Paul Bissonnette is credited with 200 career fights. That number follows him around, and it is accurate as far as it goes. 52 of them happened in an NHL regular-season game.
The other 148 were in the preseason, the playoffs, the American Hockey League, the ECHL, and Ontario junior hockey. More than half of his career fighting total, 131 of 200, took place outside the NHL entirely. He has been clearer about this than most of the people who quote the figure: “I pretty much only fought guys like me,” he told The Players’ Tribune, and “I don’t think I was ever a good enough player for non-enforcer types to ever engage with me.”
How many NHL fights did he have?
69, of which 52 were in the regular season.
| League | Regular season | Preseason | Playoffs | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NHL | 52 | 16 | 1 | 69 |
| AHL | 83 | 1 | 3 | 87 |
| ECHL | 12 | 2 | 0 | 14 |
| OHL | 30 | 0 | 0 | 30 |
| Total | 177 | 19 | 4 | 200 |
The American Hockey League is the biggest column, and its shape is a career. He had 28 AHL fights in 2008-09 alone, the season he also played his first 15 NHL games, and 87 across his time in the league. The OHL total of 30 belongs to four junior seasons between 2001-02 and 2004-05.
Two of the 16 NHL preseason fights are curiosities: one in September 2014 while on a tryout with St. Louis, and one in September 2016 on a tryout with Los Angeles. He never played an NHL regular-season game for either club.
His NHL regular-season fighting was also front-loaded. 19 of the 52 came in 2009-10, his first season in Phoenix, in 41 games. The last three came in 2013-14.
READ MORE: Paul Bissonnette names the toughest guy he ever fought
| Season | NHL regular-season fights | NHL games |
|---|---|---|
| 2008-09 | 4 | 15 |
| 2009-10 | 19 | 41 |
| 2010-11 | 13 | 48 |
| 2011-12 | 7 | 31 |
| 2012-13 | 6 | 28 |
| 2013-14 | 3 | 39 |
Which teams did he fight?
Six clubs account for 29 of the 52, and two of those rows are really one name.
| Opponent club | Fights | Who they were against |
|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles Kings | 6 | Kevin Westgarth three times, Raitis Ivanans twice, Matt Greene once |
| Columbus Blue Jackets | 5 | Jared Boll four times, Michael Methot once |
| Dallas Stars | 5 | Krys Barch, all five |
| St. Louis Blues | 5 | Cam Janssen twice, Ryan Reaves twice, Tyson Strachan once |
| Anaheim Ducks | 4 | George Parros three times, Nate McIver once |
| Calgary Flames | 4 | Tim Jackman twice, Brandon Prust once, Guillaume Desbiens once |
Every single fight Bissonnette had against Dallas was against Krys Barch. Five meetings, one opponent, between November 2009 and December 2010, including two on the same night in February 2010.
Jared Boll accounted for four of the five against Columbus and George Parros three of the four against Anaheim. Across the whole 52, Barch is the most-fought opponent of his NHL career, ahead of Boll on four.
READ MORE: Paul Bissonnette once got into a fight with Rick Tocchet in a hotel
What do his NHL numbers look like?
Six seasons: one with Pittsburgh and five with Phoenix.
| Career NHL regular season | |
|---|---|
| Games | 202 |
| Goals | 7 |
| Assists | 15 |
| Points | 22 |
| Penalty minutes | 340 |
| Penalty minutes per game | 1.68 |
| Average time on ice | 5:18 |
| Playoff games | 4 |
Pittsburgh drafted him in the fourth round (121st overall) in 2003, as a defenceman playing for the Saginaw Spirit. Phoenix claimed him on waivers on 1 October 2009, and the five seasons that followed made up his entire NHL career as a regular.
The road there and back took in a lot of buses. Wheeling in the ECHL, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton in the AHL for four seasons, Cardiff in Britain during the 2012-13 lockout, then Portland, Manchester and Ontario in the AHL after Phoenix. He won a Calder Cup with Manchester in 2015.
READ MORE: Bob Probert’s penalty minutes against every NHL team
What has he said about fighting?
More honestly than almost anyone who did the job. All of the following is from a Players’ Tribune mailbag he wrote in September 2015, while he was still playing.
On who he fought: “I pretty much only fought guys like me. I don’t think I was ever a good enough player for non-enforcer types to ever engage with me.”
On why he kept doing it: “I don’t like necessarily beating people up or getting beat up, but it’s what keeps me in the game.”
On the waiting: “The lead-up to a fight is one of my least favorite things about this job. It’s a lot of restlessness. It’s a lot of anxiety.”
And on the job itself: “Obviously, we’re dumb enough to accept a role that requires us to take a pounding in the head.”
The line that sits oddest against a 340-minute career: “There’s no one I really want to go after and beat up.”
Earlier, during his AHL years, his framing was more transactional. “I just basically want to come in, fight, show guys I’m serious about fighting, I’m going to do it if I have to,” he told the league’s own site in January 2009, before setting out the plan: “If I feel the need to fight him, then I will. And if I don’t then I won’t.”
The graphic
On 20 May 2023, a hockey account posted a television graphic listing the career points of the four men on a broadcast panel. It read: Wayne Gretzky 2,857. Anson Carter 421. Henrik Lundqvist 27. Paul Bissonnette 22.
Being last on that list, behind a goaltender, became a running joke he has never tried to escape. His own summary of the second career, given to a sports business site in May 2023: “I guess it is shocking, considering how good I was as a player, to find myself where I am.”
Why he stopped playing
Two torn anterior cruciate ligaments during the 2016-17 season, his last with Ontario in the AHL.
He confirmed it himself on 7 September 2017 with a post captioned “Well. That’s all she wrote.” By then, the next job had already started: on 24 June 2017, the Coyotes named him color commentator on their radio broadcasts.
What he did after playing
Three things, in order.
| Role | From |
|---|---|
| Color commentator, Arizona Coyotes radio | 24 June 2017 |
| Co-host, the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast | April 2018 |
| Studio analyst, the NHL on TNT | the 2021-22 season |
The podcast came first in reach. He had appeared on it as a guest before joining Ryan Whitney as a permanent co-host, and the video version moved to a streaming service in January 2026. The television job came with the league’s American rights deal in 2021, putting him in a studio alongside Gretzky.
In January 2026, the network extended him and added live game work to the studio role, starting as a between-the-benches analyst. His description of the program he helped build: “It’s more conversational-based and a little less structured than a traditional broadcast.” And on where the format came from: “The tone was set by the NBA on TNT. They kind of set the mold, and we’re just trying to create our own version of that.”
How reliable is the fight count?
The NHL has never kept fight statistics. The 200 figure comes from a register compiled by hockey supporters, and his page there is the only place the league-by-league breakdown exists at all.
We checked it the only way we could: by reading every NHL season card and counting the rows. All six seasons matched the printed totals, and the league columns sum to 200. The penalty-minute and games figures are different. Those come from the league’s own records, and his 28 opponent rows sum exactly to 202 games and 340 minutes.
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