BOSTON, MA - OCTOBER 18: Nathan Horton #18 of the Boston Bruins and Tim Gleason #6 of the Carolina Hurricanes fight in the third period on October 18, 2011 at TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. The Carolina Hurricanes defeated the Boston Bruins 4-1. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)
In the first period, Anthony Stewart scored to make it 1-0 Canes.
In the second period, Joni Pitkanen scored to make it 2-0 Canes. With less than six minutes in the period, Nathan Horton and Jay Harrison were shoving and pushing each other in front of the Canes net. Zdeno Chara came flying in and instigated a fight with Harrison. He would be the only one to throw punches and he some good uppercuts in as Harrison hung on for dear life. After the fight, goalie Cam Ward skated over to Chara and had some words for him. You could see Chara say "huh?" and lean in to hear Ward, and then Chara had some words for him too. Then everyone was grabbing onto each other, Lucic grabbing two Canes players who wanted nothing to do with Lucic. If you see the replay watch Alexei Ponikarovsky. The guy is 6'4" and gets out of there as fast as possible and leaves a smaller Canes player there to deal with Lucic. What a teammate. Tuukka Rask came down the ice to have a word with Ward and they exchanged some words but it seemed like calm words.
In the third period, Rich Peverley scored a power-play goal for the Bruins to make 2-1. A little later, Milan Lucic would try and get at Tim Gleason but Gleason wouldn't want anything to do with Lucic. Bryan Allen came over and hugged on Lucic, who also didn't want to fight Lucic. Chris Kelly and Brett Sutter would drop the gloves and have a good fight with Kelly knocking down Sutter with a punch. One minute after all of this, Nathan Horton would just lose it and he went after Gleason. Gleason turtled and Horton tried to get at him with a linesman between them while Gleason stayed down and covered up. Watching the replay it just looked like Gleason pushed Horton, nothing too serious, but Horton lost his cool and took a bad double-minor and also got a 10-minute misconduct for not stopping when the linesmen got in there. After the Horton-Gleason incident, the refs started calling everything on the Bruins that they thought would cause more scrums. Chara would get called for high-sticking because of a good sell-job by Skinner. Brad Marchand would get a 10-minute misconduct and gone from the game for a little jab at Skinner. Dennis Seidenberg got called for boarding. Later, Lucic would get a 10-minute misconduct for pushing Gleason. Bruins coach Claude Julien would also get thrown out of the game, apparently for shaking his head at the ref after the Lucic misconduct. Eric Staal and Tuomo Ruutu would score power-play goals to make it 4-1. Staal had an "Ovechkin moment" as after his goal he skated to the glass screaming at Bruins fans and then slamming the glass with his hands. Stay classy Staal.
*Update: You can watch all of the rough stuff and Bruins penalties in this video.
After the game
More on the Cam Ward talking to Zdeno Chara and Tuukka Rask "chats" as after the game Ward was talking more.
"The guy's 8 feet tall, and he's jumping a player. That doesn't translate as being very tough in my eyes," Ward told reporters after the game. "I'm emotional just like everybody else. When you see that happening to your own players, you wanna ... you know, I had some choice words, too, but it is what it is."
...
"I was surprised, but I didn't take it as a serious threat, so you know, it is what it is. I don't even know what was said. My heart rate didn't get up or anything. Basically, I told him to get down and back into his own net ... and he did."
Those weren't even Ward's most eye-catching quotes, either. According to Hurricanes.com writer Michael Smith, Ward had a pretty stern assessment of the situation when talking to FS Carolina's Bob Harwood.
"I'm not gonna waste my time with Tuukka Rask," Ward reportedly said to Harwood.
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So according to Cam Ward, if one of your star scorers who is returning from a concussion, is being pushed around and almost getting into a fight with someone you just let him fight and possibly risk another concussion or possible injury? Maybe that is "Canes hockey."
Cam Ward must be use to soft Canes hockey. If another goalie tries to mess with your teammates, you go down the ice and have a chat with him and maybe knock some sense into him. Gleason taught Ward well. Keep talking and turtle when you have to.
Unlike Ward, Tuukka Rask showed some class when answering questions about the "chat" he had with Ward.
@MurphysLaw74: When asked what he said to Cam Ward, Tuukka Rask said "I asked why he jumped my guys?"
@bizjacobs: To Tuukka: "Have you ever talked with [Ward] before?" Tuukka: "No, no....but he's a nice guy though."
Claude Julien couldn't say it any better.
"We have to take responsibility for our own actions here," Julien said. "The easy thing is to point out at everybody. And I think what I saw from tonight is that we start off the game well. In the first period we had some great chances, but we're not capitalizing. And what I see is frustration setting in and the minute we start getting frustrated we lose focus on our game and then it gets worse and worse. And that's been a bit of a pattern this year."
"I would rather we look at ourselves and take the responsibility and fix that because the referees didn't lose the game for us tonight," Julien added. "We lost the game ourselves. We got ourselves back in the game and then we end up with a four-minute penalty and other penalties followed after that, and it just got worse."
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Game notes
The Bruins led the game in shots 34-23, faceoff wins 35-32 and hits 29-18. The Hurricanes led the game in blocked shots 16-14. The Bruins went 1 for 4 on the power-play while the Hurricanes went 2 for 5.
Tuukka Rask played in net and got little support again. Rask made 19 saves on 23 shots. Rask is now 0-2 with a 2.52 GAA and a .915 save percentage.
Matt Bartkowski played in place of Adam McQuaid again and again he looked like he needs more time in the AHL. Hopefully Steven Kampfer is ready soon for game action.
Joe Corvo and Andrew Ference both led the Bruins with 5 shots on net.
Milan Lucic and Johnny Boychuk both led the Bruins with 6 hits each.
Onto the next one
The Bruins are now 2-4 this season. The Bruins next game is on Thursday, hosting Phil Kessel and the Toronto Maple Leafs at 7pm ET in Boston. It should be a good one.
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