It’s The 20th Anniversary Of The Flyers And Senators Breaking The NHL’s Single-Game Penalty Minute Record

If you woke up on March 5 feeling like it was a holiday, that's because it is. I'm not talking about National Absinthe Day (I do enjoy a nice Sazerac though), Multiple Personality Day, or even the fact that it marks the fifth day of National Brain Injury Awareness Month. 

However, that last one does tie in a little bit… 

I'm talking about the 20th anniversary of the legendary brawl between the Philadelphia Flyers and Ottawa Senators that set the NHL record for most penalty minutes in a single game with 419.

Let me reiterate: 419 PIMs.

I was just 8 years old at the time and still remember my jaw dropping to the floor seeing one of the wildest games in hockey history unfold. 

To this day, I re-watch the late-3rd-period brawl in its entirety around this time every year. It's an annual tradition at this point. It's like Year Without A Santa Claus, but instead of Rankin/Bass claymation puppets, you get one of the greatest slugfest since the Hanson Brothers' pregame donnybrook with the Peterboro Patriots… and that was of course fictional… sort of.

The game is affectionately remembered as "The Brawl" and you can watch it right here before we dive into a talk about some of the highlights.

There was some testiness for a while, but the powder keg was ignited by two players, and what's funny is that if you looked through the rosters from that game, I bet you could pick out who they were. 

That would be two of the era's best fighters: Ottawa's Rob Ray and Philadelphia's Donald Brashear.

This was with just a couple of minutes to play and the Flyers up by three.

Others joined in like Philly's Branko Radivojevič and Danny Markov as well as Ottawa's Todd Simpson and Shaun van Allen.

Two Words: Goalie Fight

Then, this puppy really got cooking when the goalies got involved. Flyers netminder Robert Esche jumped in to help his boys, but because that left the Senators outnumbered, Ottawa's Patrick Lalime — who smartly left his glorious Marvin the Martian mask behind — made the 180-foot-or-so trip to throw hands with Esche, and they did not disappoint.

Once that was all settled, it was pretty obvious that there would be some more rough stuff. As I mentioned, the rosters are fun to look through because they include some big names. One of those big names — in every sense of the word big — was then-Senators D-man Zdeno Chara who got in on the second just three seconds after the next faceoff.

He and fellow Ottawa tough guy Chris Neil dropped the mitts next. Neil dropped and then attempted to bury Radovan Somik through the Wachovia Center (now Wells Fargo Center) ice, while Chara rag-dolled Matias Timander.

Once that was cleaned up, the puck was dropped and another three seconds later, Mike Fisher — he of being married to Carrie Underwood fame — traded some punches with Flyer Michael Handzus (say it with me Flyers fans, "Zuuuuuuuuuuuus!).

Both of those fellas earned themselves an early shower after a spirited bout.

You Get A Fight, And You Get A Fight, And You Get A…

So, it was already a gong show, with guys hitting the showers early left and right. The Flyers were without one of their biggest enforcers that night —Todd Fedoruk — as well as Keith Primeau and Jeremy Roenick, the latter of whom was out with a broken jaw (I know this because a couple of weeks earlier I was supposed to get a photo with him at the Flyers Wives Fight For Lives Carnival, but he was understandably not in picture-taking shape. Ended up getting a photo with Alexei Zhamnov. Yes, he was briefly a Flyer, more on that in a bit).

So, with some Flyers more inclined to throw hands out of the lineup, the next batch of fighters for Philadelphia consisted of  John LeClair, Mark Recchi (who had taken a nasty slash from Senators forward Martin Havalt when the two teams played just 8 days earlier) and Patrick Sharp. They took on Bryan Smolinski, Wade Redden, and Jason Spezza.

That was the end of the fighting and it left the benches completely depleted. In fact, it left one of my favorite "Oh yeah, they were Flyers images" where Tony Amonte and Alexei Zhamnov were the only two dudes left on the bench.

Ottawa managed to score a late goal without any extracurriculars to make the score 5-3, and that was the end of it. 419 PIMs, the overwhelming majority of which occurred in the final minute and 45 seconds.

Both teams made the Stanley Cup Playoffs with the Senators getting eliminated in the first round by the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Flyers would eventually eliminate the Leafs in 6 games the following round, which kicked off Toronto's nearly two-decade dry spell of not winning a playoff series.

In the Eastern Conference Final, the Flyers fell to the eventual Cup-winners, the Tampa Bay Lightning, led by current Flyers coach John Tortorella.

Of course, the next season was lost due to lockout, but when the league returned for the 2005-06 season, some new rules in place dealt more severe punishments for players who instigated fights in the final five minutes of games. 

That was a direct result of this game. 

No one thinks of there being much of a Flyers-Senators rivalry, but to this day, you still feel a little bit of fire when those two teams play.