Law and Boarder: Breaking down a legendary USA, Canada brawl

On Dec. 20, 2013, Team USA and Team Canada were playing an exhibition game to prepare for the 2014 Olympics. In the dying seconds of the game, the two teams engaged in a line brawl the likes of which we pretty much haven’t seen since then.

Since yesterday was the Airing of Grievances, I thought I’d break the brawl down for us all. Happy Holidays!

It begins with a hit.

In the third period, Brianne Jenner took Josephine Pucci out with a late, high hit that might have been called even in a men’s game (or maybe not). Her linemates, the Lamoureux twins, were not particularly pleased with the hit, but didn’t retaliate in the moment.

Nearer to the end of the game, Team USA goalie Molly Schaus makes a save. After the save, Mélodie Daoust pokes at the puck from behind Schaus’ pads. Hilary Knight did not like that, so she launched herself at Daoust like a sock monkey out of a circus cannon.

Jocelyne Lamoureux looks up from that mess and who does she see charging across the crease but Vicki Bendus.

Gigi Marvin skates over to try to physically remove a twin (Jocelyne? I think?) from the pile. Monique jumps into the pile to defend her twin and Hilary and Molly Schaus, who is extremely over it. The refs mostly watch this happen, I think because they’re trying to decide whether they want to keep their jobs or all their extremities, which is a fair decision to put consideration into in my opinion.

While this is happening, Kacey Bellamy has taken Brianne Jenner into her own hands. Er, fists.

Daoust and Monique Lamoureux got a couple solid punches in before they hit the ice. Don’t forget, while this is happening, all 3 refs are focused on the mess in the crease, so whatever’s going on with Bellamy and Jenner is unsupervised.

Shoutout to Gigi Marvin looking disgruntled and disappointed in the background.

Finally the refs get the crease situation broken up. That’s mostly because the crease situation has moved to the boards, where Kacey Bellamy is being sandwiched and Jocelyne Lamoureux has taken offense. I will not judge you if you print off this next screengrab and frame it. I may already have done it myself, but you can’t prove anything.

Have you ever wondered how powerful the rage of a Lamoureux is? Let me give you some metrics:

It takes 2 refs to separate Monique Lamoureux from Mélodie Daoust.

It only takes 1 Jocelyne Lamoureux to take out both Meaghan Mikkelson and Vicki Bendus.

Finally the refs basically get everyone separated. Hilary Knight is still alive despite the fact that Jocelyne Larocque basically sat on her and pummeled her for thirty seconds. The Lamoureux twins have been neutralized. You’d think that would be the end of things, right?

Wrong.

The fight’s not over ‘til Kacey Bellamy says it’s over.

Right before this Gigi Marvin tried to stop her D partner from making this choice and got, um, gently socked in the mouth for her efforts.

The best part of this last interaction, which does not devolve into fisticuffs again but definitely involved a lot of chirping:

The chaos of this fight can be witnessed in full here. All 10 skaters got fighting majors for this mess. I do not know what the Team Canada goalie was doing while this went down. Hopefully stretching and hydrating.

I leave you with this: