An AHL game on Friday night gave us a glimpse of the glorified and gory days of 1970s hockey.
In a matchup between the Rockford IceHogs and the Milwaukee Admirals, wingers Kurtis Gabriel and Mathieu Olivier got tangled up behind the play. As the two came to blows, delivering full and wide hooks into each other’s faces with no effort to block them, Olivier eventually popped Gabriel hard enough to make him start leaking blood all over the ice.
Even the most anti-fighting hockey fan can come to terms with the fact that the image of Gabriel fighting with a visor covered in blood is extremely cool.