Caps Brawl for It All
A brouhaha erupted Nov. 21st in Beantown. It was the Boston Tea
Party revisited; an abnormal in-your-face 24-fist salute.
Having lost badly the previous night to Ottawa (4-1), the
Washington Capitals were in no mood to let any team bully them.
Yet that is exactly what happened when Boston took an early 3-0
lead before the first period was halfway over.
Then...BOOM! With 11 minutes 42 seconds gone in the period, all
hell broke loose as all 12 players on the ice - including goalies
Byron Dafoe and Olie Kolzig - got involved in the type of
free-for-all only seen in pro wrestling; the only difference
being that this was real with no preplanned choreography.
Dafoe locked horns with Washington captain Dale Hunter, while
Kolzig raced up the ice to fight Ken Belanger. Eventually, both
goaltenders were spun into each other, and the fisticuffs were
underway. One clause, though. Kolzig and Dafoe are best friends
who used to live in a bachelor pad during off-seasons in Phoenix,
and both were best men at each other's weddings. As a result,
there was no bad blood between these friends. After Dafoe
wrestled Kolzig's jersey to the ice, both goalies smiled at each
other, as if they were wondering, "Can this really be
happening?"
"It's tough fighting your best friend," Kolzig said. "We respect
each other quite a bit. It wasn't like he came after me. He went
after one of our guys that broke away. I was going after one of
their guys that broke away from the linesman. We ended up getting
together."
When law and order was finally restored, Mark Faucette did
something a referee hasn't done this decade. He ejected all 12
players - Washington's Mark Tinordi, Dmitri Mironov, Ken Klee,
Craig Berube, Hunter and Kolzig; and Boston's Ken Baumgartner,
Peter Ferraro, Don Sweeney, Grant Ledyard, Belanger and Dafoe.
Berube was suspended the next day by NHL Vice President Colin
Campbell for fighting through a linesman's restraint to get to a
Boston player.
The Capitals' 137 penalty minutes are a team record for one
period, and the combined 259 penalty minutes also set a record
for one period of play.
This team-bonding experience is exactly what the Capitals need.
Coach Ron Wilson has been vocal the past two weeks about players
who aren't giving it their all, although he hasn't named names.
But finally, to Wilson's happiness, players took it upon
themselves to create a spark and stick up for their teammates.
This new attitude paid immediate dividends when the Capitals
stormed back from the 3-0 deficit to send the game to overtime,
knotted up at four. However, Washington only won the battle, not
the war. The war ended when former Capital Jason Allison scored
the game-winning goal with 30 seconds left in overtime. Another
former Capital, Anson Carter, was stationed behind the net, to
the right of goaltender Rick Tabaracci, before finding Allison
alone in the slot. Allison wasted no time in zipping a one-timer
past Tabaracci.
"Our guys hung in there," said Wilson, who had never witnessed 12
players being tossed from a game. "We dug a hole early. But I'm
proud of their effort. It's too bad the way things turned out at
the end."
Said Kolzig: "We wanted to come out and play hard. Maybe we
played a little too hard. I like the way the team rallied. But
the bottom line is we lost."
Bruins coach Pat Burns thinks the fight stemmed from last
season's first round playoff series, which Washington won, 4-2.
"You could feel it coming when we got a big lead in the first
period," he said.
News and Notes
Left winger Richard Zednik was suspended five games for
high-sticking Toronto defenseman Daniil Markov in a Nov. 18 win
at MCI Center....
Wilson put his team through an extensive videotape session
after losing to Buffalo, 4-1, on Nov. 12. He closed practice to
fans and the media, which is a violation of NHL regulations. The
offense was reported to the league office, but no ruling has been
made public....
Jan Bulis re-injured his ankle in Boston. Soft ice is said to
have caused the problem....
Slow starts have plagued the Capitals. In four of their
last five games, the opposition has scored the first goal in the
opening three minutes of play. In the other outing, the Capitals
were scored on by the eight-minute mark....
Washington, as of Nov. 25, resides in fourth place in the
Southeast Division and 14th in the Eastern Conference. The
Capitals have 15 points (6-9-3). Carolina leads the division with
19 points (8-10-3).
The Capitals begin an eight-game road-trip Dec. 5th, the
longest in team history.
