Ben Bishop was a fan favorite in Frisco more than a decade before he signed with the Dallas Stars.
During his senior of high school Bishop played for the Texas Tornado in the North American Hockey League. The Tornado were located in Frisco, sharing the same facility as the Dallas Stars, and during that season they were the biggest hockey ticket in town thanks to the NHL lockout that cancelled the entire 2004-05 season.
“It felt like we sold out every game,” Bishop said. “We were good, we never really lost, and people wanted to watch hockey. It was a really great year.”
Bishop had a 1.93 goals against average and a .920 save percentage in 45 games with Texas, and that spring he helped the Tornado win their second straight NAHL Championship.
But Bishop’s most viral moment that season came in late November, when a kerfuffle broke out with the Santa Fe Roadrunners. Eventually Bishop ended up at center ice and squared off with Roadrunners goalie Ryan Hatch.
Thirteen years later, the two combatants re-lived the bout for The Upset Sports.
Fights were common between Texas and Santa Fe. The teams played nine times during the 2004-05 season, and there were at least 18 fights. That rivalry started a year earlier, when the Roadrunners had spent one season in DFW as the Lone Star Cavalry.
HATCH: The year before, 03-04, we were actually in Texas. North Richland Hills, Texas and we took over their rink in North Richland Hills when they moved to Plano or Frisco. So right off the bat there was that built-in rivalry. So since then the two teams always, always hated each other from the very, very beginning.
Whenever we played the Texas Tornado it was always high tension, real physical play, especially in a weekend where we would play them back-to-back, or there were some weekends where we would play them in three times in a weekend, things got very, very chippy and rough to say the least. And that was the year before, then we got bought out and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and the same rivalry was there, it was pretty much the same team and players, and there was always tension between us.
BISHOP: We had a pretty good rivalry there. I think we were the two best teams in our division, we were always going back and forth in an always chippy game, always a bunch of fights.
HATCH: We actually at one point had a line brawl with them with 0.7 seconds to go in the game, and it was a charity game of some sort. That kind of explains the tension between the two teams, .7 seconds to go in a charity game and it was an all-out line brawl.
The game on Nov. 26, 2004 was already the sixth meeting of the season in less than two months. There had been a brawl between the teams one week earlier involving nine players, including Hatch, in front of the RoadRunners net.
In the game with the eventual goalie fight things were chippy early on. A Santa Fe player was ejected in the first period for spearing and there had been a fight early in the second period. There were two more fights earlier in the third period, then things got out of hand after Bishop made a sprawling breakaway save at 9:52 of the period.
HATCH: I believe we were getting beat pretty fairly, I don’t believe the score was close. It was another chippy game, obviously you can see in the video we had that little scuffle going on behind the net and it was one of those things where I had tried to fight a couple times down in the North American Hockey League, but I never had a chance to. So this was kind of the opportunity, everyone was busy in the corner.
BISHOP: It was Thanksgiving break, and I had my entire family down here and the rink was pretty much sold-out. It kind of worked out where we were winning in the third period and a big brawl broke out. And I don’t know why, but we were just looking at each other and it just kind of happened.
This is where the video looks funny. While Hatch and Bishop both had dropped their gloves, neither seemed ready to engage and they played a bit of chicken to try and get the other to cross the red line.
HATCH: I looked down at Ben, he looked down at me. He kind of waved me to come down, I looked over to my coach and usually the coach just waives me and says, ‘Don’t go, get back in the net.’ This time he waved me on and he wanted me to fight on him, and the only thing he said to me was, ‘Just don’t cross the red line.’ I guess you get a fine if the goalie crosses the red line, that’s why there was that coming up to the red line, and backing up for both of us. Because neither of us wanted to cross the red line and get a fine.
BISHOP: You got an extra game suspension if you crossed the red line, so we were both kind of toeing. I wanted to meet at the red line, that way it was kind of fair. But he wasn’t budging, so I kind of said, ‘Screw it, I’m going over.’
Bishop crossed the red line, came at Hatch, and quickly both goalies were on the ice.
HATCH: You can hear it in the video, that place went absolutely nuts. We drop the gloves and are skating back and forth trying to get each other to cross the red line and then finally he crosses over the red line, comes at me, we pretty much throw a couple of punches each and I don’t think any of them really connected. He pretty much ended up knocking me over when he skated into me.
BISHOP: I went across, but neither of us got suspended because the refs had an opportunity break it up and they didn’t. So it actually worked out great.
HATCH: My only thought process was this: get one punch in, bury my head into his chest and don’t get killed. That’s pretty much what I was thinking. I’m not a fighter, it’s pretty evident by the video, but I just wanted to have that junior experience of getting into a fight. The year before I had came close a couple times, I had skated down to the other end, but got yanked down by the ref in a game at Texas. So I wanted to make sure I finished it off, I wanted to make sure I got one in.
BISHOP: There was zero game plan involved. I was just swinging as much as I could, I actually got him pretty good there. And once I was down I got a couple more in, it was a good way to go. I think I came out on top at home and neither of us got hurt. Win-win for me.
HATCH: I still remember looking into the crest on his jersey, I came up to the middle of his chest. I think he had seven inches on me. So there was that, what is he? The tallest goalie to play in the NHL? Or one of them. That was one of the things where I had a chat with my coach afterwords and he said, ‘of all the times you tried to fight, you had to pick the biggest goalie to ever play the damn position?’
While the video got put online because of the fisticuffs, the play-by-play from Alex Kyrias added another element to the clip.
HATCH: It was one of those things were I never actually got to see the fight or hear the fight when it happened. It’s funny my parents used to listen to every single game, and whenever we would play the Tornado my parents would listen to the Tornado feed because of the announcer, he was so good. My mom thought that my face was re-arranged listening to that, she thought that I was part dead. I actually had two voice mails from my mother before I even got back to the locker room. From the time the fight ended to the time I walked back to the locker room, she had called me twice to see if my face was re-arranged.
BISHOP: That was hilarious. I think it won call of the year or something like that. It got all the publicity, and all the views, and he did a great job selling the game.
HATCH: It’s funny to see such an awful goalie fight that much viewing, you know what I mean? I think the announcer made that entire fight what it was, it wasn’t much of a fight to be honest.
The video gained notoriety as Bishop’s NHL career progressed. It may have reached peak popularity this season when the Stars signed Bishop to a six-year contract. In a recent video feature about Bishop’s time in Frisco, which has also played on the video board at American Airlines Center multiple times, the Hatch vs. Bishop fight is prominently featured.
HATCH: I want to say it was 2010 first time I saw it. And I was surprised, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, because it wasn’t a good goalie fight. I was just amazed how many people were watching it and viewing it, you know? It kind of just took off, it went from sporadically seeing it here and there — friends finding it on some obscure Facebook page or something like that, now I open up an NHL.com video my friend sent me and seeing Bishop’s fight was one of the first ones on there. It’s gone from not being anywhere to being a lot more popular than I ever thought it was gonna be.
BISHOP: It seems like everywhere I go somebody pulls it out of the archives. And it’s a big hit, but it’s pretty funny now just being with the Stars and that happening just on the other rink over there, so it’s even closer to home now.
HATCH: Since 2012, it’s come up more and more on Facebook. It’s funny I just got a message from one of my buddies that was on that team. He sent me a video that was all about Bishop going back down to the Stars and it pretty much all started off with our fight.
Hatch played one season of college hockey at Canisius as a freshman and then finished his hockey career with three seasons as the starting goalie at Salem State College. He is now the head goalie instructor at NETS Elite Goalie Training in New England. Often his students will uncover the video of his fight with Bishop.
HATCH: Quite a few people have found it, usually somebody in the team or group will come in and say, ‘Hey I found this video,’ and then everybody on the team watches it. They can’t believe it. First they can’t believe I fought Bishop, and then they like to laugh because it looks like I got my ass kicked. They get a chuckle out of it.
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