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The Flames’ best fights of 2025-26: Joel Hanley and Ty Emberson put on a classic

Photo credit: Sergei Belski-Imagn Images

By Ryley Delaney

Jul 31, 2026, 12:00 EDTUpdated: Jul 31, 2026, 00:31 EDT

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There are times when a fight is so damn good that the only winners are the fans.

That’s exactly what happened in the final Battle of Alberta this past season, days before the beginning of the Olympic break. The second match-up, a game two days before Christmas, was a testy one as all 10 players on the ice got a 10-minute misconduct at one point.

Despite playing four days later, that hostilities didn’t carry over into their next match-up, and the two teams didn’t see each other again until Feb. 4. There were some fisticuffs in this game, but not from two players you’d expect.

Instead, Calgary Flames’ defenceman Joel Hanley threw down with Oilers’ defenceman Ty Emberson in not just the Flames (and Oilers) best fight of the season, but one of the best fights in the NHL period.

The Flames won a defensive zone draw, but before they got a chance to rush, Hanley and Emberson threw down near the Flames’ blue line. They finally started throwing haymakers near centre ice, which was fitting because this fight was the main event of the evening.

There isn’t really a way to describe this fight other than they traded blows here both fighters threw caution to the wind. It was a fight that’d you see in a classic like Slap Shot. There was nothing that set this fight off, it was just two third-pairing defencemen throwing down.

Neither fighter won, but the fans sure did. On hockeyfights, 41 of the 77 voters gave it a draw, with 21 giving it to Hanley and 15 to Emberson. At the end, the players patted each other knowing that they just put on a masterpiece of a fight.

In fact, the fight’s rating of 7.31 put it in the top 10, with all other fights having notable fighters such as Mathieu Olivier, Nicolas Deslauriers, Arber Xhekaj, and others. This is an outlier, but having this type of fight in a rivalry such as the Battle of Alberta makes it a special one.

Ryley Delaney is a Nation Network writer for FlamesNation, Oilersnation, and Blue Jays Nation. She can be followed on Twitter @Ryley__Delaney.

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