The heavyweight division in pro boxing begins at 201 pounds.
Adam Fantilli is 205 pounds. But make no mistake, the third overall pick in the 2023 NHL draft is no heavyweight.
He’s not even a middleweight. Or a lightweight.
After all, he doesn’t really fight.
And yet, that didn’t stop Fantilli, who is tied for the lead among Columbus’ goal scorers, from picking a fight with New Jersey’s Jonas Siegenthaler in a brawling NHL game on Tuesday that featured four different fights and 74 penalty minutes.
After the game, Devils coach Sheldon Keefe blasted Fantilli and the Blue Jackets for not adhering to the ‘fighter’s code’ by repeatedly sucker-punching players who didn’t have a chance to drop the gloves.
Then again, it’s difficult to blame non-fighters for not knowing about the code — much less remembering it — when Fantilli had never fought in the NHL before, and Siegenthaler’s last fight was four years ago. Maybe that’s why Siegenthaler forgot to tie his jersey down, which led to Fantilli pulling it over Siegenthaler’s head.
‘I had my gloves off,’ Fantilli told the Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA TODAY Network, after the game, ‘Keefe says I threw seven punches before (Siegenthaler) takes his gloves off. I don’t know how you take seven punches before throwing your gloves off. That’s a pretty long time.’
The Devils play the Blue Jackets next on Dec. 31, so we won’t have to wait a long time before there’s retribution. Maybe Siegenthaler can remember to tie down his jersey down. And maybe the Blue Jackets will have an actual heavyweight, such as Mathieu Olivier, who was out with an injury on Tuesday, in the lineup.
Not that it matters much.
How many fights in the NHL this season?
There have already been 97 fights this season, according to hockeyfights.com. At this rate, we should see slightly more than the 297 fights that occurred last season.
And while the heavyweights are throwing their fair share of the punches — Montreal’s Arber Xhekaj has fought five times this season, while Ryan Reaves, Nicolas Deslauriers and Tanner Jeannot have each fought three times — they are getting help from some unlikely sources.
Yes, Matt Rempe, who gained notoriety two years ago when he fought three times in his first five games, hasn’t played since Oct. 23. But the heavyweights aren’t going away. If anything, they’re being joined by skilled players who have more points than PIMs.
In addition to Fantilli, we’ve already seen fights from Buffalo’s Alex Tuch and Tage Thompson, Colorado’s Gabriel Landeskog, Washington’s Jakob Chychrun, Vancouver’s Connor Garland, Carolina’s Logan Stankoven, Anaheim’s Frank Vatrano and Detroit’s Moritz Seider.
In a game last month, Dallas’ Mikko Rantanen fought Calgary’s Jonathan Huberdeau in a scrap that no one had on the fight card.
It was Rantanen’s first fight. But with the number of players the Stars forward has already injured with questionable hits this season, it might not be his last.
Which raises the question: what in the name of Don Cherry’s Rock’em Sock’em Hockey is going on?
What’s to blame for rise in fighting?
You can partly blame the Florida Panthers for this. After all, the Panthers showed you can win back-to-back Stanley Cups with Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Bennett and Brad Marchand in their lineup and by playing a pugnacious style of hockey and employing pests who can beat you with their fists and their sticks. The NHL is a copycat league, so it’s natural that other teams are now stealing their championship blueprint.
Another factor that has contributed to the number of fights is an all-for-one sort of gang mentality within teams. If a player is being targeted, then the whole team has his back. We saw that in the Columbus-New Jersey game, where Dmitri Voronkov’s beatdown of Brenden Dillon set off a chain reaction of fights that probably would never have occurred.
So far this season, there have been 10 multi-fight games. Two of those games included three or more fights.
‘It’s kind of an identity thing,’ Fantilli told the Dispatch after engaging in his second career NHL fight. ‘Yeah, we have Ollie (Mathieu Olivier), and we have Guddy (Erik Gudbranson) who can take care of that stuff, but when they’re not in our lineup, it’s still a part of our identity. It’s part of the way we play.
‘Maybe we don’t fight four to five times every game, but when things need to be taken care of, it’s in this locker room. We care about each other, and we’ve got each other’s backs, and I think we kind of proved that, too.’
Chances are the Blue Jackets will have to prove it again when they play the Devils on Dec. 31. And this time, it looks like Olivier will be back in the lineup.
‘Oh, yeah, he’s fired up,’ Fantilli told the Dispatch. ‘He’s got that game circled on his calendar, for sure.’
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