Romanian And Bulgarian Women's Hockey Teams Rack Up 554 PIMs

Just in case you weren't keeping tabs on IIHF Division III Women's hockey. why not? Because those ladies put on a show with enough penalty minutes to make Dave "The Hammer" Schultz blush.

The IIHF Women's Division III Group World Championships took place last week. From the looks of the IIHF website, the tournament used a round-robin format, with Hong Kong taking the title.

However, the game that got everyone talking was the final one on the schedule. It worked out that this game was for 4th place in the tournament and pitted now-heated rivals Romania and Bulgaria against each other.

Romania had an offensive explosion in the third period with seven goals en route to a comfortable 10-2 win. But right at the final buzzer, a puck battle in the corner spawned a legitimate bench-clearing brawl that likely left the official scorer with a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

You can see a few Bulgarian players jump one of the Romanians and then the game unraveled into chaos.

Romania And Bulgaria Combined For Over 550 PIMs

That's right, kids: 554 penalty minutes.

The NHL record for most combined penalty minutes belongs to the Philadelphia Flyers and Ottawa Senators who put up "just" 419 on March 5, 2004.

Now, it is worth noting that the penalty for fighting is more severe when playing by IIHF rules. In the NHL it's a 5-minute major and that's usually it barring misconduct or additional minor for instigating.

Looking at the scoresheet, 18 players were given 25 minutes a piece for fighting (another got 25 minutes for an illegal hit/roughing), while Romania was also dealt a 20-minute team penalty for abuse of an official.

It looks as though it was a chippy game. There are a ton of penalties the entire way through the game but mostly just minors.

Now that the tournament is over, none of those penalties have been served, You've got to think that there could be some suspensions coming or maybe even some fines.

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