The World Deserves To See An Alex Ovechkin vs John Tortorella Fight
Things got a little testy between the Washington Capitals and Columbus Blue Jackets last night. CBJ was waxing that ass 4-1 at the end of the 1st period and usually when games get that out of hand that early, you know it’s going to devolve into a real gongshow at some point. So toward the end of the first period after a little pushing and shoving, Matt Calvert ended up catching Ovechkin with a stick to the face in which Ovi went down like a sack of bricks. John Tortorella, one of the very few remaining old school hockey guys in the league, wasn’t all too impressed and thought Ovechkin should try out for the diving team. After voicing his displeasure of his acting, the two of them had a nice little chit chat by the Blue Jackets’ bench.
Unfortunately, neither Ovechkin nor Torts were mic’d up for this altercation. Fortunately, however, I was able to obtain some exclusive audio from the conversation and please do not ask me how I got this.
Wouldn’t expect anything less coming from these two. But seriously, I don’t think I could ever pick two people in hockey who are two completely opposite halves of the same whole like Torts and Ovi. I mean, I guess Ovechkin plays a pretty strong game which Torts can respect. Like I feel that Tortorella would hate the shit out of a player like Jonathan Drouin way more than he’d hate Ovechkin. But you’ve got Ovi who has some flash to his game, isn’t known for his work ethic in the defensive zone even though he’s been much better at that, and on top of everything he’s a Russian. Torts, on the other hand, is old school meat and potatoes puck. The kind of guy who would rather have Justin Abdelkader on his team than Phil Kessel. It also wouldn’t surprise me if he still refers to Russia as the “Soviet Union”. The two of them complete each other. Their personalities are completely different yet somehow the same. I think it would be a fight for the ages.
Speaking of player vs non-player altercations from last night, I thought we were about to have another Dennis Wideman situation on our hands and have the entire Lightning bench try to fight this ref after he threw Cedric Paquette’s glove at him on the bench.
To be fair, Paquette 100% deserved this and I love to see the stripes give it back to the players every once in a while. But I feel like if Ryan Callahan wasn’t worried about taking a “too many men” penalty he would have jumped right on the ice and beat that zebra’s ass.