Fighting in the First Season

I know what you’re thinking… not another one of the articles that talks about fighting and its place in hockey.

Well second sentence in and let me tell you that this will NOT be that.  I’m not trying to get into whether fighting has a place in the sport and what it’s place is.  I merely want to put out some rather interesting findings when it comes to fights that occurred during our first year in the AHL.

Anyway here are some interesting findings:

• The Heat fought 58 times this season, 27 times at home and 31 times on the road
  • Those numbers include the times that multiple fights broke out in a single game.
• Those 58 fighting majors came in just 34 games and in those 34 games the Heat had a record of 15-18-1
  • What that tells me is that while fights can help create momentum and turn games, we, for whatever reason, weren’t able to accomplish that with a below .500 record in games we fought.
• Sticking with that above trend, we fought multiple times in a single game 16 times and had a record of 7-8-1
  • Again, going along with the above point.  In games where a couple fights broke out we still weren’t able to muster comebacks.
    • By the way an addendum to the above points, on occasion those fights came near the end of a game or when the game was well in hand for the opposition so perhaps it does go to show when guys get frustrated and they can’t fight back on the scoreboard, they do so to send a message to their teammates and to the opposition
• By the way, the Heat were a pretty clean team.  Of the 59 major penalties assessed to a Heat player, 58 of those were for fights.  Only Dustin Stevenson was tagged for a five-minute boarding call and it took all the way to April 12 for a non-fighting major to be called.
  • For the record, Stevenson did not get tossed from the game due to that boarding call.

Now for the fun part…who did those 58 fights come against?

TEAM	OVERALL	HOME	AWAY
Bakersfield	7	3	4
Iowa	4	3	1
Manitoba	3	1	2
Ontario	17	10	7
Rockford	2	0	2
San Antonio	5	2	3
San Diego	8	5	3
San Jose	9	3	6
Texas	3	0	3

As you can see, 29% of the fights the Heat got into were against the Ontario Reign, a little over 13% higher then the San Jose club that saw 9 fights in the rivalry.

In one of those two road wins against the Reign though, the Heat fought five times on the New Year’s Eve game in SoCal, which ended in a 4-1 win for the visitors, however they only fought in one other road game in Ontario, a 1-6 loss in January.

At home against the Reign, the Heat went 2-3-0-0 in games they fought against the Reign.

As I mentioned above, that December 31 game in Ontario saw the most fights in a single game (Hunter Smith, Emile Poirier, Ryan Lomberg, Mitchell Heard & Bryce Van Brabant), the next most they had were three fights in a single game and that actually occurred on four occasions, most recently a 6-5 Overtime Win against the Bakersfield Condors on the road on March 19.  There were 11 times the Heat had two fights in a game.

Finally we look at the players involved in the majority of those.  For the Heat, Austin Carroll led the way with 10 fighting majors followed by Hunter Smith with eight and a two-way tie for third with team penalty minute leader Dustin Stevenson and Mitchell Heard with 7 each.

Take a look at the chart below for the full breakdown:

RANK	PLAYER	# OF FIGHTS
1	Austin Carroll	10
2	Hunter Smith	8
3	Dustin Stevenson	7
	Mitchell Heard	7
5	Blair Riley	6
6	Ryan Lomberg	4
7	Turner Elson	3
	Bryce Van Brabant	3
	Garnet Hathaway	3
10	Pat Sieloff	2
	Derek Grant	2
12	Emile Poirier	1
	Colton Orr	1
	Gabriel Verpaelst	1

By the way, the rule of “third major or second fight” which is a game misconduct was violated twice this season, once by Ryan Lomberg and once by Hunter Smith.  Both were ejected from losing efforts on the road with Lomberg’s coming in San Jose and Smith’s coming in Rockford.

Also first fight in team history?  Do you know who it was?

Four games in.

On the road.

Against San Antonio…and really against Borna Rendulic.

Guesses?

…

…

Pat Sieloff!

I don’t think I’d have guessed that…

Last fight belonged to Dustin Stevenson on April 12 in Bakersfield against Philip McRae.

Finally, we look at who we fought the most.  I had my guess before I did all this and while I wasn’t far off (my guess was Kurtis MacDermid of Ontario who ended up being tied for the second most with 3 times), I was wrong.

Instead it was San Diego’s Stu Bickel who fought a Heat player on four occasions this season.

Full breakdown of guys we fought on more than one occasion:

RANK	PLAYER	TEAM	# OF FIGHTS
1	Stu Bickel	San Diego Gulls	4
2	Paul Bissonnette	Ontario Reign	3
	Kurtis MacDermid	Ontario Reign	3
	Ryan Horvat	Ontario Reign	3
5	Curt Gogol	Ontario Reign	2
	Michael Haley	San Jose Barracuda	2
	Ryan Hamilton	Bakersfield Condors	2
	Joel Lowry	Ontario Reign	2
	Scott Sabourin	Ontario Reign/Iowa Wild	2

No surprise that a lot of Ontario Reign players on this list as with 17 fights and a highly skilled team that’s heading to the Western Conference Finals that some of the same names would show up but I guess I didn’t remember Paul Bissonnette go with Dustin Stevenson twice (however I do remember the Hunter Smith one as many, including the man himself, won’t let me forget it!)

Curt Gogol is a Colorado Eagle I remember from last season and played just 7 games in the AHL this year but fought in back to back games on December 29 (fought Mitchell Heard) and December 31 (fought Hunter Smith).

My favorite on this list is Scott Sabourin.  Fought him as a member of the Reign on November 7 (fought Dustin Stevenson), then he was traded on February 29th’s NHL Trade Deadline to the Minnesota Wild and assigned to Iowa.

We then fought him on March 18 as a member of a different team.

I was surprised to see Ryan Hamilton, the captain of the Condors fight a Heat player twice and only see Kale Kessy fought once.  Hamilton is a skilled captain, but apparently one who’s not afraid to stand up for his team.  Gotta respect that (he’s also going to be back in Bako next year).

So what does all this tell you?

I don’t really know…not too terribly much.  I couldn’t really decipher any real trend about fighting because so many factors come into play that the numbers don’t 100% show. However to me, it’s kind of interesting to see how fighting came into play this year, who were the combatants, and how many times they tussled.

I think the slightly more interesting thing is that their really does seem to be a rivalry building between the Heat and Reign on the ice that I didn’t know to really expect.  Fighting 17 of 58 times against one team to me tells me that next year’s games against the Reign could get really, really heated…no pun intended.

One other interesting note and I’ll leave it at that.

Former Adirondack Flame Brian McGrattan did not fight once against the Heat.  Maybe nobody upset the big fella when they were teammates or maybe nobody wanted to go with him, but not a single fight between a NHL fighting great and a member of the Heat.

Thankfully, our resident Fighting legend, the now retired Colton Orr, gave us one last round and didn’t disappoint.

However this fight still might be my favorite of this year.  I think Hunter, and I, are still looking for the reason that started…

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I’m closing out all of my blog posts with a jersey or logo in the sports world. I love sports jerseys (I collect them) and I love logos and what goes into making a brand.

Sometimes I like to feature logos I love.  Sometimes I like to feature logos I don’t like.  And sometimes, I just like to look at random stuff and find the cheesiest logo I can find.

This is the latter.

The Vancouver Ravens played in the National Lacrosse League (same league that the Calgary Roughnecks play in) from 2000 to 2004.

First off, I cannot believe that this was designed in the new millennium cause this doesn’t look like it has.

Secondly…this is just awesome.

This is the type of logo you like even though it’s awful.  What bird have you ever seen that has pecs and abs like that?!?!

The overall cartoonyness (yes that’s a word) is magnificent and that awful word mark just adds to it.

What truly is a travesty is not that someone said, “You know what, I love this logo and this is what we’re going with” back in 2000, but is the fact that when the Washington Stealth moved to Vancouver, that they didn’t bring this logo back, but instead continued with the Stealth name, which is cool, but not when your logo looks like this…but it is when it looks like this!

Also…what is that V on his chest?  Is it a tattoo?  Is there a reason he has no eyeball?

Just fantastic.  If there was an art museum for funny logos, I’d go…

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Brandon Kisker is the Heat’s Director of Broadcast & Media Relations and will be entering his fourth season as a broadcaster in Stockton and second for the Heat.  He yells a lot when excited, but that yelling is genuine, and typically fist pumps when goals are scored or big saves are made. He thinks Rick Jenerette is really top shelf…..and that is where mama hides the cookies.  He’s getting married in less than 60 days.  Follow him on Twitter @kiskerbc or email him at bkisker@stocktonheat.com with comments or questions.