A Look Back in Flyer's History: Ball with the Brawl

The date was March 5, 2004. The Philadelphia Flyers were taking on the Ottawa Senators in what looks like will be an easy win for the Orange and Black and then with just under 2:00 minutes to play, it starts. Enjoy the Tweet below for a refresher.

Rob Ray and Donald Brashear start to go at it in front of Flyers goalie Robert Eshe. In total we saw, 419 minutes were assessed, passing the previous NHL record of 406. The 213 minutes assessed against Philadelphia was also a record, as was the number of penalty minutes in the third period. WOW.

Philadelphia's Patrick Sharp attempted to restrain Simpson who was going after Brashear, Simpson then pushed Sharp to the ice and started throwing punches at him. Markov intervened, and he fought Simpson. At the same time, Branko Radivojevic and Shaun Van Allen had paired off for a fight, and Ottawa's goaltender, Patrick Lalime, skated the length of the ice to fight fellow goaltender Robert Esche; both received penalties for leaving their crease as well as fighting majors.

The game restarted with two new goaltenders, and the Senators on the power play, but within three seconds, the fighting started again � Ottawa's Chris Neil poked Radovan Somik with his stick, and the pair started scrapping. At the same time, Zdeno Chara started a fight with the Flyers' Mattias Timander, for which the former received an instigator penalty.

Both fights angered Philadelphia Head Coach Ken Hitchcock, who claimed that "Their tough guy Rob Ray got beat up and then their next two lines fought guys who don't fight."

Within 24 seconds of the restart, the crowd had their way; Mark Recchi hit Wade Redden, who immediately launched himself into a fight with John LeClair. While those two fought, Recchi and Bryan Smolinski engaged in a second fight in the middle of the rink.

LeClair received an additional penalty for holding, placing the Senators on the power play. At the next face-off, a fight once again broke out straight away, between Jason Spezza and Patrick Sharp. Spezza received a fighting major, a misconduct and double game misconduct, totaling 35 penalty minutes, the most of any player in the game.

Boy do we ALL mis old time Hockey!