Randy Holt's Record-Setting Night

Sitting in the penalty box with time winding down in on the clock, the Kings' Randy Holt untied his skates.
With just a few seconds remaining in the first period, he should have been sent directly to the dressing room, but following a second dust up with Philadelphia's Frank Bathe, he was, for some reason, relegated back to the box.
As the chaos continued around him on the ice, Holt tugged at his laces.
Just before the buzzer sounded, teammate Bert Wilson approached the box to speak with Holt.
"Wrangler," he said. "You better get those skates tied. I heard they're going to get you at the end of the period."
Holt simply nodded and did up his skates. Wilson's words proved prophetic. As soon as Holt cleared the box at the end of the frame, the Flyers converged on him.

Philadelphia had wanted revenge for an incident late in the first period when Holt punched a prone Blake Dunlop in the head along the boards. Although Holt had already fought Bathe twice following the incident, the Flyers were still not satisfied. Holt had expected as much.
"The Flyers were known as the Broad Street Bullies. Unlike the Boston Bruins, a tough team which had Bobby Orr, they always tried to play hockey first because they had Bobby Orr," Holt said.
"If by the third period they weren't winning or it's a lost game, then the Bruins would get nasty. While the Flyers were the opposite. They would come out and try to intimidate you over the first half of the game."
Just as Holt got back out onto the ice, he remembers Paul Holmgren having a few choice words for him. "He came up to me and said 'Randy, you've embarrassed us and we have to do something about it,'" Holt said. "Those were the first words he said to me and then we ended up fighting."
"To the Kings' credit, they came over and everybody took one-on-one and I was able to get out of the box," Holt added.

As a line brawl erupted, Holmgren and Holt paired off. It should have been a lopsided tilt. Holmgren had a few inches and at least 25 pounds on Holt, but the latter was as tough as a coffin nail. In his previous season with the Cleveland Barons, Holt had racked up 229 penalty minutes and had no trouble taking care of himself on the ice.
It didn't take long for Holt to get the better of his opponent. As the two traded blows, the other players involved in their own skirmishes couldn't help but shift their gaze towards what was happening.
"He pulled me in after I hit him quite a few times in the face and he told me he was bleeding pretty badly," Holt said. "And I said, 'yeah, is that it, Paul? Or do we go again? And he said that was it."
But the Flyers weren't quite done yet with Holt. He recalls Bob "Mad Dog" Kelly coming over to try to start something, but he simply told him "on the best day you ever lived, you couldn't beat me." Holt's words apparently made Mad Dog second-guess his chances. "I was quite shocked when he turned around and skated away," he said.
When the dust finally settled, referee Wally Harris told Holt he had racked up 67 penalty minutes, which included three game misconducts, an NHL record. Holt couldn't believe what he had heard. "You're bad at [expletive] math, were my exact words," he said.
"I can't even comprehend how he came up with that. I fought Frank Bathe twice, maybe the punch to the head to Dunlop they called that a major but it was them [the Flyers] who started the whole brawl at the end of the period. I don't know how that happened."

All told, Holt was given nine penalties: one minor, three majors, two 10-minute misconducts, and three game misconducts. His 67 minutes were part of a grand total of 352 combined penalty minutes that Harris had doled out to both teams at the end of the period.
When play resumed for the second period, the Kings' Butch Goring scored less than five minutes into the frame to tie the game 1-1, but the Flyers added two more goals before intermission and never looked back. Philadelphia won 6-3 and, with most of the protagonists from the donnybrook watching the game from the dressing room, there were only a handful of penalties called in the final two periods.
Following the game, the NHL suspended Holt for three games for his part in the melee. When he eventually returned to the lineup, a reporter suggested to him that his role with the Kings was similar to that of a junkyard dog. Holt reportedly grinned and simply said, "I'm a battler."
During his time in the NHL, few battled better than Holt, and to this day, no other player has earned more penalty minutes in a single game.