Two of the NHL’s best young defensemen showed off a different side of their games on Saturday night.
Rather than creating offense, Matthew Schaefer and Luke Hughes exchanged punches late in the second period of their heated Metropolitan Division rivalry matchup between the New York Islanders and New Jersey Devils.
The two were the main event of a fracas that saw five separate roughing penalties called as tempers flared around New York’s net.
Matthew Schaefer and Luke Hughes exchange punches
The conflict started in front of the Islanders’ net after Logan Stanley slashed Devils forward Nico Hischier and tussled with defenseman Brett Pesce. Attention then turned behind the net, where Schaefer and Hughes turned up the temperature to 11 as they threw gloved haymakers at each other’s faces, and Schaefer ended up on top of Hughes in a pile-up.
“I don’t know,” Hughes said. “He just had my visor, and we just started…it doesn’t really matter. I think hockey is an emotional sport, and I wouldn’t call that a fight at all. Neither of us had our gloves off. It’s part of the game, two competitive guys.”
Schaefer, who scored his fifth goal of the season in the game, shared a very similar take on t...