In Game 3 of one of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals series, the Montreal Canadiens and Ottawa Senators played like they had both watched the movie Slap Shot the night before the game. The teams combined for 236 penalty minutes in the 6-1 Senators’ win in Ottawa on Sunday night. Nine players earned themselves a game misconduct.
Jean-Gabriel Pageau scored his first career playoff goal in the second period, but it cost him a tooth. P.K. Subban of the Canadiens hit him in the mouth as he scored the goal, and knocked out a tooth. Pageau’s teammates were looking around for the tooth in the post-goal celebration. Missing a tooth didn’t stop Pageau in the least. He ended up scoring twice more in the third period, to record a hat trick.
In the third period, the ugliness increased dramatically. Kyle Turris scored a goal to give the Senators a 4-1 lead. Immediately after the ensuing face-off, everyone on the ice except the 2 goalies were fighting. Five different fights were going on at the same time. After the refs had stopped all the fights, Ottawa had a power play. The Senators’ Jakob Silfverberg scored 8 seconds of playing time after the Turris goal, to make it 5-1. More penalties followed. Between all the players who received a game misconduct, and those still in the penalty box, at one point only 11 players were left on the bench, combined for both teams (Montreal-6, Ottawa-5).
As the game was finally winding down, Ottawa coach Paul MacLean called a time-out with 17 seconds left, and a 6-1 lead. This move angered Montreal coach Michel Therien, who referred after the game, to the late time-out as classless. Canadiens’ John Gorges’ shot at Turris as time was running out, wasn’t classless at all, was it? This type of behavior in an NHL playoff game is very rare. Individual fights are rare, let alone 5 fights going on all at once. Don’t get me wrong. If you think I am condemning this behavior as barbaric and unacceptable, think again. I loved it. I rewound it and played it over again. Yes, I loved Slap Shot too.
Many in the sports world condemn the fact that fighting is even allowed in hockey. Sure there are penalties and game misconducts handed out, but the referees generally don’t stop a fight unless one of the fighters fall to the ice, or they stop throwing punches. If you’ve ever been to a hockey game and a fight broke out, you must have noticed that the crowd gets really loud. It’s not just the men only who love the fights, many of the women do too. Hockey is a tough, physical game, and should remain that way.
This was just Game 3 of the Canadiens-Senators series. With at least 2, and maybe up to 4 more games in this series, the emotion is about as high as possible already, and who knows where it will end up? The Senators lead the series 2 games to 1, with Game 4 on Tuesday in Ottawa. Montreal needs to win this game badly, or they will return home for Game 5 facing elimination. It won’t be easy though. So far, Senators’ goalie Craig Anderson is badly outplaying Canadiens’ goalie Carey Price. Through the first 3 games, Anderson has a 2.01 goals against average, and a .949 save percentage, compared to Price’s 3.69 and .879 respectively.
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