Veteran enforcers Nicolas Deslauriers and Micheal Haley try to take each others heads off.

Two very tough men.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 4 years ago
Veteran enforcers Nicolas Deslauriers and Micheal Haley try to take each others heads off.

These two tough guys did not waste any time. 

On Sunday during a game between the New York Rangers and the Anaheim Ducks we were treated to a pretty good tilt between two very gritty players in the form of Anaheim Ducks forward Nicolas Deslauriers and New York Rangers enforcer Micheal Haley. These are two guys who are no strangers to dropping the gloves and it showed both in their willingness to drop the gloves as well as what came after the fact. 

It is not exactly clear what provoked this incident between the two men as just prior to them dropping the gloves the only contact we saw between them was a very routine, and relatively mild, body check on the part of Haley. Even the broadcast crew was surprised at how quickly this one developed and in fact that very same broadcast crew speculated about whether or not these two guys had discussed the possibility of this earlier in the game at some point. 

Whether or not they planned it however mattered little as both men were obviously willing to go and both men threw their punches with some pretty ill intentions behind them. Micheal Haley is a very tough customer but Deslauriers had the reach advantage in this one and he used it both to keep Haley at a distance by gripping his jersey and extending his arm, and also to land some big looping punches to the head and face of his opponent who was unable to return fire at points during the fight. You could tell as well that Haley was frustrated by this but to his credit he did manage to free himself somewhat and eventually was able to land some shots of his own. 

It seems clear to me however that Deslauriers emerged as the victor in this one, not only did he appear to largely dominate the exchange with his superior reach but he also appeared to do more damage to Haley. As Haley sat in the penalty box and the cameras panned over him you could see bruising on his face as well as some swelling beginning to show as a result of the damage from Deslauriers. 


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