Commissioner Gary Bettman would love to put an end to fighting in the NHL, but if Saturday night's Boston Bruins game is any indication, both fans and players disagree.
A balanced effort carried the team to a tough 5-1 home win over the Dallas Stars, with forward Marco Sturm netting two goals and Tim Thomas nabbing 35 saves to continue his recent streak of excellent performances. But the statistic of the night came from the penalty box, where the teams racked up a combined 146 penalty minutes — a figure from a box score of the 1970s — with the Bruins claiming 77 of them, the second-highest single-game total of the season.
"When a team like the Stars comes to town, other teams have a pretty good idea of what to expect," coach Claude Julien said. "You just have to look at some of the guys they have in their lineup, and the two guys that were agitators tonight were guys we already pointed out."
Those noted agitators, Sean Avery and Steve Ott, accumulated 21 and 18 minutes of penalties, respectively, and both have developed quite the reputation. Avery is notorious for his incendiary comments, his summer internship at Vogue magazine and his necessitating the invention of a new penalty to prevent him from waving his stick in Martin Brodeur's face during last season's playoffs. Ott is a well known cheap-shot artist with a history of dirty hits.
"They're just trying to frustrate you, to make you take penalties and when you're frustrated [and] you aren't making good plays, and that's what an agitator is trying to do," forward Milan Lucic said. "I try to get in their face and just play the game that they were playing right back at them."
Bruins defenseman Mark Stuart gave credit to the dynamic Avery-Ott duo.
"You got to take your hats off to those guys," Stuart said. "They do their job well, and we kind of let it get to us there for a while."
The Bruins matched the Stars' intensity and turned the emotional game to their advantage in the third period. Captain Zdeno Chara emphasized his team's tight camaraderie and physical toughness.
"We like to play hard," Chara said. "We like to be a team that's hard to play against. We never get pushed around, especially in our building. We have enough guys to do the job … If it gets physical, we don't mind to do it. That's the style of hockey that sometimes you are going to see, especially on this team here that has guys that like to play with emotion and like to play hard."
The Bruins scored three unanswered goals in the third as the game disintegrated. Shortly after the second goal at 11:05 in the third, a scrum broke out that resulted in seven separate game misconduct penalties. The Bruins were disappointed that the instigator rule allowed players like Avery and Ott to run amok in the game.
"There used to be a code where if you did stuff like that you had to answer bell," said Shawn Thornton, who serves in the unofficial role of enforcer on the ice for the Bruins. "But now we're not allowed to police the games ourselves, so they get away with a little more, I think."
Because of Ott's refusal to fight, Thornton instead tangled with Stars forward Krystofer Barch at 9:31 in the third period. Barch gave a game effort and took Thornton to the ice but generally got the worse of the bout.
"Those are the kind of things you saw tonight that make the league discuss the players policing themselves," Julien said. "Personally, I felt bad for Barch that he had to mop up the mess that his other two teammates couldn't finish."
If nothing else, the game was certainly a throwback to an earlier era in the NHL.
"I can't remember a game like that for a long time, maybe [in the] AHL," Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas said. "I don't know if I've ever experienced one exactly like that, but you know, judging from the reactions of the fans, they actually enjoyed the game."
The crowd of 14,576 spent much of the third period on their feet as fights, Bruins goals and extracurricular activities kept the tempo up.
Still, it's unlikely that the NHL will return to the bad old days. Once in a while is enough for players and coaches, who are focused on the hockey rather than the boxing.
"It's fun to be in a game like that if you win," Stuart said. "But if you come out with the loss, it's not so much fun."
