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Mon Jan 24 02:07pm EST

Fight Video: Players leave benches in wild, bloody ECHL line brawl

By Greg Wyshynski

We're not sure how this Saturday night brawl between the Reading Royals at Florida Everblades started, but we're hoping it had something to do with a Reading player talking smack about their holiday sweaters:

Woody Wommack of Naples News has the blow-by-blow of how this brawl came about:

With the score still 1-0, emotions boiled over between the two teams when Reading's Brett Gallant speared Florida's Alex Imbeault, who returned with a spear of his own just moments later. "He can't even play in this league, he's a bum," Imbeault said. "I was just going after the puck and he speared me and if I get speared I'm going to spear back."

The back-to-back infractions led to two fights, one between Gallant and Imbeault and another between Mike Egener(notes) and Ryan Donald. As the four rolled around on the ice in front of the Reading bench, multiple players left the bench area and came onto the ice to jump into the fracas.

"(Gallant) their resident idiot started the whole thing," Florida coach Greg Poss said. "Like I told the referee before the game, they just have to control the situation."

Reading's Rob Kwiet(notes) jumped into the fight with Egener and Donald, but a punch from Egener left Kwiet blooded and face-down on the ice for the remainder of the brawl.

All of the penalties are here. From Lady Byng's Love Child, our official Everblades guru:

This was the final game in the three game series, the Blades had won Tuesday 7-4, and then managed to come from behind Friday to force it to OT then a shoot-out, which they then won. They did end up winning this game so I guess it worked out for them?

We'll update with any suspensions or supplemental discipline from the ECHL.

UPDATE: Some clarifications from Brewmeister Smith, who was at the game:

"The Imbeault-Gallant stuff is right, but Egener was fighting Kwiet, busted his nose. Kwiet didn't want anything more to do with the fight, but Egener dropped a bomb and knocked him out. That's when Riendeau hit Egener on the head with butt end of his stick. Lots of blood from Kwiet's nose and Egener's head. Then Perry and Donald came off Reading bench."

So there you go.

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