The second period of Thursday’s Senators-Panthers game had just about everything except a fight between Brady and Matthew Tkachuk. The two brothers did engage in separate scraps during the same frenetic shift, though.
While Givani Smith and Mark Kastelic engaged in a bout in the first period — and Patrick Brown and Radko Gudas threw down earlier in the second — the ill will really took off when (Matthew) Tkachuk deleted Alex DeBrincat with an absolutely devastating check after DeBrincat caught him with a shot earlier in the game.
Tkachuk and Jake Sanderson mixed it up moments after that hit. Then, all hell broke loose.
As the bad feelings boiled over, Alex Lyon’s net seemed to be a den for violence. One big exchange happened after Patrick Brown gave Lyon a snow-shower.
Radko Gudas went after Brown, netting the two matching fighting majors, while Brown also received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Senators forward Austin Watson also received a misconduct penalty for his part in the melee.
More than once, (Brady) Tkachuk made contact with Lyon. After one of those exchanges, chaos ensued, with Brady taking down Marc Staal in a scrap, while Matthew got the best of Drake Batherson.
Through two periods, the teams combined for a whopping 90 penalty minutes. With Brady Tkachuk ejected for his activities earlier in the game and the Panthers in the midst of an extremely tight playoff race, it was Florida putting the nail in the coffin of the Senators’ season with a 7-2 win — officially eliminating Ottawa from postseason contention.
Though the middle frame saw the brunt of the scraps, the tensions certainly boiled over to the third. Both teams were handed several roughing penalties and misconducts as things continued to percolate, before DeBrincat (seemingly) tried to avenge the earlier hit he suffered at the hands of the Panthers’ star agitator.
When all was said and done, the two teams totaled a whopping 166 penalty minutes on the night, which was the most combined PIMS in an NHL game in about six-and-a-half years.
Not to be overshadowed amid the mayhem was Florida’s third-string-turned-starting goaltender Alex Lyon, who posted an egregious 56 stops, setting a Panthers franchise record for most saves in a game that ended in regulation.
The 30-year-old journeyman, now with a whopping 36 career starts to his name, has been on a ridiculous run since the end of last month, going 5-0 with a save percentage hovering around .970 (!!) since March 29 while almost single-handedly lifting the Panthers into the top wild-card spot after the team looked down and out not that long ago.
