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Top 10 Canucks fights of all time: #9 – Rick Rypien vs. Brandon Prust

Originally posted on Canucksarmy | By Tyson Cole | Last updated Aug 12, 2025 12:12 PM ET

Welcome to our top 10 Vancouver Canucks fights of all time. With our friends from HockeyFights.com, our 9th Canucks fight of all time is the fight between Rick Rypien and Brandon Prust.

Earlier in the summer, we covered our top 5 Vancouver Canucks fights of the 2024-2025 season. You can rewatch all of these fights here:

#5 – Dakota Joshua vs. Brady Tkachuk
#4 – JT Miller vs. Anthony Mantha
#3 – Dakota Joshua vs. Michael McCarron
#2 – Elias Pettersson vs. Logan O’Connor
#1 – Conor Garland vs. Erik Haula

On January 9, 2010, the Canucks welcomed one of their biggest division rivals, the Calgary Flames, to General Motors Place. The Flames were in control for most of the first period and were rewarded with the first goal of the game, off the stick of Rene Bourque, halfway through the opening frame.

Mikael Samuelsson evened up the game less than five minutes later. Shortly after that, Rick Rypien and Brandon Prust lined up against each other off the faceoff, and the two got after it.

The two started chatting before the puck dropped, and Rypien skated right into Prust, and once the defenceman shot the puck and the puck went into the corner, they dropped the gloves.

Prust wasted no time, immediately throwing punches at Rypien. It took Rypien a while to change his stance from defence to offence, but once he did, he connected his punches. Rypien caught Prust in a vulnerable position with Prust’s arm behind Rypien’s back and landed a trio of haymakers to the face.

Rypien continued to feed shots to the head and the body, with Prust finally being able to lean away from the attacks and throws Rypien to the ice. As Rypien regained his footing, Prust took that as his opportunity to attack, where he connected on a few upper-cuts and rights, before attempting to rip Rypien’s helmet off.

The Canucks enforcer was able to keep the helmet on his head, but it cost him a few extra punches, which caused enough damage that he began to bleed.

They would exchange a few more blows as they danced around the ice, trying to get loose a hand to start throwing punches again. Prust was finally successful in taking Rypien’s helmet off, but would only land one more punch before the referees stepped in and stopped the fight.

But wait, there’s more.

The two didn’t get enough of each other, as halfway through the second period, they fought again.

While this fight was still entertaining, the HockeyFights voters only scored this contest a 7.7/10, but gave the win to Rypien, who received 49% of the votes. The level of hatred toward one another to drop the gloves twice only halfway through the hockey game certainly earns them a spot on the list of best Canucks fights of all time.

HockeyFights voters gave the first fight an 8.4/10 and slightly favoured Prust, who earned 42% of the 473 votes. Rypien still received a respectable 40% of the votes, with 18% calling it a draw.

Our previously ranked top 10 Canucks fights of all time:

HM – Rick Rypien vs. Hal Gill
#10 – Scott Walker vs. Dody Wood

What would you rank this fight out of 10, Canucks fans?

This article first appeared on Canucksarmy and was syndicated with permission.

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