Reimer on How Close He Came to Fighting Fleury, Unwritten Code of Goalie Fights

How close was James Reimer to fighting Marc-Andre Fleury?

On Saturday, Evgeny Svechnikov almost touched off a powder keg when he stopped up deep in Fleury’s crease.

Fleury and Svechnikov will settle this at the Renaissance Faire tomorrow pic.twitter.com/L3VEOW0ki8

— Sheng Peng (@Sheng_Peng) March 12, 2023

Marcus Foligno sent Svechnikov a message, and all the San Jose Sharks and Minnesota Wild skaters on the ice converged. Then…

Reimer came out to blueline and Fleury looked at him like, 'You want to go?'

— Joe Smith (@JoeSmithNHL) March 12, 2023

Nothing came of it, Svechnikov was penalized, and the Wild took advantage on the power play en route to a 5-2 victory over the San Jose Sharks.

“Usually when there’s a goalie fight, there’s something dirty the other goalie’s done. So then the other goalie steps in. That’s kind of the unwritten code,” Reimer explained today, in good humor about it all. “There wasn’t much to avenge there. It was pretty tit-for-tat there. Just slapping each other sticks or whatnot.”

Reimer doesn’t know Fleury personally, but that would’ve been something, to see two of the NHL’s nicest players going at it.

“I think he was scared of my toughness,” Reimer quipped. “I’ve got quite a reputation around the league as being mean.”

But seriously…what would a fight between the mild-mannered Reimer and Fleury look like?

“We probably would’ve shook hands, given each other high-fives, and both went back to our creases,” the San Jose Sharks netminder laughed.