- The NHL posted the full Feb. 1, 2020 Oilers-Flames game to YouTube on Aug. 10
- Mike Smith and Cam Talbot traded punches at center ice in an 8-3 Edmonton win
- Read below for the full replay, the fight video and how the Battle of Alberta boiled over
The wildest night of the modern Battle of Alberta is now free to watch from puck drop to final horn.
A full replay of the Feb. 1, 2020 game between the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames went up on the NHL’s YouTube channel on Aug. 10. It runs an hour and 22 minutes, and it includes every second of the night Mike Smith and Cam Talbot dropped their gloves at center ice. Zach Laing of Oilersnation spotted the upload.
Here’s the whole game:
Edmonton won 8-3 at the Saddledome. Connor McDavid scored twice, and Zack Kassian, Kailer Yamamoto, Sam Gagner, Gaetan Haas, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Caleb Jones got the rest.
Both goalies did most of the damage to the penalty sheet. Smith finished with 17 penalty minutes and Talbot with 21.
Getting to that point took a month. Kassian and Matthew Tkachuk had been going at each other since Jan. 11, when Tkachuk ran Kassian twice and Kassian ragdolled him for it. Kassian drew a two-game suspension out of the second one.
They squared off again on Jan. 29, in a game that a rare Ryan Nugent-Hopkins fight with Sean Monahan actually kicked off.
Things went sideways at the end of the second period on Feb. 1 with Edmonton up 6-3. Gagner dove at a loose puck and kept jamming away in the Calgary crease, Talbot answered with blocker punches, and both benches emptied.
Ethan Bear and Tkachuk paired off along the glass. Away from the cameras, Darnell Nurse pointed Talbot toward center ice, where Smith had already skated out and was leaning on his stick, waiting.
Take a look at what happened next:
Smith landed almost all of it and put Talbot on the ice. It was the first goalie fight in the NHL since Ray Emery and Braden Holtby squared off in 2013, ending a seven-year gap that had plenty of people convinced the goalie fight was extinct.
It joins a run of old games the league has been posting all offseason, including Evgeni Malkin’s playoff hat trick against Carolina in 2009 and last season’s Stadium Series comeback by the Bruins. Neither of those ends with two goalies swinging at center ice.
