Connor McDavid was down behind the net clutching his leg and the building had gone quiet. Eight minutes into a scoreless game at Rogers Place, Drew Helleson drove McDavid into the goal frame – his knee striking the net – and he wasn’t getting up.

McDavid’s winger didn’t wait to find out if he was okay. Vasily Podkolzin went straight at Helleson and started throwing punches. Helleson dropped his gloves and tried to answer but was rocked before he could respond.

 

 

Only one man got a fighting major. Only one man was ejected – and the power play that followed cost the Oilers a goal.

The calls

Referees Cody Beach and Graham Skilliter – working his 900th career game – sorted it out at 8:06 of the first period:

  • Vasily Podkolzin (EDM): 27 PIM, ejected
    • 2 minutes, instigator
    • 5 minutes, fighting
    • 10 minutes, aggressor
    • 10 minutes, instigator – misconduct
  • Drew Helleson (ANA): 2 PIM
    • 2 minutes, unsportsmanlike conduct

The hit itself drew no penalty at all. No charging, no boarding, no roughing on Helleson for the check that put McDavid into the post. Anaheim’s only penalty on the sequence was the unsportsmanlike minor. The Oilers picked up quite a bit more. 

Referee Cody Beach announced the penalty as a “one-man fight.”

Podkolzin’s instigator minor and Helleson’s minor cancelled out, leaving the fighting major unmatched, resulting in a five-minute Anaheim power play. Cutter Gauthier scored on it at 9:26 to make it 1-0 Ducks. Edmonton tied it late in the period on an Evan Bouchard power-play goal – set up by McDavid, who had briefly gone down the tunnel after the hit and missed a few minutes before returning to his regular rotation, ultimately finishing with a goal and three assists.

McDavid appreciated the response.

“Podzy, you know, stepped in there and was unfortunate to – you know, I’ve never seen that call before,” he said. “It was unfortunate there for sure, but yeah, I appreciate the response, obviously… I thought it was an unfortunate call. Didn’t like the call really one bit.”

How the rulebook handles a one-man fight

A fight does not require two willing participants. Rule 46.1 deems a fight to have occurred “when at least one player punches or attempts to punch an opponent repeatedly” and Rule 46.14 levies a major on any player who fights.
Podkolzin deserved everything he got. The instigator minor fit Rule 46.11’s criteria almost by definition – among them, “obvious retribution for a previous incident in the game.”  His ejection comes from the aggressor rule, Rule 46.2: a player who “continues to throw punches in an attempt to inflict punishment on his opponent who is in a defenseless position or who is an unwilling combatant” is assessed a fighting major and a game misconduct. He started it, and he kept throwing. Instigator: check. Aggressor: check.

The miss was on the other side of the ledger. Rule 46.1’s bar for a fighting major is not landing punches, it’s punching or even attempting to punch. Helleson dropped his gloves and attempted to throw. He didn’t turtle; he tried to respond and simply got rocked. By the rule’s own standard, that’s a participant, meaning matching fighting majors should be the call. Instead, Helleson got two minutes and Anaheim skated off with a five-minute power play. 

Past aggressors

Seattle’s Ville Ottavainen got a “10 Aggressor” line this September for piling onto an unwilling Brennan Othmann, and Toronto’s Max Domi (March 30, 2026) and Tampa Bay’s Curtis Douglas (February 5, 2026) have the same entry on their records. In Ottavainen’s game it appeared alongside a plain game misconduct to another player in the same stoppage, so the distinction is deliberate when the official scorers record it.

During the game, Podkolzin’s game misconduct carried no such label – on the summary and in the league’s play-by-play feed, it was a plain “Game Misconduct.”  After the final horn, the league went back through and sorted their paperwork, giving Podkolzin his full suite of earned penalties – and increasing the penalty totals for the game. 

He didn’t turtle

There is a class of player who gets nothing in these situations: the true non-combatant. Matthew Tkachuk covered up and took zero penalties while Zack Kassian punched him in 2020. Kassian’s attack was scored as a double minor for roughing plus a misconduct – no fighting major at all – before Player Safety suspended him two games as the aggressor. Jordan Nolan kept his gloves on and his stick in his hands against Tom Sestito in 2014: nothing. Nick Cousins curled up under Erik Gudbranson in 2023: nothing on the play, while Gudbranson took 27 PIM and earned a one-game suspension.

Helleson’s involvement was different. The line the officials have drawn before is participation, and it isn’t a high bar: Nikita Zadorov, punched by Milan Lucic in 2019, never dropped his gloves and never threw a punch but still got five for fighting because he grappled and held on, a participant under Rule 46.1’s wrestling clause. Helleson did more than Zadorov. He dropped the gloves and tried to throw. He just got beaten before any of it mattered – and losing a fight has never been the standard for whether you were in one.

The sequel

Podkolzin has been here before, though on the opposite side of things. On January 20, Jonathan Kovacevic hit McDavid, Podkolzin dropped the gloves immediately, and because Kovacevic fought back, Podkolzin’s night stopped at 2 + 5 + 10 and he stayed in the game. Tonight the trigger and the response were the same. The difference was the other man: the officials felt Helleson didn’t fight back while Podkolzin kept going, so the aggressor rule applied, ending his night with just 2:40 of ice time.

The period did get a good old fashioned fight for contrast. At 16:52, Kasperi Kapanen and Pavel Mintyukov took matching fighting majors out of a scrum. By intermission, the two teams had combined for 51 penalty minutes in the first period, the most in any first period this season. It’s not the season’s wildest period outright – that title goes to the 55-PIM third period of Vegas at Seattle on October 6. The game finished with 67 combined penalty minutes, well short of the season’s high-water mark: the 84-PIM nights Florida and Ottawa produced on October 21 and Anaheim and Vancouver matched on November 3.

Player Safety watch

An aggressor designation is recorded “for statistical and suspension purposes” under Rule 46.2, so the league may still take a look. The recent range is wide: Ottavainen and Douglas were fined this calendar year, and the heavyweight precedent belongs to an Oiler – Darnell Nurse, suspended three games in 2016 for jumping San Jose’s Roman Polak, who never dropped his gloves, in retaliation for a hit on a teammate.

The hit that started it

Lost in all of the fighting debate is the evaluation of the hit that started it all. 

“I wish that we treated the net like we treat the end wall,” McDavid said. “If I do that to him, going Mach-1 into the end wall, it’s a five-game suspension and everything like that. The net is just as dangerous, in my opinion, with the goalie there, the post there. It’s just as dangerous.”

Oilers head coach Mike Babcock backed his player’s response and aimed at the instigator specifically. “The reaction was what it should have been,” Babcock said. “I didn’t like the fact that you get an instigator on a thing when they’ve run your guy into the net. The instigation of the whole thing was what? When they run your guy into the net?”

Asked whether a defenseman is allowed to cross-check a man driving the net that hard, he smiled off the question: “That’s the good thing about it. I don’t have to ref.”

The Anaheim Ducks beat the Edmonton Oilers 5-4 at Rogers Place on Thursday night. Officials were referees Cody Beach (#12) and Graham Skilliter (#24) with linespersons Scott Cherrey (#50) and David Brisebois (#96).