Randy Holt’s Record Setting Brawl vs. The Flyers – 3/11/79
When people think of the Broad Street Bullies it conjures up images of Dave “The Hammer” Schultz, Don Saleski, Bob “Hound” Kelly, Andre “Moose” Dupont and of course Bobby Clarke with that toothless grin. They fought and terrorized the NHL and bullied their way to back to back Stanley Cups. Dave Schultz was the team’s preeminent tough guy and the Flyers antics forced the NHL at large to really toughen up. As teams attempted to keep pace with the Flyers, the arms race began as each team brought in tough guys to counter the Flyers bullying ways. It was a great time to be a fight fan.
It’s hard to imagine the Flyers getting any tougher. But they did. They moved on from Schultz after the 75-76 season and added American born Paul Holmgren who played for the WHA’s Minnesota Fighting Saints the year before. Holmgren came in and promptly deposed Schultz, beating him in the Spectrum in front of the Hammer’s former fans, who now booed him as he skated to the box in defeat. Holmgren would step in as the Flyers policeman and serve admirably in that role, always on the front line of every Flyer rumble.
The following year they would add Dave Hoyda. Hoyda wasn’t very big but he was very capable with his fists and was mean and nasty which made him a good fit in Philly. Hoyda, Holmgren, Bridgman, Hound Kelly and the Moose brought some serious Philly style cement game in, game out. At a time when teams were lucky to have one legit tough guy on the roster, the Flyers were rolling deep with tough guys and that doesn’t include guys who could jump in and fight in a pinch like Bob Daily, Frank Bathe, Rick Lapointe, Orest Kindrachuk etc. These guys weren’t world beaters but they added to the overall mix and made them a nightmare to play against.
They couldn’t possibly get tougher right? Well the Flyers went out and selected Behn Wilson as their first pick in the ’78 NHL entry draft. A big kid at 6’3, 200 lbs, Wilson would jump in and prove to be one of the better fighters in the league. He had some great bouts in his rookie year and just like that the Flyers were tougher than ever. You can make a great case that the Holmgren/Wilson version of the Broad Street Bullies were a tougher and meaner lot than their Stanley Cup winning predecessors. Schultz was the real tough guy on that first incarnation of the Bullies, the Flyers of the late 70’s had three guys who could handle the Heavyweights a luxury that no team outside of the Bruins and Islanders had. So you can imagine how intimidating it must’ve been for teams to come into the Spectrum in Philly at that time. Knowing you were going to have to deal with Wilson, Holmgren, Hoyda, Bridgman or any of the other Bullies skating around I’m sure brought on a quite a few cases of the Philly Flu.
It’s in this setting that the Los Angeles Kings came into the season. The Kings were a markedly different kind of team than the Flyers. Gone were the days of Dan Maloney and Dave Hutchison. The Kings had gradually morphed into a finesse team. Going into the year their main tough guy was Battlin’ Bert Wilson. Wilson was indeed a tough guy but against the onslaught of the Flyers, he’d be overwhelmed. The Kings were outgunned and out-manned and Bert Wilson wasn’t going to be enough to tackle a team like the Flyers. In order to be able to hang with the Flyers, the Kings were going to have to toughen up.
That’s when Randy Holt came along.
Holt first broke into the NHL back in 74-75 with the Chicago Blackhawks. He played sparingly for the Hawks and didn’t get a full time gig until the Hawks traded him away to the fledgling Cleveland Barons organization. Holt jumped right in making his presence felt, using his fists to make room for his new teammates. He played 48 games that year-his most as a pro-and amassed 229 penalty minutes. He was under 6 feet tall and no more than 185 lbs. but he had a machine gun like left hand and he was utterly fearless. He also showed that he was not afraid to go over the edge when the situation called for it. And even when it didn’t.
The Barons folded the following year and Holt was picked up by the Vancouver Canucks. For most of us, this is where we caught our first glimpses of Holt on actual video. Holt’s fights with Barry Beck and Nick Fotiu have been available on video for years. Only recently did his fight with Stan Jonathan surface. This once again gives us hope that there might be other rare gems out there. The Canucks had a young Curt Fraser, Wolfman Jack McIlhargey as well as Harold Snepsts to handle the rough stuff. So, on New Year’s Eve, the Vancouver Canucks traded Holt to the Los Angeles Kings for veteran winger Don Kozak. The Kings were starved for toughness and were looking to beef up and Holt was a perfect fit.
Now the Flyers might have intimidated players and teams throughout the league but there were certain players that just didn’t scare easy. Randy Holt was one of them. He cared little for how tough the Flyers were. In fact, he’d even developed a bit of a feud with Flyers forward Mel Bridgman during his time with the Barons. Holt had a rep for being badger tough and a little on the crazy side and crazy is just what you needed to be when dealing with the Flyers and their gang tactics.
And so it was, on March 11, 1979, that Randy Holt and the Los Angeles Kings visited the Spectrum in Philadelphia. Holt wasted little time. The game was still in the first period when Holt bumped into Flyers forward Blake Dunlop. After a quick exchange of words, Holt punched Dunlop. Frank Bathe came to his teammate’s aid and went after Holt. Now Bathe was no great shakes as a fighter and the fight amounted to some wrestling with few punches thrown. After they were sent to the box, Dunlop came over to have a few more words with Holt. Holt stood up and Frank Bathe seeing this put one leg over the side of the penalty box door. This caused a rush from the officials to restore order. Things calmed down for the moment.
Before Holt and Bathe could serve their initial fighting major, another fight broke out, this one between LA’s Battlin’ Bert Wilson and Philly’s Big Behn Wilson. Bert was a veteran tough guy and a good one at that. Not a huge guy but he had long arms and was quite capable. Behn was a young Heavyweight contender who had a breakout rookie year as a fighter in 78-79. They squared off briefly before coming together. Behn got his trademark uppercut going right away. Bert attempted to get his right going but neither could quite find the mark. Bert switched to his left and landed a big awkward looking shot that popped Behn’s helmet off. He then landed another on the back of Behn’s head. Big Behn still tried to score with the uppercut, while Bert switched back to his right and landed a bomb. This shot forced Behn to uncharacteristically go for the leg lift tackle. Behn Wilson’s chin was on display here as that was a good right landed by Bert.
With the preliminaries out of the way, the real fun could begin. With the First period coming to a close Holt came out of the box to go to the dressing room. The Flyers-particularly Paul Holmgren- wanted a piece of Holt. They circled him menacingly and both sides began pushing and shoving. You can see the push and pull as the line dividing the orange and white jerseys from the purple and gold surged back and forth. And there in the middle of it all staring defiantly at his attackers was Randy Holt.
On the outside of the swirling mob, Philadelphia’s Mel Bridgman and LA’s Steven Jensen came together and got into a good toe to toe exchange. They both went down to the ice, got back up and renewed the struggle before going down again, with the officials jumping on top to separate the two scrappers. Jensen did surprisingly well in this fight as he was not generally known as a big fighter. He didn’t fight very often but if you look throughout his career you’ll find that once in a blue moon he’d get into a great brawl. He looked good here against Bridgman.
The mass scrum continued as players continued to push and shove. There’d be moments where things would fall into a lull before someone got their hands up on another player and everything would become animated again as players circled, paired off and forced their way to the hot spot. As this was going on, Bridgman and Jensen found each other again. They came together, tugging and pulling on each other with Jensen stripping free from most of his jersey. This round died down quickly as the main event began.
Randy Holt and Paul Holmgren had found each other and talked a while before they mutually agreed to step back and square off. What a scene this was-in the middle of all this chaos for these two badasses to come to grips. After locking on, Holmgren began with a major league salvo of right hands. He was taking the fight to Holt, but the undersized southpaw was undaunted and began pumping the left hand and the pair got into a vicious toe to toe exchange. Once again we see how great a lefty-righty toe to toe tilt could be. After one final left, Holmgren grabbed onto Holt and the fight degenerated into grappling. That final left by Holt has become the subject of some discussion over the years. Did that last left hurt Holmgren forcing him to hold on for the remainder of the bout? Did Holmgren lose balance and just grab on, spent from the exchange? I always found these little mysteries just added to how great these fights were.
After that things began to die down. Holt appeared to be going to the LA dressing room. He even stepped off the ice briefly but both teams began bunching up and eyeing each other over again and Holt stepped back onto the ice. Mel Bridgman began having words with Holt, these two were old friends and Mel was looking to renew acquaintances. Both teams surged towards the two and another rugby scrum began with everyone pulling and jostling to get free. At one point, LA’s Mark Heaslip was suckered by Frank Bathe and later Hound Kelly and Mark Heaslip begin fighting over by the player benches with a mob surging around them.
One of the interesting things about this brawl was how almost no one on Los Angeles paired off with Holmgren. He was allowed to circle the crowd and pop in and out with relative ease. Early on he attempted to get at Holt but more or less bided his time. After the fight was over, he again just roamed from one hot spot to the next, always where the most action was. At one point he was just propped on an elbow by the player benches taking in the scene while Kelly and Heaslip went at it. Later, while skating around freely, he began jawing with Steve Jensen who was without his jersey at this point. That’s when Bridgman bumped him from behind and round three between these two fierce battlers began.
I loved the square off between these two. Jensen was anxious, ready to jump at anything but Mel was calm and still and ready to pounce. As they came together, it wasn’t to clinch and grab on, Jensen had no jersey and just his flimsy shoulder pads and t-shirt, so they fired away like it was a street fight. Bridgman’s fast hands were on display as he began to overwhelm Jensen. At one point he was firing away with two fisted combos with good balance. Jensen was on the defensive and one of his teammates grabbed onto Bridgman. This stopped Bridgman’s onslaught and Jensen was able to pound away and more players joined in and the fight degenerated into a frenzied mob scene. When things slowed down again the Spectrum crowd cheered Bridgman and booed Jensen. Jensen was spent having fought Mel Bridgman three times and was the first to begin the exodus off the ice. Eventually all the Kings players began to follow suit and filed off to the dressing room.
When all was said and done, Randy Holt had come into the Spectrum and forced the issue with the dreaded Flyers and all their tough guys. He came into their building and gave the Flyers a dose of their own medicine. He shattered the old record for penalty minutes for a player in a game with 67, a mark that still stands to this day. This is even more remarkable when you think about the fact that outside of Bert Wilson, Holt had almost no one he could rely on to back him up. It always amazed me the pure guts Holt had, standing tall in the face of the Broad Street Bullies gang style attacks.
This is one of my all-time favorite brawls. I remember first catching it on VHS tape back in my youth. I had the high light news clip that had the funky Emerson, Lake and Palmer background music to it. It wasn’t until later that I’d get the full version of the brawl with the black and white feed and the Bert vs. Behn match up. One of the things that I found interesting was the play by play guy who covered this brawl. I never found out his name but his take on this brawl just added to the overall character of this brawl. At one point after the Holt-Holmgren bout he says “Unbelievacable!” He kept referring to Bert Wilson as Murray Wilson. His blow by blow account was certainly different and mixed with the wild scene on the ice gave this brawl something of a unique feel.
On this night Randy Holt sent a message to the Broad Street Bullies. The Kings would no longer be pushed around while he was on the beat. No matter how out-manned the Kings might be, Holt was willing to go into your building and rewrite the record books with his misdeeds. Holt would play another year in LA where he would once again create havoc in the Spectrum. He would go on to play another four seasons with the Flames, Capitals and, oddly enough, the Flyers, bringing his brand of crazy toughness-and that piston left hand- to each stop.