Thunderbirds’ Wardley gets suckered from behind, starts brawl with goalies going at it, linesman becomes punching bag (VIDEO)

Ryan Gibbons. Ex-WHL player, current WHL linesman, and now punching bag.

Or, just an ordinary "Saturday night in Seattle", as he quiped on his twitter feed (@ryangibbons16) Sunday.

The incident in question happened at 18:22 in the third period of Saturday night's tilt between WHL rivals Everett Silvertips and Seattle Thunderbirds. Everett had just gone up 4-3 less than two minutes before, and the T-Birds were pressing to tie it up, and then this happened:

The fun begins at :12, where Silvertips defenceman Mirco Mueller nails Seattle forward Alex Delnov into the linesman from behind, and then as the clans begin to gather, Thunderbirds defenceman Evan Wardley sends Mueller to the ice. Wardley gets suckerpunched from behind by an unknown Silvertip, and the boys gather 'round for some punchin' and wrastlin'.

Goalie-fight lovers can start at :58, where T-Birds netminder Brandon Glover starts skating the length of the ice and enters the shot against 'Tips goalie Austin Lotz. Linesman Ryan Gibbons tries to restore order by jumping in between the two goalies, but soon realizes that he's become a punching bag for both sides. At 1:17, Gibbons comes to his senses and lets the goalies go at it for some glorified wrestling, with Glover achieving the takedown. Gibbons looked to take more shots than both goalies combined during the fight. Glover sticks the exclamation point at 1:46, pointing at his fallen combatant.

For his part, Glover was assessed 19 minutes in penalties. He got two minutes for leaving his crease, two minutes for instigating, five for fighting and a game misconduct. Lotz was given five minutes for fighting.

And Gibbons was given some chirps by the twitter faithful:

Wardley was given fifteen minutes in penalties for his role in the fracas, with a major for charging and a game misconduct penalty. Seattle was assessed a total of 34 minutes in penalties on the play, Everett just nine. The T-Birds had 66 PIMs on the evening.

The Silvertips hung on to win the game 4-3.