When a goalie fight broke out with 14 minutes left in a game Monday night between the Florida Panthers and San Jose Sharks, it was hard for Patrick Roy not to reminisce.
Now the head coach of the New York Islanders, the former goaltender was no stranger to dropping the mitts during his Hall of Fame career.
Over 19 seasons, Roy was credited with three fights. His two most famous scraps came as a member of the Colorado Avalanche, when he fought two Detroit Red Wings goalies in consecutive seasons.
Roy squared off with Mike Vernon on March 3, 1997, then Chris Osgood a year later on April 1, 1998.
So how did he feel watching Florida’s Sergei Bobrovsky and San Jose’s Alex Nedeljkovic fight on Monday? His answer might not be quite what you expect.
“It brought some memories back," Roy said to the New York Post's Ethan Sears on Wednesday. "Things that, I guess, I wish I would not have done, to be honest with you. Maybe I’m older now, I don’t know what it is. But I understand what he tried to do."
For his part, Bobrovsky explained that he skated the length of the ice because he felt Nedeljkovic's response to a scrum in the Sharks' end "was a little much."
"It's exciting, but obviously it's not a thing I'm doing for a living. It is what it is, but we had a good fight," Bobrovsky said on Monday.
Though it's never been a common occurrence, goalie fights are even more rare these days than during Roy's career.
Monday's fight was the first between goalies in the NHL since Mike Smith fought Cam Talbot in the Battle of Alberta on Feb. 1, 2020.
And as expected, it was still a spectacle that captured the attention of the sports world.
