The Philadelphia Flyers defenseman is no stranger to dropping the mitts.
The Philadelphia Flyers defenseman is no stranger to dropping the mitts.
During the Philadelphia Flyers' 3-1 road victory against the Chicago Blackhawks on Feb. 21, Flyers' blueliner Nick Seeler notched his fourth fight of this regular season against forward Reese Johnson.
Seeler clearly dominated the fight, throwing numerous punches, landing multiple body shots. They fell to the ice, with Seeler on top at first, followed by Johnson rolling over top. Johnson did not appear to land a single punch.
Seeler also played for the Blackhawks during the 2019-20 season.
The votes of nine fans on HockeyFights unanimously declared Seeler, 6-foot-3 and 197 pounds, the winner, against similarly-sized Johnson at 6-foot-1 and 193 pounds.
Seeler has seen victories in previous fights as well, including a Dec. 22, 2023 fight against the Detroit Red Wings' 26-year-old forward Christian Fischer.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5FOzfGoKoY[/embed]
After Fischer checked Seeler into the boards very hard, the men dropped the gloves. Seeler threw the first few punches before Fischer came back with two, and then Seeler brought him to the ground to end it. Just before they went down, Seeler landed a powerful left.
Fischer is 6-foot-2 and 212 pounds, and shows he can throw the body with 80 hits this season. He doesn't fight often though, with only four NHL fights in his career.
Although the Seeler-Fischer fight was more even, 24 voters (73 per cent) on HockeyFights said Seeler won.
Less controversially, Seeler easily won a fight against the Dallas Stars' 31-year-old blueliner Jani Hakanpaa in October. Voters (98 per cent) almost unanimously said Seeler won, with only a single vote for Hakanpaa.
It was a crushing victory for Seeler, who ended the fight in less than five seconds. Hakanpaa is a giant Finn, towering over even the tall Seeler at 6-foot-7 and 222 pounds. Seeler threw multiple rights and Hakanpaa went right down.
But Seeler has far more experience, at 22 NHL fights versus Hakanpaa at only four.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMwaLBEyCc8[/embed]
Seeler hasn't played a single NHL season without a fight, except for the 2020-21 season when he didn't play any NHL games.
He has fought all the way back to his 2011-12 season as a teenager spent partly with the Des Moines Buccaneers, a United States Hockey League (USHL) team, when he notched one fight.
Between 2016 and 2018, Seeler had an additional 13 fights with the AHLs Iowa Wild.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fhz_2lLAa4[/embed]
Seeler's Oct. 14, 2023 fight against Ottawa Senators centre Mark Kastelic was more even, with both men initially grappling, with each throwing a few punches before two referees ended the fight before either man could go down.
Like Seeler, Kastelic has four regular-season fights this season.
The large Kastelic, 6-foot-4 and 226 pounds, notched a whopping 10 fights last year including one preseason fight.
One of those was against Flyers left-winger Nicolas Deslauriers on March 30, 2023.
Deslauriers (whose 33rd birthday was yesterday) is the only Flyer who's been in more fights than Seeler this season, at eight. He is a six-foot-one, 218-pound enforcer, and notched a tied career-high whopping 14 fights last year, 13 in the 2021-22 regular season, and another 14 fights in the 2019-20 season.
Flyers' forward Garnet Hathaway is close to Seeler at three fights, and star forward Travis Konecny has one, very recently on Feb. 8 vs the Winnipeg Jets' Neal Pionk.
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