Since it is still November, you can say we have yet to enter the Month Of Good Cheer and Glad Tidings, and that was certainly evident in the NHL game held in Ottawa on Sunday night between the Florida Panthers and the hosting Senators. Things became chippy, as they say, as the game slipped away from the homers, and then by the third period it devolved into a street fight, and the problem rose to a level that the refs had to eliminate the problem.
This meant removing all players from the game.
When the home team finds itself in a losing game, they often resort to physical play to save face. The Senators fell behind in the first period, conceding a goal within a minute and a half. Things then went downhill from there, especially in the second. The Panthers were down two goals and a video replay was conducted to determine if Florida’s Matthew Tkachuk, who appeared slightly offside in the review, was actually a good goal. The Senators were agitated, the fans complained, and by that time, the game was over.
The mood changed at the end as the time was running out and the players began to complain in groups. This continued into the final period. In the third, officials tried to calm the crowd down by calling penalties. Then it reached a crescendo just seven minutes before the end.
The situation descended into chaos when Matthew’s older brother Brady Tkachuk slapped Florida’s Sergei Bobrovsky. It took the officials on the ice minutes to separate the fights and sort out punishments. The lead referee Garrett Rank decided that he would clear the ice completely of all the trouble. All skaters, as well as others, were immediately thrown out of the game.
“Every player on the ice has a 10-minute misconduct, among other penalties.”
😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/uvWt11PY32
— Bally Sports Florida: Panthers (@BallyPanthers) November 28, 2023
After the melee ended, 13 players were given 16 penalties, and both teams saw a dozen players immediately kicked out of the match. The Panthers’ head coach Paul Maurice wasn’t at all dissatisfied with either the outcome or the way his players stood up.
It got a bit snarly. It was fun. It was fun. It is the reason why hockey is so great. It’s beautiful, athletic, and angry at the same. It was good. It was good.
The Tkachuks racked up eight penalties between them. Matthew, surprisingly, was not taken off the ice because his line wasn’t on the ice during the final bout. After the ice had been cleared of hockey equipment, Florida’s TV analyst Randy Moller said that “the official score sheet will look like a CVS voucher.”
He did not do anything wrong.
I ran stats for the Panthers one season. It is not often the final score sheet needs to be 2 pages, but over 160 minutes of penalties will do that. pic.twitter.com/31SIw305I3
— Brad Slager: Flips On The Highbeams In Fog Of War (@MartiniShark) November 28, 2023
