The rate of fighting in the NHL crept up last season, and it's doing so again this year despite the debates after the QMJHL introduced automatic game misconducts.

It's not your imagination – fighting is making a bit of a comeback in the NHL.

Through the first 368 games of the 2023-24 season, we've seen 97 fights in the NHL, according to hockeyfights.com. That works out to 0.2636 fights per game, or a little more than one fight every four games.

At first glance, that doesn't seem like a big change from the last couple of years:

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If this year's current rate of fighting continues over a full 82-game schedule, we'll end up with 345 fights this season, an increase of 11. That's not a massive change — but doesn't it seem like a surprise that fighting is on the rise at all?

In the years leading into the pandemic pause, it looked like fighting might all but disappear from the game. Scoring was on the rise, and teams were moving away from keeping fourth-line spots open for designated enforcers. 

The all-time record for penalty minutes in a season was Dave 'The Hammer' Schultz in 1974-75. He had 472 minutes with the Philadelphia Flyers in the heart of their 'Broad Street Bullies' era.

In the five years from 2015-16 to 2019-20, the only player to crack even 200 penalty minutes in a season was Micheal Haley, then of the Florida Panthers. In 2017-18, he finished with 212 penalty minutes, including 22 majors — all of which were for fights.

But he was an outlier. In 2018-19, the last full season before COVID-19, only six players finished with more than 100 penalty minutes, and no player was assessed more than seven majors in the year. Of those three, Mark Borowiecki had six fights, as did Cody McLeod, while Ian Cole had four.

In 2019-20, Nicolas Deslauriers started to singlehandedly change the landscape. In his seventh NHL season, after never having had more than 71 penalty minutes in a year, Deslauriers took a league-leading 14 majors with the Anaheim Ducks before the season was paused in March. All 14 were fights and came in just 59 games. Other than him, once again, Austin Watson was the only other player to even hit seven majors (also all fights).

Perhaps the pandemic pause did leave players needing an outlet for their aggressions? Even with no fans in the stands through most of the shortened 2020-21 campaign, Tom Wilson managed to log 96 penalty minutes in just 47 games, which would have pro-rated to 168 minutes over a full season. And Brady Tkachuk has a lot more to his game than just his pugilistic skills, but he led the league that year with seven majors in 56 games — all fights. That pro-rates to 10 majors over a full season.

Zack MacEwen, then of Vancouver, and Brady's teammate Watson were right behind him, with six fighting majors each.

All told, there were 196 fighting majors over 868 games that year, working out to 0.2256 fights per game, or one fight about every four and a half games.

This season, the fighting has intensified, with some new names in the mix.

Andreas Englund of the Los Angeles Kings leads the way with five major penalties, all from fights. The 27-year-old defenseman, who was signed by the Kings as a free agent this summer, clocks in at 6-foot-4 but had not previously been able to establish himself as an NHL regular. 

This year, he's averaging 12:16 of ice time per game on the back end of the league's second-stingiest team, but he's not limited to just dropping the gloves. Englund also scored his first-career NHL goal on Halloween against the Toronto Maple Leafs and has seven points in 20 games with the Kings, who are also the league's highest-scoring team.

Those seven points have actually matched the first 80 games of his NHL career. Meanwhile, he's also tracking to join Haley as just the second player since the 2012-13 lockout to hit 20 fighting majors in a season.

The Kings had a reputation as a big, imposing opponent during their Stanley Cup years in 2012 and 2014. Englund's numbers this season seem to be a bit of an outlier. Only one other L.A. player has been in a fight this year — Harvard alum Alex Laferriere, in his first NHL game. And the disciplined Kings rank 30th in penalties taken, averaging just 9:12 per game.

Around the league, five other players have already taken four fighting majors this year, which could put them well into double digits by season's end.

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Factor in Englund, and four of the top six fighters hail from the Western Conference. 

In terms of total majors, Nashville leads the way with 11. And of the nine teams that have logged eight or more majors so far this year, six are from the West. Philadelphia, Tampa Bay and Ottawa represent the East.

If the NHL was still clinging to the hope that fighting would organically disappear rather than having to be legislated out of the game, these numbers suggest that will not, in fact, turn out to be the case.

In junior hockey, the QMJHL became Canada's first major junior league to automatically eject players for fighting, starting this season. 

According to hockeyfights.com, there were 82 fights in the QMJHL last season, compared to 284 in the WHL and 234 in the OHL.

With about a third of the junior seasons played, the WHL is at 119 fights so far in 2023-24, while the OHL is at 72. 

Quebec? Eight.

This year's new rules include automatic game misconducts for anyone who participates in a fight, along with a one-game suspension for any player deemed to be the instigator and a minimum of two games for the aggressor.

So far, we've seen three instigator and three aggressor suspensions handed down. 

While it's true there was already much less fighting in the QMJHL than on the oter circuits, the rule change has had an effect. Their total number of fights could be down by two-thirds or more by season's end.

It's an indication the NHL may need to consider a similar approach if it wants to make fighting a less prominent part of its game. It doesn't seem to be going away on its own.