Most people who watch hockey, even if not on a regular basis, know of the game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Bruins and how it is widely considered the most physical game that took place this season. Now take that game, and all its’ physicality, and multiply it by 3. The result is the game that took place tonight between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the New York Islanders at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Without a doubt the most physical, and at two or three points plain out dirty, game that has taken place in the NHL in a long time.
This game has been brewing for a while now, especially for the Islanders. They’ve been tired of being pushed around, disrespected, having their best players being rammed every game, and having the referees take no action to try and prevent any of it from taking place. Tonight, against the rival Penguins, all the anger and all the frustration came out, and I promise you that it was not pretty. Three all out brawls, 15 fighting majors, and an astonishing 20 game misconducts all combined for a total of 346 penalty minutes. Like I said it wasn’t pretty.
However this type of game is what you get when around the league the script is talking about how head hits will be punished severely, and anybody who is deemed to go for a hit to the head will be punished severely. Yet when the Islanders’ star player suffers a concussion from a blindside elbow to the head, debatably involuntary, from Adam Burish in the season opener there was no suspension. When Maxime Talbot, of the same Pittsburgh Penguins, gave Blake Comeau a concussion from yet another blindside head hit, this time voluntary, there was no suspension. When Dion Phaneuf rammed Tavares with a hit to the head, leaving his feet to deliver the hit, there was no call. So what does the league expect of the Islanders? Do they honestly expect them to just sit there and take hard hit after hit, and not do anything about it? If they did, oh boy were they wrong. Tavares said it best in his post-game interview, “…it just shows that we’ll do anything for each other.”
Trevor Gillies, Matt Martin, Zenon Konopka, and Micheal Haley didn’t come into the game looking to deliver as much pain as they humanly could to the Penguins. That’s just what it ended up looking like. In a post-game interview Konopka said that it wasn’t a direct hit on Pittsburgh, he said that they just fell in the way during a point that emotions built up over the season, and tonight they just boiled over. He was right. The Islanders came out to play hockey, not to beat the ever living hell out of the Penguins, but they did however want to set a physical tone to the game and basically tell the Penguins that what happened on February 2nd (when Talbot delivered the concussion to Comeau, and Johnson delivered his left hook to Rick DiPietro’s face) was not going to happen again.
Unfortunately though, this physical tone that the Islanders set was matched by Pittsburgh, but this didn’t last long. After the first period ended, with a score of 4-0 in favor of the Islanders (Travis Hamonic, Jesse Joensuu, PA Parenteau, and Michael Grabner) tensions in the Penguins locker room must’ve been high. They were getting beat on the scoreboard, and they were getting beat physically. Something they’re not exactly used to.
After 5 minutes of play in the second period the first brawl broke out. Matt Martin was skating alongside Talbot, and he found himself having a chance to deliver some pay back for the hit on his teammate and if you know anything about Martin then you know that he is not one to give up this chance. As soon as he saw the name Talbot on the back of the jersey, he dropped the gloves and threw a right hook at Talbot’s head. Talbot managed to duck at the last second, avoiding the full contact of the fist. After the first punch was thrown, there was no looking back. Before you knew it there were three fights on the ice (Josh Bailey vs. Pascal Dupuis, Travis Hamonic vs. Michael Rupp, and Matt Martin, Deryk Engelland, and Maxime Talbot all mashed up in one pile with each one hitting the other). Engelland, Bailey, Hamonic, Dupuis, Rupp, and Martin were all given game misconducts. Then it all kind of cooled down for the rest of the second period, and the two teams went back to playing hockey as the Islanders scored another 4 goals (John Tavares, Micheal Hailey, and Matt Moulson with 2), and the Penguins managed to get two on the board during a 5-on-3 and a 5 minute major power play (Kris Letang, Jordan Staal).
Then the third period started, and once more it all came crumbling down and for the most part it stopped being about hockey. Not even 5 minutes into the third, and brawl number 2 broke out. Trevor Gillies brought an elbow to Eric Tangradi’s face and everything broke out one more time. Basically every player threw at least one punch, except maybe the Islanders’ goalie Koskinen. However Pittsburgh’s goalie Brent Johnson was a way different story, he’s now not only a goalie but a consistent fighter too apparently, having three fights in his last 2 starts. He had a minor scuffle during the second period brawl, but in this third period brawl it was a bit more than a minor scuffle.
After Hailey beat Talbot in a fight, he skated by the Islander blue line, saw Johnson standing by the Pens’ blue line and started to get into it with him. Eric Godard didn’t think this to be a good idea so while Johnson and Hailey are fighting, he doesn’t try to get Hailey away from Johnson he, in what many might consider the dirtiest incident of this entire thing, started throwing hooks and haymakers at Hailey making it a 2-on-1. Once Hailey noticed he was fighting 2 people, and getting hit from both sides, he quickly went down to the ice and tried to protect himself from 2 people throwing fists at him.
After this second brawl, there were just a handful of players left on both benches but somehow the two teams managed to have a third brawl with this time the main star of it being Zenon Konopka, you knew you couldn’t have a real physical game without his name being thrown in it at one point. Who did Konopka fight? Who else but old Islander buddy Maxime Talbot even though you can’t really consider this a fight. Once again there was a bit of pushing and shoving between both teams, and Konopka went after Talbot. Some Penguin players tried to stop him but with plain out perseverance, and some help from him teammates, he found a way to get his hands on Talbot, and throw him down to the ice like he was a rag doll. He had a clean opportunity to deliver as much pain as he wished to Talbot, but with Talbot being in a vulnerable position Konopka did what Johnson did to DiPietro. He beat him in the fight, proved the point and decided to deliver no more pain than he had to.
Not much scoring in the third period though, only goals scored were Tyler Kennedy (8-3) and Michael Grabner (9-3) with less than 3 minutes left in the game and leaving the fans chanting “We Want 10!” for the rest of the game and “Crosby Sucks!” after the game ended.
Like I said before, the Islanders were tired of being stepped on, being disrespected, being called doormats, being hit and injured and seeing no consequences or punishment being dealt by the league to the opposition’s players. Tonight all the frustration, all the anger, all the disappointment poured out and the Penguins were the ones that were so unfortunate as to experience all this frustration, all this anger, all this disappointment, and most importantly all this Islander pride first hand. They were beat on the scoreboard, they were beat mentally, and they were definitely beat physically. My guess would be that teams will now think twice before deciding to deliver head hits to Tavares, blind side hits to Comeau, and deliberately ramming DiPietro (like Matt Cooke, arguably the dirtiest player in the game and a “human tornado” according to Stan Fischler, did during the first meeting between the two teams in October).
My guess would be that the Islanders will no longer be disrespected, they will no longer be called doormats, and they will no longer stand for lack of discipline from the league and the referees. Like Konopka said, if they’re not going to do anything to stop the opposition’s players from delivering dangerous hits to our key players then we will take care of the disciplining ourselves and that’s exactly what the Islanders did tonight.
Suspensions will be dealt to the Islanders, and punishment will be dealt to the Islanders. But do you know what anyone on that team, especially Martin, Gillies, and Hailey will say once they hear their sentencing…”IT WAS ALL WORTH IT!!!”