WATCH: 7-foot-1 Sharks prospect Alexander Karmanov gets into first fight during NHL rookie tournament game
It didn’t take long for Alexander Karmanov to use his size in an NHL-sanctioned game.
The San Jose Sharks prospect dropped the gloves with Liam Lefebvre on Saturday night during the team’s first 2026 Rookie Faceoff game against the Los Angeles Kings, and he proved to be as overwhelming in a fight as one would expect.
The fight occurred after the seven-foot-one defenseman had run over Jakub Dvorak as the play was moving up the ice. Dvorak was injured on the play, so Lefebvre stepped up and fought Karmanov to defend his teammate. However, it was a fairly one-sided fight, as even as six-foot-three, Lefebvre was no match for Karmanov’s size and reach, and got very few licks in before falling to the ice.
The game was as one-sided as Karmanov’s fight, as the Sharks went on to win 8-1, getting multiple goals from Ivar Stenberg, Andre Gasseau and Carson Wetsch. Karmanov’s scrap wasn’t the only in the game either, as the gloves were dropped on five occasions, with the game totaling 82 penalty minutes.
Karmanov was the Sharks’ seventh-round pick in the 2026 NHL Draft, a pick that comes with a couple bits of history. At seven-foot-one, Karmanov is the tallest player to ever be drafted in the NHL, and will obviously become the tallest player in NHL history should he ever reach the point where he plays a game. Up to this point, the tallest players to play in the NHL are Hall of Famer Zdeno Chara, 2015-16 Chicago Blackhawk Viktor Svedberg and current New York Rangers enforcer Matt Rempe at six-foot-nine.
Hailing from Chisinau, Moldova, Karmanov is also the first Moldavian to be drafted by an NHL team. He is also eligible to play for Russia at the international level.
Karmanov is coming off a 2025-26 season that saw him take significant strides, especially when it was unclear if he would be able to play in the OHL considering his mobility at his stature. He started the 2025-26 season in the GOJHL with the Brantford Titans, where he had three goals and four assists for seven points in 15 games. His play was impressive enough that he was called up to the North Bay Battalion in the OHL, where he had two assists in 20 games. Despite the Battalion making the playoffs, he did not play when they were swept at the hands of the Brantford Bulldogs in the first round.
The Sharks will play their second and final game of the 2026 Rookie Faceoff against the Utah Mammoth on Sunday at 5 p.m. PT.