Sources Confirm This Is Just A Good Ol' Fashion Lacrosse Brawl. No Two Ways About It
I don't know how many times I need to say it in order for people to believe me, but box lacrosse is single-handedly keeping violence alive in sports. All across the board, you've got a swath of losers out there trying to take any shred of physicality out of sports. They'll cry about things like "player safety", but really it's just a bunch of dorks who were never able to handle the physicality themselves.
But when it comes to box lacrosse? They shoot first, ask questions about player safety later. The Ontario Hockey League has started suspending players after they hit a certain number of fights per season. But the Ontario Junior Lacrosse League? Well the OJLL is home to brawls like this one right here between the Orangeville Jr Northmen and the Six Nations Arrows. This is a league that still allows the players to police the game themselves if necessary. After a hit like this, someone's face was going to have to receive a special delivery from someone's fist.
It wasn't the worst hit in the world, but you still want to send a message that you're not going to sit around and let one of your guys get bundled like that.
So a little later in the period, we get two fellas just trying to settle some differences. What a fight we were treated to right there. Gloves off, helmets off, it was a fully proper tilt. I love how the ref originally thought he was going to let cooler heads prevail and stay in the middle of that one. Only to realize he's not getting paid nearly enough to accidentally catch a stray hook, so he let the boys get after it.
By the way--everybody needs a teammate like Trey Deere (#91 in white). He's one of the most freakishly skilled players on the floor, so he's not the kind of guy you would want to see fighting himself too often. But he's always going to be right there in the mix. He'll get more fired up about his teammates winning a fight than his teammates will get about him scoring a goal like this.