The Montreal Canadiens have been playing a more physical game all year under their new head coach Michel Therrien, but they took it to a new extreme against the Philadelphia Flyers on Monday night.
It started with Canadiens forward Ryan White throwing what the referees deemed to be an elbow (replay shows that it was a shoulder) right to the jaw of Flyers defenseman Kent Huskins. Huskins went down immediately and looked to be in a lot of pain while his teammate Kurtis Foster jumped White and started to throw punches.
Foster earned a double-minor for instigating a fight with a visor, a five-minute major for fighting and a ten-minute misconduct. White received five-minutes for fighting, a five-minute major for elbowing and a match penalty. Huskins did not return to the game and the match penalty means that a suspension will be coming for White. Despite it not actually being an elbow that hit Huskins, it was still clearly a headshot.
Then later on in the game at 18:30 of the second period, Canadiens rookie Alex Galchenyuk destroyed Flyers forward Ruslan Fedetenko from behind. Flyers forward Wayne Simmonds went after Galchenyuk, unsuccessfully, and Galchenyuk was only given two-minutes for boarding. It’s unclear whether or not Galchenyuk will be suspended, but it wouldn’t shock me if he wasn’t, especially since Fedetenko returned to the game.
And let’s not forget Tomas Plekanec losing his cool and cross-checking Daniel Briere eight times after taking a faceoff against each other.
The Flyers ended up getting back at the Canadiens where it hurt them the most, on the scoreboard, winning 7-3.
