As Alex Ovechkin moved nearer to NHL historical past along with his 892nd profession purpose, his Capitals obtained into a number of brawls in a heated sport with the Hurricanes on Wednesday night time — that included one vicious takedown.
The 5-1 win for Carolina included 142 mixed minutes of penalties — 122 of which got here within the third interval — together with two fights and 6 misconducts.
Issues obtained actually heated within the third interval, first with a smidge over seven minutes left within the sport when the groups obtained chippy, sending Tom Wilson of the Capitals and Logan Stankoven of the Hurricanes to the dressing rooms early.
Not two minutes later, one other scrap broke out, together with an precise combat between Washington’s Brandon Duhaime and Carolina’s Tyson Jost, resulting in 4 misconducts.
However the greatest — and most polarizing brouhaha came about on the 14:38 mark when the Capitals’ Connor McMichael — who was helmet-less — was lifted up and introduced all the way down to the ice exhausting by Jalen Chatfield.
Capitals middle Pierre Luc-Dubois mentioned there have been a couple of issues that led to the boiling over resulting in full-on brawls.
“In a game like this, there’s frustration,” Dubois mentioned, in accordance with the Washington Put up. “And then when guys go unpunished for dirty plays, dirty slashings — refs, a bit overwhelmed, miss some key, key things that happen. Then frustration takes over. It’s an emotional sport.”
The Chatfield takedown was notably mentioned on social media, with some calling for the NHL Division of Participant Security to overview it.
Longtime hockey author Ken Campbell opined that these kinds of performs might at some point be deadly in a worst-case situation.
“Just a reminder after that Chatfield-McMichael scrap: Somebody is going to die from a head injury sustained in a hockey fight someday,” he wrote on X. I’ve been saying it for years now. Is perhaps 10 years from now, is likely to be tomorrow night time. However it can occur. It’s inevitable.”
“Really dangerous move by Chatfiel,” the account scouting the refs wrote. “Interesting to see if DOPS weighs in. … They’ll certainly be taking a look.”
