Ottawa and Montreal combined for 236 penalty minutes Sunday afternoon as the Senators routed the Canadiens on home ice 6-1. The two Canadian rivals played a physical and chippy game throughout. And once Kyle Turris scored to make the score 4-1, Montreal became frustrated and started a brawl on the next face-off. On the video below, you can see at the eight second mark a Montreal player giving an Ottawa player a hard slash. It was from there that all 10 players started a brawl with each other. In that instance all 10 were given game misconducts in addition to fighting major penalties.
Before that fight, it was already a heavily penalized game as Ottawa had eight penalties while Montreal had seven.
It didn’t take too long for another fight to break out, as 1:27 later Turris squared off with P.K. Subban. Both teams were short of players on the bench at the end of the game. Sens coach Paul MacLean called a timeout with the lead in the final minutes of the game. Habs coach Michel Therrien took offense to the gesture, even going as far as calling the move “classless”. MacLean said in his press conference that he was forced to protect his players and will do it every time. He also threw a barb at Therrien when he said “I’m classless? This is another disrespectful thing? They were doing a good job of (humiliating) themselves … [they] don’t need my help.”
We can be certain Brendan Shanahan will be busy Monday morning looking at footage of the game to determine if any disciplinary action is necessary. One thing is certain is he will review the controversial hit on Cory Conacher by Rene Borque. I won’t be surprised of Borque will miss the next game, as he has had history with elbowing fellow players, as he elbowed Washington’s Nicklas Backstrom last January.
Game four will take place Tuesday night in Ottawa.
