Mar 19, 2016; Glendale, AZ, USA; Arizona Coyotes left wing Anthony Duclair (10) and Tampa Bay Lightning right wing J.T. Brown (23) fight during the third period at Gila River Arena. Mandatory Credit: Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports
The Arizona Coyotes love to drop the mitts, and as the second half of the 2015-2016 season’s fights show us, the post-deadline call-ups love to fight too.
The Arizona Coyotes fought 21 times officially though the 2015-2016 season and Howlin’ Hockey has hit half of those fights so far.
We learned that Max Domi has a considerable amount of pent up anger and that anger may be enough to make Max a better fighter than his enforcer father.
We learned that Brad Richardson is more than your run of the mill bottom-6 center, but a lean, mean fighting machine who can throw down with the best in the league.
We also learned that All-Star icon and folk hero John Scott fights when he wants to, and can toss people, particularly Jared Boll, around at will.
But some of the Arizona Coyotes’ best fighting moments of the 2015-2016 season lay in the second half of the team’s fight card.
Let’s look at each of the remaining 10, blow by blow starting with your Captain.
Shane Doan has made a career out of being a power forward, and with that role comes fighting. He’s good at doing both.
Every game has it’s battles and for the Arizona Coyotes, and the Captain Shane Doan is a part of many of them. Despite his age, he actively participated in all three phases of hockey last year and he never shied away from rubbing people the wrong way.
St. Louis’s Joel Edmundson was no exception to Doan’s tenacity.
During a late February game on Throwback Night, Doan threw back with Edmundson after Edmundson gave Doan an unnecessary crosscheck into the boards during a scrum. Once the two got going, Doaner landed some solid punches in early and bloodied Edmundson up pretty good.
Once Edmundson started leaking, he bear hugged Doan to keep it from getting any worse and took a few sub-par jabs at Doan’s ribs.
Doan won this bout and the win was only exaggerated by the amazing sweater he was wearing.
Of the three extra defensemen the Arizona Coyotes have vying for a roster spot in this coming season, Kevin Connauton is the most qualified when it comes to the fighting department.
Last season, the Coyotes acquired two defenseman. One was from a forced trade (which was a misguided attempt to try and snub an All-Star legend) and the other was by waivers.
Interestingly enough, one of them can fight well and the other one makes for a good punching bag.
The one who fights pretty well is Kevin Connauton.
During another losing effort on the road, Kevin Connauton was crossed by a particularly feisty-feeling Scott Laughton. Now Laughton doesn’t have an illustrious history of fighting, but he has one none the less.
So when Laughton “came off the bench and looked at him [Connauton] right away”, everybody knew Laughton was jonesing for a throwdown. Instead, Laughton got thrown down and Coyotes fans were left giggling.
So some wise advice to Laughton for the next time he wants to fight a Coyotes’ defenseman, fight the other late-season acquisition. He might be an easier go.
Speaking of late-season defensive acquisitions, this is the other defenseman I just talked about. The one who doesn’t win fights.
Jarred Tinordi likes to try and fight. The operative word in the sentence is clearly “try”.
On March 3rd against Anaheim, a scrum broke out in the Coyotes’ left corner boards after Anaheim’s Nick Ritchie took the liberty of roughing up Arizona defenseman Connor Murphy.
Now props to Tinordi, he not only stood up for a teammate against an overly aggressive opponent, but he landed a decent amount of punches on Ritchie through the course of this fight, mostly to the side and top of Ritchie’s head.
But trying only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
Tinordi felt the brunt of Ritchie’s anger, taking more shots to the face directly than he gave, not to mention the final takedown.
So once again, Jarred Tinordi, you get an A for effort, but a C- for execution.
So you’re winning a game by a lot and it’s late in the third period, would you A) finish the game like a decent hockey player or B) take a cheap shot at your opponent’s alternate captain?
Put yourself in Ryan Garbutt‘s shoes.
You’re winning a hockey game 5-1 against a team that isn’t gonna make the playoffs. You’re a bottom line player out there just wasting the final minutes of the game away so you can get on a plane to go back to Anaheim or wherever the Duck’s next game was scheduled.
Is the first thing you think to do in that scenario take an arguably illegal check on your opponent’s best defensemen?
Apparently so, because that’s exactly what Garbutt did. And boy, did Anthony Duclair and Max Domi not like that one bit.
There is a code in hockey, and part of it is that when you’re destroying an opponent on the scoreboard, you don’t need to destroy their face into the half boards.
That code being known, Domi and Duclair nearly fought each other over who got to rearrange Ryan Garbutt’s face. Domi ultimately won and gave Garbutt his two cents on the hit.
Max Domi, on this fight and subsequent suspension alone, deserves to be the next Captain of the Arizona Coyotes.
Kyle Chipchura proved over his half-decade of time in Arizona that he can fight. His bout with Alex Petrovich only reiterated that point.
Have you ever heard the quote “nobody buts baby in the corner” from the movie Dirty Dancing? It’s also apparently “nobody hits Jaromir Jagr from behind”.
So when Kyle Chipchura did check Jagr down to the ice, Alex Petrovic took issue with Chipchura’s actions and told him so through the cordial activity of flicking his gloves off and grabbing Chipchura.
Now as noble as Petrovich’s actions were, he honestly didn’t pick quite the right guy to take a stand against. Kyle Chipchura has a nasty ‘lawn-mower’ that finds a way to hit home over a half-dozen times a bout.
But then again, nobody needs to tell Petrovic that fun fact anymore considering he lost a few milliliters of blood to Chipchura after that fight.
Now another important question you may pose to yourself when watching Arizona Coyotes’ fighting videos is most certainly, “Can we please get Coyotes color commentator Tyson Nash to stop saying ‘schnozimoto’? Like, pretty please?”
Young players get plastered into the side walls during hockey games all the time by veterans, but how many rookies get up and smack around the veteran after the hit?
Typically, when a young player or a smaller goal-scorer type get smashed into the wall by a veteran grinder or defenseman, the Captain or one of the alternates will come out in defense of the now flattened rookie.
But Max Domi is not your prototypical rookie.
Max Domi is a 5 foot, 10 inch, 200 pound ball of pent up anger and aggression. I’m not certain where he gets it from, but I can take a pretty good stab at it.
None the less, Max Domi gave Marc-Edouard Vlasic a big what-for of the hit into the boards and essentially jumps Vlasic. It was all Vlasic could do to get a hold on Domi as Max let loose right after right on Vlasic, missing a couple but landing a few.
Ultimately, who doesn’t love seeing small players stand up for themselves and keep bigger players accountable for their hits?
After watching this fight, you’d swear Duclair and Brown practiced their junior hockey with teams of lumberjacks considering how many hacks the two took with their sticks.
For all of you Arizonans who are just learning about ice hockey and the rules of hockey, I’ve got a fast fact for you straight from the NHL rulebook itself:
Rule 61.1: Slashing is the act of a player swinging his stick at an opponent, whether contact is made or not. Non-aggressive stick contact to the pant or front of the shin pads, should not be penalized as slashing. Any forceful or powerful chop with the stick on an opponent’s body, the opponent’s stick, or on or near the opponent’s hands that, in the judgment of the Referee, is not an attempt to play the puck, shall be penalized as slashing.
And that’s exactly what Anthony Duclair did to JT Brown‘s stick after he tried to chop off Louis Domingue‘s hands. Now to be fair, Brown was playing the puck, but Brown took 3, essentially, slap shots in the blue paint against a goaltender who’s pads were sealed to the ice.
It may not quite be slashing on Brown’s part, but it certainly wasn’t good acumen. However the rule quoted above does say that “powerful chop with the stick on…the opponent’s hand” is a no-no and Brown certainly took an extra whack at Domingue’s hand.
And for that whack, he got the penalty of fighting Anthony Duclair. Duclair didn’t win the fight, but he stood up for his goaltender and that’s a win in the fan’s rule book.
The March 31st game against the Dallas Stars was more of an AHL call-up fight night for the Arizona Coyotes than it was a game.
By March 31st, a culmination of injuries, poor goaltending and atrocious defense had knocked the Arizona Coyotes out of the playoff picture for the 2015-2016 season.
Players with injuries were put on season ending injured reserve stints and minor leaguers were called up for what amounts to late season tryouts. One such player was a veteran defenseman named Alex Grant.
However the wrong way to make an impression is to take cheap shots on your opponents when you’re just finally getting some NHL ice time. But Grant did just that, and he took his shot on the young and talented Dallas defenseman John Klingberg.
That, my friends, was not a wise choice because the hit solicited the attention of one Mr. Colton Sceviour, fighter extraordinaire.
Grant stood his ground and wrestled off Sceviour. All in all, I left this fight cheering for Sceviour and the Stars, which was honestly a first for me.
Remember the last slide where I said the game in late March against the Stars ended up being more fight than scoring for the Arizona Coyotes? Here’s exhibit number two.
Eric Selleck has an excellent career of fighting during his time between the NHL and the AHL. But his showcase against Jordie Benn of the Dallas Stars was not one for the highlight real when he applies to be an MMA fighter after he retires from hockey.
Selleck landed a few good punches in on Benn early on after squaring up in what seemed to be the traditionalist start to a fight; both players standing their with their gloves off picking the moment to strike.
But after the initial period of contact was over, Benn found his footing, adjusted his grip and lowered his center of gravity. The result was that Jordie Benn found a grove in his punches and he left that groove on the left cheek of Eric Selleck.
I think Selleck should stick to fighting in the minors, because Jordie Benn isn’t even one of the big boys when it comes to fighting in the NHL and he got creamed.
Then again, former Coyote and Twitter/Instagram legend Paul Bissonnette fights for the Ontario Reign so maybe Selleck should just stop fighting altogether.
Max Domi hit Nate Schmidt. Nate Schmidt cross-checked Max Domi. End result: gloves on the ice and punches in the air.
It was a brief affair between Max Domi and Washington defenseman Nate Schmidt. Both took the liberty of committing some cheap shots and both were looking to mix it up.
But neither really found their footing in this match up.
Fans say Domi won this fight by a 43.8% decision, which is slightly surprising but not out of this world unbelievable.
From my count, Domi launched 5 attempts to Schmidt’s 1, but Schmidt’s landed in a better spot than all five of Domi’s plus he landed on top at the end of the scrap.
So if we are counting shear volume of punches and aggression, Domi wins the wrestling match, but if we are going for quality, this is more of a draw than a win for Domi.
None the less, Domi finished his season with a 3-0-1 fighting record. Not bad for a rookie whose hands are supposed to be for scoring.
The final fight of the 2015-2016 season was the “emotional leader” of the Arizona Coyotes and boy did he make us proud to be Coyotes fans.
Shane Doan did not beat the snot out of Roman Polak to take the Coyotes season out with a bang.
Heck, he didn’t even win the fight outright.
But he did stick up for a teammate who got hit earlier in the period, as the video notes, and demonstrate to his teammates that he will stand up for them, no matter how old he is.
Shane Doan showcases the core of what it means to be an Arizona Coyote. He is grit, determination, a little skill and a lot of heart. Doan is the Captain for a reason.
So when a teammate got hit earlier in the period, he stood up to the guy who did the deed and took the penalty minutes.
Fans voted this a draw by a 60% vote, and that vote was 100% right. Nobody won this bout outright, but in the realm of moral victories, Doan did for sure.
Mar 17, 2016; Glendale, AZ, USA; Arizona Coyotes center Max Domi (16) and San Jose Sharks defenseman Marc-Edouard Vlasic (44) fight during the second period at Gila River Arena. Mandatory Credit: Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports
The Arizona Coyotes fought all season to stay relevant with a young and unproven roster.
They stayed in the hunt through January and when things got rough, the team stuck together, standing up for one another when hits got heavy and celebrating the few goals that came their way.
If they can keep that camaraderie as tight as they did last season for the coming season, there are few reasons other than Mike Smith‘s goaltending that will keep the Arizona Coyotes from achieving their goal for the past half-decade; getting back into the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
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