In Wednesday night’s Colorado-Calgary game, we nearly saw a fight between two players you may not have expected to go at it: Mark Giordano and Jarome Iginla.
According to hockeyfights.com, Giordano has 12 regular season NHL fights in his career, but none last season and only three since 2012. Iginla is a little more prolific in this department with 69 regular season NHL fights in his career, eight of which have come in the past three seasons, including a tilt with Washington big body Tom Wilson on Oct. 18.
But it may have been unexpected because the two guys consider each other friends. They were teammates from when Giordano first entered the league in 2005-06 until Iginla was traded away from Calgary in the 2012-13 season. It would have been strange, and probably a little funny to watch the two go at it had the linesmen allowed it to happen.
After the game, Giordano and Iginla both spoke about the near-throwdown.
“There’s some emotions. I think we bumped into each other a few times before that,” Giordano said. “I tell you guys all the time, he’s one of the most competitive guys out there. It was just words really.
“Sometimes you get into fights with your buddies too, or disagreements. It was just one of those things. I think I bumped him a couple shifts earlier and he wasn’t too happy about it and let me know.”
For Flames coach Glen Gulutzan’s part, he didn’t want to see the tilt maybe as much as some fans would have.
Things like this flare up in the heat of the moment in a game and, really, these athletes are high-end competitive performers so friendships get checked at the gate. It really isn’t all that surprising this could happen after a slash.
But it is kind of funny to look back on this After Hours segment with Giordano from last season, where he talked about taking over the Calgary captaincy from Iginla after he left.
“What I did take from Iggy is, number one, he’s one of the most competitive guys you’ll ever meet. He wants to win, score goals get points all that stuff he’s just a really competitive person whether it be in practice or games and I took that from him…”
“But the biggest thing I tried to take from him was the way he treated people. He always treated people so well. The city loved him, the people around Calgary loved him and they still do.”
Should the linesmen have let them go at it? Well, not really as their job is to stop fights or break them up after they’ve begun.
It is fun to see these run-ins between friends on opposite teams in the NHL though, so let’s take the opportunity to bring up again a funny little moment between Dallas’ Jamie Benn and Colorado’s Tyson Barrie from a late-December game.
After Barrie ran into Stars goalie Kari Lehtonen, Benn found himself tangled with the Avs defenceman in the corner. The situation didn’t escalate at all and, in fact, seemed to de-escalate against the boards.
To which one person pointed out on Twitter: hey these guys are so close they’re like brothers!