Bench Not-Clearing Brawl

[hab_in_exile]

This weekend I had a Midget AAA game. I was working lines. A player from Team A fell to the ice behind me (I was on the blue line), I turned when I heard him fall. He immediately got up and went after the guy that may or may not have hit him, throwing his gloves to the ice in the process. The guy he was chasing was a bit oblivious at first and was just heading to the bench.
The Team A player caught him right at the door and pushed him into the Team B bench, and following right along. The long and the short of it was I had a Team A player going into the Team B bench to get his pound of flesh.
The Team B coaches were very good and kept their kids under control so it was not the riot it could have been. However, in the room after we talked about what we should have done. We both went into the bench to try and save the Team A player from himself. We agreed that had more Team A players come over to help we would have been absolutely screwed because we would have been stuck in the bench.
Does anyone have any suggestions for this rather novel problem?

[jicecone]

You probably did all that you could do and yes if the players had wanted to get into it more, you would have had a busier afternoon.

Some people actually believe that we can stop penalities, let alone, brawls before they actually happen. Would'nt that be nice? We would never have games with penalties or problems because we would have prevented them from happening, before they started. HMMM!!!

Anytime you have multiple altercations happening, it is not easy. One time I was working a Jr game as a linesman and a twelve player brawl started. Yes including the goalies. My partner and I took one pair at a time to the box. We saved the goalies to last because both had stripped down to their waist and were going full blast at each other. Actually, it was the best fight of all of them.

By the time we got to them they were so tired that the one guy actully thanked us for coming over. As officials your stuck in a situation that is really beyond your control.
Work with your partner because it is safer that way and just keep taking poeople off the ice , pair by pair. But don't go off the ice unless the incident is isolated and in the bench or penalty box. NEVER LEAVE THE ICE to break things up, you are less protected than the players in most incidents. Good Luck.

[slimjym]

Sounds to me like you did everything more or less right. The best thing to do in a scenario like that is back off and take numbers. As a linesman, that's the biggest way you can help your referee.