Five-on-one fight breaks out on bench in SHL relegation game
Just when you think you’ve seen it all in hockey, something comes along and surprises you.
Another one of those shocking surprises happened during an SHL relegation game between HV71 Jonkoping and Leksands IF on Tuesday, as the hockey world not only witnessed a fight on the bench, but a five-on-one fight on the bench.
Hahahahahah bland det sjukaste jag skådat i SHL! VILKET JÄVLA LIV 😂😂😂
The incident occurred midway through the third period of Game 4 of the best-of-seven series between HV71 Jonkoping and Leksands IF. While it’s unclear how he ended up there, William Ignberg-Nilsson found himself on the Leksands IF bench, with several players on Leksands IF going after Ignberg-Nilsson.
The SHL doesn’t list the exact penalties called during a game, so the fallout of this incident isn’t known. But for the one known culprit in Ignberg-Nilsson, he found himself with four penalty minutes on the night, likely related to the incident.
“Five fucking guys on one! Fucking cowards!” could be heard from one of the players in the footage of the fight posted on Twitter/X.
While Ignberg-Nilsson isn’t a notable scorer in the SHL, with just three goals and two assists for five points in 31 games in the 2025-26 season, he isn’t known for being an enforcer who gets up to these types of shenanigans either with just 16 penalty minutes on the season.
“Det var fullt fräs där i båset,” Ignberg-Nilsson said after the game, which was basically him mentioning how heated things got on the bench.
However, HV71 got the last laugh in the game. Already up 3-0 in their relegation series, Leksands had a 1-0 lead at the time of the scrap on the bench. But Hugo Pettersson tied the game for HV71 with just 10 seconds left in the game, and then Lukas Rousek scored the game-winner 10:21 into overtime, completing the sweep for HV71 and relegating Leksands to HockeyAllsvensken.