Tyrel Bauer is two games into his NHL career and has two fights. The Winnipeg Jets rookie defenseman dropped Detroit’s Keegan Kolesar on Sunday night in a 3-2 Jets win at Little Caesars Arena.
A correction on the premise: Bauer did not fight JT Compher. He hit Compher, a Red Wings forward, with a heavy check along the boards in the first period. Kolesar answered for his teammate.
How the Fight Went
The fight started at about the 12-minute mark of the first period. Bauer landed two left hands and Kolesar went down. Both players got five-minute fighting majors, and Kolesar also took a two-minute unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.
That gave Winnipeg a power play, and Cole Perfetti scored on it for a 1-0 lead. The Jets scored on the power play again, and Kyle Connor finished with two goals and an assist. Stuart Skinner made 33 saves for his first win as a Jet. Kolesar returned for the second period.
Bauer, a 24-year-old who is listed at 6-foot-3 and over 200 pounds, also fought Boston’s Mark Kastelic in his NHL debut on Friday. Two games, two fights.
Fighting Is Rare, but Not Gone
The league that Bauer is joining fights far less than it used to. Fighting averaged 1.10 per game in 1987-88, according to NHL Rumors. By 2025-26 it was 0.23 per game, according to HockeyFights.com, essentially unchanged from 2024-25.
That is about one fight every four or five games. It is not extinct, and the teams that fight a lot are not losing because of it. Tampa Bay led the league in 2025-26 and made the playoffs, per reports.
Detroit is the better test case. The Red Wings acquired Kolesar from Vegas in July after finishing 29th in both hits and fighting majors last season, per House of Hockey. Kolesar did exactly the job he was brought in to do. He lost the fight, but his teammate was hit, and he answered.
The Right Call for a Rookie
I like that Bauer is willing to do this. A depth defenseman fighting his way onto a lineup is an old, honest route, and it works because Winnipeg gets something back each time: momentum, a power play, a team that sees one of its own win.
The worry for rookies is that the league keeps shrinking the space for this. A player who fights twice in two games is going to be tested by every team’s tough guy. He will have to keep winning, and not every opponent will go down on the second punch.
Fighting is a smaller part of the NHL than ever, but Sunday showed it still moves games. Winnipeg won that exchange and the game.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.