Washington Capitals and the Tampa Bay Lightning.

The first brawl was started by Stewe Downie after a clean hit by Ovechkin, but it was quickly stopped by the refs, who gave the two players a minor penalty. When they got out of the penalty box Ovechkin was ready to go as he dropped the gloves and the helmet too, but when he and Downie were approaching each other, Matt Bradley intervened and started fighting Downie himself, not allowing his captain to fight.

“I didn’t see him actually,” said Ovechkin after the match to the Washington Post. “So I dropped my helmet, dropped my gloves, ready to fight, and Brads jumped in the fight for me. He do a great job.”

“We had a guy like that going after our best player, obviously we can’t let that happen,” Bradley stated to the Washington Post. “I’ll bet they would do the exact same thing if someone was squaring off with Stamkos. I mean, you don’t let guys like that go after your best players, and he’s our best player. And no matter who it is, we’re not gonna allow someone like Downie to go after him.”

Below is the video of the fight.

Avangard and Vityaz get 840 PIMs, set new world record (Photo © khl.ru)

The participants of the Saturday’s bench-clearing brawl in the KHL, Jaromir Jagr’s Avangard Omsk and Vityaz Chekhov, set a new world hockey record getting 840 PIMs. The KHL disciplinary committee met on Sunday to spend 7 hours studying the incident.

As a result, the total number of PIMs was increased from 691 to 840 minutes. Six Vityaz and one Avangard player were suspended for one game. Both teams got fined for the total of $133,000. Vityaz was warned that in case of a similar situation happening in future the team will get excluded from the KHL.

According to Russian newspaper Sport-Express the teams were awarded with enormous 840 PIMs. Vityaz got 421 minutes, Avangard — 419. The teams surpassed the record set by NHL‘s Ottawa Senators and Philadelphia Flyers in 2004, when teams together earned 419 PIMs. It should be noticed that Vityaz beat this record just by themselves having 2 more PIMs than Senators and Flyers combined.

See also:
Video: KHL game cancelled after bench-clearing fight, teams get 691 PIM
Jaromir Jagr: “I’ve never seen a fight like this before”

KHL game cancelled after bench-clearing fight, teams get 691 PIM (Photo © khl.ru)

A Saturday game between Vityaz Chekhov and Avangard Omsk in the KHL didn’t last any longer than 3 minutes and 39 seconds. It was postponed after a massive brawl because there was not enough players to continue the game. Teams got 691 PIM (Update: KHL increased it to 840), which look like a record in hockey history.

Just seconds after the game started Brandon Sugden, former AHL tough guy who recently joined Vityaz to replace Chris Simon, jumped on Alexander Svitov. Other players present on the ice started fighting too, among them was a former NHL star Jaromir Jagr who fought Darcy Verot. Here is an interview with Jagr on this fight.

After the first wave of fighting was gone the second wave came bringing a bench- and even a penalty-box-clearing fight. However, goalies didn’t fight, they didn’t even remove their hockey goalie masks during the brawls.

“What a disgrace. I have no other words for it. I can’t say why it happened, probably because Vityaz players wanted to entertain their fans. Alas, there was only a bit of hockey today,” said Alexander Svitov in an interview to Russian site shaybu-shaybu.ru after the game.

“During the warm-up Sugden jumped on our captain, Svitov,” said Anton Kuryanov of Avangard Omsk. “They fought and everything continued later in the game. In the very beginning of the 1st period Darcy Verot attacked Jaromir Jagr, and this is not welcomed in our league. Jagr plays hockey and if Verot wants to fight he should choose another sport.”

On Sunday KHL will held a special meeting to analyze the situation and discipline the players.

Below is the full video of all fights.

Zubov, Esche, Saprykin, Dallman in massive brawl, goalie fights defenceman (Photo © khl.ru)

Former NHL players Sergei Zubov, Robert Esche, Oleg Saprykin and Kevin Dallman took part in a massive brawl in a Sunday game between KHL’s Barys Astana and SKA St. Petersburg.

The game flared up in the end of the 3rd period when SKA scored a powerplay goal to make the score 5-1 to their advantage.

The fans didn’t get a chance to witness a goalie fight but instead they saw a goalie-defenceman fight, as Barys keeper Alexei Kuznetsov faced defenceman Alexei Petrov of SKA.

Update
To watch the famous Avangard-Vityaz 691PIMs fight go here:
KHL game cancelled after bench-clearing fight, teams get 691 PIM

Sergei Fedorov gets into a fight to avenge his brother Fedor (Photo © khl.ru)

Sergei Fedorov, who moved from NHL to KHL past summer, got into a fight with Roman Derlyuk to avenge Derlyuk’s dirty hit on Sergei’s younger brother, Fedor.

After the game 23-year-old Derlyuk couldn’t beleive he fought 40-year-old Sergei Fedorov himself.
“Fedorov is a great player, I remember watching him play when I was a kid. I’d even call myself his fan. And if someone told me that I’d ever fight Fedorov I would… I would… never beleive. It just happened that he went after me, one of his punches reached my head and I… Of course I’d never start a fight against such player as Sergei Fedorov… never,” said Derlyuk to Alyona Shilova of vhockey.ru after the game.

Sergei Fedorov is playing for Metallurg Magnitogorsk on a line with his younger brother Fedor. In 36 games Sergei scored 8 goals and recorded 16 assists. His plus/minus rating is +23. It’s Metallurg’s best and KHL’s 3rd best result.