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The Flyers–Senators brawl was a National Hockey League (NHL) regular season game between the Philadelphia Flyers and the Ottawa Senators that resulted in a league record for penalty minutes. The game was played on March 5, 2004, at the Wachovia Center, the home arena of the Flyers. Philadelphia won the game by the score 5–3. In all, 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. The events were precipitated by an incident in the previous meeting between the two teams, when Ottawa's Martin Havlat had swung his stick at Mark Recchi's head. Just under two minutes before the end of the game, enforcers Donald Brashear of the Flyers and Rob Ray of the Senators engaged in a fight. As they skated off to the penalty box, Brashear became involved in another scrap, and the rest of the players on the ice for each team, including goaltenders Robert Esche and Patrick Lalime began to fight. On both of the next two face-offs to restart the game, further fights occurred. The first of these angered the Flyers management, who believed that the fights were deliberately unbalanced against their players. On the third restart after the initial fight, the crowd booed when a fight did not immediately ensue, but in less than 30 seconds, two more fights had broken out. The final fight occurred directly after the fourth face-off, involving Jason Spezza and Patrick Sharp. Spezza and Brashear were assessed for the most penalty minutes in the game, receiving 35 and 34, respectively. At the start of the 2005–06 season, the NHL introduced a rule that punished anyone instigating a fight in the final five minutes of a game with a one-game suspension, in order to prevent similar incidents occurring in the future. == Background == In each of the previous two seasons, the Philadelphia Flyers and the Ottawa Senators had met in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and on each occasion the Senators had eliminated the Flyers. The Flyers had not beaten the Senators in their previous five contests, going . When the two sides met in late-February, a week before the brawl game, during the third period, Flyers winger Mark Recchi was following Martin Havlat of the Senators when he crossed into the Philadelphia defensive zone. As this happened, Recchi hooked Havlat, causing both of the players to collide and fall into the boards. When Havlat got up from the ice, angered by Recchi's hook, he took his stick above him and slashed Recchi, hitting him in the face. Havlat was given a five-minute major penalty for attempting to injure Recchi, along with a game misconduct penalty. He was later given a two-game suspension by the NHL due to the incident. He was forced to give up US$36,585.36 of his salary as he had already been suspended for kicking Eric Cairns of the New York Islanders earlier in the season.〔 Revenge was mentioned after the game by Flyers Head Coach Ken Hitchcock. During a post-game interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), he commented that "someday, someone's going to make him eat his lunch. This is something, in my opinion, that the players should take care of."〔 Recchi also mentioned revenge, not specifically from the Flyers, during an interview with the CBC. "It doesn't surprise me coming from this guy. He's that type of player. He's done it before. It might not come from our team. But he better protect himself," said Recchi.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Philadelphia Flyers–Ottawa Senators brawl」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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