Bench clearing brawl in Wild Wild East

January 08, 2008. Russian Superleague, Kazan Ak Bars vs. Chelyabinsk Traktor. The bench clearing brawl...

No instigator rules, in fact, no rules... Wait couple more years, they are coming to NHL. :-)

Traktor's Head Coach is Andrei Nazarov, a former NHL tough guy. Both teams received 378 penalty minutes, a new record for Russian Hockey Superleague.

Here is an article about the brawl from SovSport.ru http://www.sovsport.ru/gazeta/default.asp?id=278876 in case someone wants to translate.

"I loved it," Clarke told TSN :-)

Update: NY Times guys from slapshot translated it a bit, here are more details:

In the end, the teams totaled a Russian record 378 penalty minutes — Shafigulin getting 49 of them, Stepanov 47, and Andrei Zubarev 35, all Ak Bars players. Baev of Traktor got 37.

The next day back in Chelyabinsk, Traktor coach Andrei Nazarov told the Russian daily Sport Express that his players poured off the bench to the aid of their teammates because “Ural nature does not suffer injustice.” But he also said something that made sense: the NHL rule imposing automatic longterm suspensions for clearing the benches, and even longer suspensions for doing so in the last minute of play, would have prevented the absurdities in Kazan.

Stay tuned to see if the Superliga imposes such a rule in the aftermath of Tuesday’s brawl. In the meantime, though, nine players have been suspended for a single game, and Stepanov and Shafigulin were each suspended two games, plus 30,000 rubles or an additional six matches.