Breaking down the scrum that led to 10 skaters kicked out of Panthers-Senators game
The ruling from referee Garrett Rank said it all.
“Every player on the ice has a 10-minute misconduct among other penalties.”
Wait... what?
A full-on scrum broke out midway through a heated third period in the Florida Panthers’ 5-0 win over the Ottawa Senators on Monday at Canadian Tire Centre after Senators forward Brady Tkachuk interfered with Florida goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and Panthers players took exception to it.
After a few other fracases occurred before that — a near benches clearing scrum at the end of the second period, Ottawa’s Zach MacEwen being ejected for a check to Matthew Tkachuk’s head early in the third, and Tkachuk fighting Ottawa’s Jake Sanderson shortly after that — the game had reached its tipping point.
And a whole lot of players found themselves heading to the dressing room for the final eight minutes of the game.
Gone for the Panthers: Jonah Gadjovich, Kevin Stenlund, Ryan Lomberg, Dmitry Kulikov and Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
Gone for the Ottawa: Brady Tkachuk, Erik Brannstrom, Rourke Chartier, Travis Hamonic and Drake Batherson.
“Just a hockey game,” Panthers coach Paul Maurice said. “You can’t play light in the game. Both teams want to win. You get a little snarly. That was fun. It’s good.”
For good measure, Florida’s Sam Bennett and Ottawa’s Mathieu Joseph were also tossed from the game about two minutes later after another dustup.
It led to 13 total players — seven from Ottawa, six from Florida — being tossed in the final period and 167 total penalty ice minutes throughout the course of the game (151 of them coming in the third period).
In addition to the 12 misconducts and the match penalty, there were 14 minor penalties, one bench penalty and the two fighting penalties.
“That was mild,” Maurice said with a laugh. “We only got to about 160-some minutes there. It’s got to get into the 250s before it gets too squirrely. Sometimes hockey can get like that. That’s part of why the game’s so darn great because it’s graceful and beautiful and physical and angry all at the same time. It’s probably good for both team. You get to make it part of the story of your year.”
By the time all of that was over, the Panthers’ bench was bare, to the point where backup goaltender Anthony Stolarz was able to get comfortable and have all sorts of leg room.
The Panthers were already comfortably ahead 4-0 at the time of the main scrum and scored a fifth goal for good measure in the final minutes.
“You don’t see that every night,” said Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov, a rare player without a penalty on Monday, “but most important were the two points that we wanted to get here.”
This story was originally published November 27, 2023 at 10:47 PM.
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