Alexander Karmanov immediately made his presence felt — and it is quite a large presence — in his first game as a member of the San Jose Sharks, a rookie camp exhibition.
Late in the third period, the 7-foot-1, 280-pound Sharks defenseman bulldozed Kings rearguard Jakub Dvorak as he was carrying the puck up the ice in the neutral zone. Or as @MacklinMuse so elegantly put it on X, “(Dvorak) attempted to check Karmanov. Suffice to say, he… found out the hard way.”
A scrum immediately broke out as Dvorak laid on the ice with an upper-body injury. After several Kings players approached Karmanov, 6-foot-3 Kings prospect Liam Lefebvre, a large boy himself, challenged the Moldovan-Russian to throw hands.
The fight featured a staggering 10-inch height disparity, as illustrated by videos shot by @kibblesmith02 and @RegendaAgenda at the game.
Karmanov ultimately got the better of the bout, using his enormous reach advantage to land punches before Lefebvre eventually went down. The Sharks defenseman then skated toward the penalty box while waving his arms and asking the San Jose crowd to get louder, which got a big reaction.
Like a moose in a herd of a deer, Karmanov got attention from Kings prospects all night, like when Jared Woolley gave him a random cross-check.
There was some trash-talking, too.
Karmanov also gave some of that energy back in the form of rapid-fire cross-checks in front of the net.
The Sharks went on to win their first game of the 2026 Rookie Faceoff, an 8-1 rout of the Los Angeles Kings. San Jose got a two-goal performance from Ivar Stenberg, the second overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft. His beautiful put-in after great setup feeds from Michael Misa and Igor Chernyshov landed him on NHL social media — though Karmanov’s fight got a lot of attention postgame.
“It was good fights. The players fight good. It was good for the whole team,” Stenberg said. “It’s special because in Sweden you can’t fight. Yeah, it was kind of special to see it from the bench.”
Karmanov, who spent last season between the Brantford Titans of the GOJHL and the OHL’s North Bay Battalion, was selected by the Sharks 201st overall at the 2026 NHL Draft. He is the tallest player ever drafted.
