Niskanen and Strome drop the gloves on Sunday afternoon!

These two are not exactly known for throwing hands.

The National Hockey League's games over the past 24 hours have really delivered and on Sunday afternoon the match up between the New York Rangers an the Washington Capitals did a fantastic job of continuing along that path. Not only were fans treated to an awesome back and forth game in terms of the actual scoreboard itself, but there was also plenty of rough stuff happening on the ice later in the game as things got incredibly tense between both sides. 

Perhaps the most surprising moment of the game however came with a little over 13 minutes left to go in the game's third and final period of play. As I mentioned things were getting pretty chippy out there and this was no exception. During a battle along the boards for the puck New York Rangers center Ryan Strome took a big hit from Washington Capitals veteran defenseman Matt Niskanen that appeared to come up a little high on Strome, catching him in the face and jaw area. 

Strome immediately took exception to the hit and what resulted was a bit of a wrestling match between he and Niskanen, one that eventually got much more serious. I believe it was Niskanen's attempts to push Strome's head into the ice that really set the Ranger off, because as soon as it happened he bounced right up to his feet, gloves already off of his hands, and began immediately swing for the fences. Strome was throwing bombs at Niskanen's head and to his credit Niskanen seemed more than willing to engage himself although he was admittedly doing a very poor job of it overall. 

Neither man involved in this confrontation is really known for fighting so there's no one in their right mind who was expecting this to be an epic clash of heavyweights, but it did prove to be an entertaining, if somewhat wild, fight between two players known for different aspects of their game. It is really tough to call a winner here as neither man really seemed to land too many significant punches, but it was Strome who ended up on top at the end of it all.

[pub]