Gustafsson and Vesey drop the gloves, and even their teammates are surprised.

The reaction of the players around this one was arguably the best part of the whole thing.

The Chicago Blackhawks and the Buffalo Sabres faced off on Sunday night in one of the two games on the schedule and unfortunately for the Sabres it turned out to be an extremely frustrating affair for them early on. The Sabres were coming into this one with 7 losses in their last 8 games and by the look of things thus far it seems like they are about to make that 8 losses in their last 9 games, as the Sabres are currently down by a margin of 4 - 0 at the time of this writing in the game's third period. 

That frustration from the Sabres did lead to one positive however in the form of a rather interesting highlight between two guys you would have never expected to see in this situation. Buffalo Sabres forward Jimmy Vesey, a Harvard educated player, let his frustrations get the best of him in the game's second period when he dropped the gloves with another guy who is definitely not known for fighting, Chicago Blackhawks veteran defenseman Erik Gustafsson. Gustafsson is so unaccustomed to fighting in fact that this was the first such incident of his entire career in the National Hockey League thus far, marking the first time the 27 year old blue liner had ever let his fists fly in the league. 

It was actually a fairly decent exchange between the two men although you would almost certainly have to give the nod to Vesey in this one on damage alone. Both men traded blows, although the blows from Vesey appeared to land with more pop to them, but it was Gustafsson who was showing the visible impact of those blows after it was all said and done. Perhaps somewhat unsurprising given that he has never been in this situation before, at least not at the NHL level.

As I stated before though perhaps the best moment of this exchange was the look on the faces of the other players in the game when they realized exactly who it was that was going at it. The cameras happened to catch the look on the face of Chicago Blackhawks forward Brandon Saad and that look really does say it all.