On an afternoon game in late November, a hockey game broke out at a fight night.
The Calgary Flames visited the Columbus Blue Jackets on Nov. 29, 2024. If that game on that date sounds familiar, we’ve already covered one of the fights from that day. In fact, there were three of them.
A quick recap for those who didn’t read it: Martin Pospíšil dropped the gloves with Jake Christiansen after he laid out Andrei Kuzmenko with a clean, open ice hit. That fight wasn’t a top-five ranked fight according to Hockeyfights, but Pospíšil’s second fight against Mathieu Olivier was. In the end, the Blue Jacket got the better of Pospíšil, as he stepped in for Joel Hanley this time.
Would you believe it if I told you that one of the toughest guys in the league got into his second fight of the period? Well, at the end of the fight-filled second, Olivier dropped the mitts with Ryan Lomberg, the Flame with the most fights in 2024-25.
Off the offensive zone face-off, the two were jawing at one another, and they dropped the gloves as the puck dropped. Olivier has a clear size advantage, and he used it in this fight, as Lomberg got maybe three punches in, while Olivier got about 20 punches in (it was 22, I counted). Lomberg’s biggest punch was his first one, getting it in after about five seconds.
Of the 87 voters on Hockeyfights, only one voted for Lomberg, as 99% of voters picked Olivier as the fight winner. Honestly, it’s hard to argue against that. This fight had a rating of 7.79, the highest-voted Flames’ fight in 2024-25.
It’s not Lomberg’s size that makes him valuable. Standing at 5’9”, 184 pounds, the left winger plays like he’s 6’3”, fighting any challenger and sticking up for teammates. While he may not have won this fight, nor did the Flames win this game, Lomberg was easily the best teammate on the Flames in 2024-25.
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