Looks like we’ve got a new rivalry on our hands, hockey fans.
The way Wednesday’s game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Winnipeg Jets went down, you’d think these opponents were steeped in a long history of playoff battles and penalty minutes.
The first period alone featured back-to-back fights, an ejection, plenty of goals and a total of 43 penalty minutes.
The list of infractions from the second period was definitely shorter, but filled with enough hooks and slashes to maintain the heated tone of the game.
So, why all the bad blood?
Let’s rewind a few weeks to Feb. 16, when Evgeni Malkin laid a high hit on Blake Wheeler. Malkin served two minutes for interference but was not penalized by the NHL Department of Player Safety.
Wheeler was not seriously injured, but he was angered by the hit—especially when his teammate, Jacob Trouba, was suspended two games for a similar hit just three nights later.
“From my perspective, you’d like to see the guy [Malkin] at least get a phone call. You don’t touch the puck. Leaves his feet. Hits you in the head. That’s the unfortunate part about it,” Wheeler said back on Feb. 21.
“Malkin’s a pretty good hockey player. I think he knows who has the puck and when they have the puck. His instincts are pretty good out there. I never had the puck. I never even saw him coming. He comes from the side of me. All I felt was my head snap back.”
“You can live with your guy getting two games as long as there’s consistency throughout,” he said. “I know they have a lot of hits they’re looking at every night. You like to feel protected out there. With what’s transpired in the last week, it raises a lot of questions.”
That’s when we all circled the March 8 rematch on our calendars—and it didn’t disappoint.
Revenge was swift and sweet on Wednesday night, as Wheeler dropped the gloves with Malkin less than four minutes into the game. (Watch the fight at the top of this post.)
The Jets captain won in a Hockey Twitter-determined consensus, firing up his teammates in the process.
Just two seconds later, Chris Thorburn and Tom Sestito put on an encore, exchanging punches and earning themselves five minutes each for fighting.
Sestito wasn’t done there. He was ejected later that period for a vicious-looking hit from behind on Jets defenceman Toby Enstrom. (More on Sestito’s ridiculous three-shift game here.)
Unfortunately for the Jets, Malkin got the final say: He scored twice and added an assist for a Gordie Howe hat trick, all while helping the Penguins to a 7-4 victory.
In an honest post-game chat with Sportsnet’s Sean Reynolds, Malkin acknowledged that his hit back in February was “not great” and explained that fought Wheeler early in Wednesday night’s game out of respect for the Jets’ leader.
As for his punch-throwing performance?
“It’s not great, my fight, but it’s fine,” he said in another moment of honesty.
Unfortunately for hockey fans, we’ll have to wait a while before we see another matchup between these two clubs, as they won’t meet again this season.
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