Blue Jackets defenceman loses his mind in retaliatory fight

For two teams with no history with each other, today's afternoon game between the Columbus Blue Jackets and Florida Panthers became incredibly heated.

It started early, when Panthers' forward Nick Cousins threw a slightly dirty hit against Blue Jackets defenceman Eric Gudbranson. In response, Gudbranson got right back up to throw punches, and he clearly didn't forget it later in the game either.


Both players got minor penalties on the play, for boarding and roughing respectively. After seeing what came after this though, it may have been best to take them out of the game entirely.


In the third period, Gudbranson had an opportunity to exact some revenge against Cousins, and he didn't go easy on him. Gudbranson threw a huge hit at Cousins, but then threw his gloves off and jumped on him, throwing punches to the back of Cousins' head while he was down on the ice.


For Gudbranson's violent actions in the second incident, he's clearly trying to exact revenge and hurt Cousins. It's very possible that the NHL department of player safety could look at this play for intent to injure, after doing the same just earlier today for the similar David Perron incident.