Thornton chews out the officials for breaking up fight too early.

Every hockey fan who is a fan of fighting in the game absolutely hates it when National Hockey League officials step in too early to break up a good fight, or a fight that after some grappling is finally about to get under way, and it turns out some players hate it as well.

On Tuesday night linesman Pierre Racicot was on the receiving end of a verbal tirade from Florida Panther's veteran Sean Thornton after the officials stepped in to break up a fight between Thornton and the Montreal Canadiens' Mike Brown.

Thornton was clearly just getting started, and it looked like Brown was more than willing to continue sparring with him as well, so when the officials broke it up a fired up Thornton took his frustrations out on the linesman instead. With the music that came on after the two men were split apart I half expected Thornton to drop the linesman with a Stone Cold Stunner.

[pub]