Bench-clearing brawl

In this case, dangerous hits, excessive post-whistle roughness, taking shots after the whistle, attacking the goaltender, and hatred from competition in a game with a significant amount of inter-player violence, all contribute to bench-clearing brawls.

[10] One of the more notable incidents was the Punch-up in Piestany, a game between Canada and the Soviet Union during the 1987 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships.

The game was rougher and more dangerous than is generally accepted, and with 6:07 left in the second period, a fight broke out between Pavel Kostichkin and Theoren Fleury, causing both teams to leave the benches for 20 minutes.

A notable KHL bench-clearing brawl saw all the players of Avangard Omsk and Vityaz Chekhov, except for the goaltenders, begin fighting at 3:34 into the first period.

In 1995, the National Basketball Association changed the penalty for leaving the bench to participate in a brawl from a $500 fine to an automatic one-game suspension.

In 2010, the Northern Territory Football League in Australia ruled that any player found to have left the interchange bench to participate in a melee would be ejected from the match.

All levels of the game penalize any "substitute who leaves the team box during a fight" (as it is worded in the high school rule books) with automatic ejection and possible further sanctions depending on the league, and the amount of equipment a football player wears greatly increases the risk for injury in a brawl.

A minor bench-clearing brawl occurred during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in the quarterfinal match between Argentina and The Netherlands, when Argentinian player Leandro Paredes kicked a ball directly into the Dutch bench after fouling Nathan Aké.

[12] In more severe instances, participants and coaches can face criminal charges (for example, assault and battery and endangerment of a minor, respectively), and entire schools can face sanctions from their state's athletic association, ranging from letters of reprimand, forfeiture of contests, withholding of travel expenses and extended suspensions of players and coaches to, in the most severe cases, cancellation of a team's entire season, prohibition from participation in state tournaments for a period of time, or suspension of a school's entire athletic program.