David Rittich Leads The League In BDE, And The Battle Of Alberta Is So Friggin' Back
Folks, let me tell ya something real quick. You'll never see anybody put one through David Rittich's 5-hole. And why is that, you might be asking yourself right now? Well because this man has nuts the size of watermelons just clogging it up.
I don't care what amount of strings the NHL needs to pull, but every Flames vs Oilers game needs to be on national television. I mean what were the NBCSN games last night? Preds vs Caps and Lightning vs Kings?
DOOOOOOOON'T CAAAARRRREEEE.
Those games suck. Who gives a shit about either of them? The Kings suck ass and we see Washington all the time. I know that the Battle of Alberta doesn't have a team in an American market so obviously NBCSN isn't going to want to carry that game but still. Fuck, man. Throw us a bone every once in a while. Just take one for the team and let everyone witness these two teams go at it. They play again on Saturday night and then close out the season against each other on April 4th. If neither of those games are televised nationally, we should riot. Because this game had everything you could ask for.
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It was back-and-forth. We saw some nasty goals out of Andrew Mangiapane and Matt Benning. We had Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Sean Monahan drop the mitts for maybe the most random tilt in Battle of Alberta history.
How can you not love that shit? 2 skill guys going after it. This wasn't anything that had spilled over from the game before. This wasn't anything that was brewing up for a while. This was just two teams that hate each other, and that hatred is so pure that it led to a couple of guys who never drop the mitts to try to cave each other's faces in.
Then, of course, we finally got the Zack Kassian vs Matthew Tkachuk fight everyone had been waiting for.
This was the scrap that the whole building was there to see, but truthfully I thought the undercard was a little better. But still. This is why hockey is the best. You have two guys who have beef. They've gone after each other on the ice, they've gone after each other in the media. But now they settle it like men and fight it out. And afterwards? Nothing but mutual respect.
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Then the game went to overtime and both teams had some 1-on-0 chances with the goalie but couldn't get it done. Still worth watching the full 5 minutes though.
And then finally, David Rittich gets it done in the shootout and puts the dagger in the game with the staredown of Draisaitl and the bat flip celly.
Just a ridiculous game from start to finish. And if the regular season ended today, we'd have a 7-game series coming up between these two teams in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. If the Hockey Gods truly do exist, they'll keep that matchup for us in April.