October 27, 2011, Pittsburgh Penguins-New York Islanders fightless game column for HockeyPrimeTime.com

Nothing violent about this Penguin win on Long Island

Columns

Written by Denis Gorman

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 16:10

On February 11, the Penguins visited the Islanders in a game that turned into a violent spectacle. The season's first meeting was hyped up by MSG Network in anticipation of a violent redux. Thankfully the reality was a routine hockey game. UNIONDALE, NY – The reality did not match the anticipation. See, on Tuesday night at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the New York Islanders and Pittsburgh Penguins kicked off their season series. It was their second meeting since Feb. 11. That evening at the Nassau Coliseum, the two teams engaged in a two-hour, 58-minute long gang fight on ice. The numbers from that night are as obscene as they are outrageous: A combined 346 penalty minutes. Seventeen players with 10 or more penalty minutes. Fifteen fighting majors. Ten game misconduct penalties. Tangentially related was that the Islanders won the game, 9-3. John Tavares (a goal and three assists) had four points. Michael Grabner, Matt Moulson and Travis Hamonic each had three points; P.A. Parenteau finished with two points. But the theme of that evening was the NHL's worst example of team-on-team violence since the Colorado-Detroit rivalry was a brawl for Western Conference supremacy throughout the mid-to-late 1990s. The specter of the Feb. 11 game hung over Tuesday night’s match. How could it not? The venue and the teams were the same. Media outlets in New York and Pittsburgh scrutinized what occurred in the short-and-long term aftermath – professionally. No matter where one falls on the fighting-in-hockey debate, this was a legitimate story and ignoring it would have been amateurish. But there is a difference between reporting a story and manipulating a story to push a narrative. MSG Network in New York aired commercials in the days leading up to last night’s game that highlighted the Feb. 11 brawls. The commercials were not MSG’s first attempt to celebrate the fight-marred game. The cable network was going to re-air a series of games in their entirety during the summer. The Islanders scheduled viewing parties around the games. But once word began to leak that the Feb. 11 game was going to be shown at one of the viewing parties, it was the Islanders – not MSG – that absorbed most of the criticism. The Islanders asked MSG to select another game to air in its place and cable outlet acquiesced. How disappointed the Islanders' cable partner must have been when the realization dawned that the two teams were uninterested in slamming fists off skulls. Still, the unspoken insinuation in airing the fight-filled spots was clear: There will be violence and you don’t want to miss it. How disappointed the Islanders’ cable partner must have been when the realization dawned that the two teams were uninterested in slamming fists off skulls. There were only five minor penalties in the Penguins’ mostly unmemorable 3-0 win. Each team was 0-for-2 on the power play and the closest instance of on-ice viciousness was Marty Reasoner’s four-minute high-sticking minor in the third period. Marc-Andre Fleury stopped 33 shots to record his 20th career shutout and Dan Bylsma earned his 121st win in his 200th regular season game as coach of the Penguins. Pascal Dupuis scored the game-winning goal on a semi-breakaway with 2:54 remaining in the first period. Islanders castoffs Richard Park and Aaron Asham teamed up on Pittsburgh’s second goal and Jordan Staal potted an empty netter with 2:00 left. Instead of discussing punches and promises of retribution, the postgame conversation topics spanned the gamut of hockey: Evgeni Malkin’s return after missing five games; an extraordinary defensive effort by the Penguins; a quartet of Pittsburgh defensemen – Matt Niskanen, Deryk Engelland, Ben Lovejoy and Paul Martin – combining for 15 of the team's 26 blocked shots; the Islanders’ third straight loss, and whether the trendy pre-season pick to compete for an Eastern Conference playoff berth needed to break up its line combinations in order to generate offense. What transpired at Nassau Coliseum on the night of Feb. 11 was unforgettable. So a resumption of the violence Tuesday night was unnecessary. No, Tuesday night at the Coliseum did not live up to the hype. Thankfully. On Twitter: @HockeyPrimeTime and @DenisGorman Photos by Getty Images

Last Updated on Wednesday, October 26, 2011 19:26

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