Pat Maroon and Michael McCarron drop the gloves in front of nearly 70,000 fans.

As much as some fans would like to see fighting taken out of the sport of hockey, there are many of us who love nothing more than a good tilt between rivals. On Saturday night the fans who braved the cold weather to watch the Nashville Predators take on the defending Stanley Cup Champions, the Tampa Bay Lightning, in an outdoor game as part of the National Hockey League's stadium series were treated to one such tilt.

It was two big boys squaring off in this one with Lightning forward Pat Maroon taking on Predators forward Michael McCarron, and with an expected crowd of 69,000 fans it meant that there were nearly 70,000 pairs of eyeballs on hand at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, Tennessee glued to these two combatants.

It seems these two had done a little chatting prior to dropping the gloves as though they were relatively far apart by the time they squared up with one another, it was clear both men were more than willing to engage. Unfortunately they both seemed to get a firm grip on one another and that resulted in something of a defensive standoff between the two, as they both kept each other at arms length and made it difficult for the other to connect with any blows.

Early on it was Maroon who was generating all of the offense with McCarron seemingly content to keep the Lightning's enforcer at bay, and he did just that with most of Maroon's shots either failing to connect or not connecting solidly. After the initial wave of offense from Maroon however it would be McCarron that would fire back in the later stages of the fight, and he seemed to connect a little better than Maroon had previously.

At one point a punch from McCarron landed enough to dislodge Maroon's helmet from his head and from there McCarron began to throw more shots both to the head and to the body. Again though none of the shots seemed particularly devastating as neither man seemed willing to relinquish the defensive grip they had on one another, making this a pretty tough one to call.