If, like me, you were glued to Breaking Bad on Sunday night, you missed a gong-show of a Toronto-Buffalo pre-season game, and Phil Kessel’s very own David vs. Goliath moment.
The whole thing started when Leafs tough guy prospect Jamie Devane squared off with Sabres winger Corey Tropp midway through the third. Tropp’s helmet popped off in the fight and his head bounced off the ice when the two hit the deck, requiring a dazed Tropp to be helped off.
At centre ice, Buffalo winger John Scott muttered a few choice words and wheeled around unlikely dance partner Phil Kessel in that mock-casual threatening posture that amounts to revving your engine at a stop light.
When he and Kessel lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, the visual alone was ridiculous: Scott is 6-foot-8 and 270 pounds, and looks like he smiles when the dentist tells him he’s going to need a root canal. Kessel, at six-foot-nothing and 202 pounds, almost always looks like he was just informed that Champ, the beloved old yellow lab his parents sent to live “on a nice farm” when he was in Grade 5 really didn’t go to a farm at all.
In a single gesture, Scott dropped his stick, shed his gloves and grabbed for Kessel’s helmet. Kessel smacked Scott’s hands away, then backed up far enough to buy himself a second or two. He looked like a proud but startled tourist walking through Times Square after dark—and not Times Square now, all glittery and safe and family-friendly; legitimately scary 1980s Times Square.
You can practically see his thought process: “This guy is large and means business. Should I just hand over my wallet and watch, like I read in the guidebook, or can I fight back?” Kessel decided he had time to reach for that bottle of pepper spray tucked into his fanny pack. He reared back, grabbed his stick with both hands and swung at Scott’s giant, angry ankles.
This attracted the attention of Kessel’s teammates and a small herd of them sailed in to defend him, tackling Scott. Kessel found the opportunity to take another two-handed slash at Scott just before his would-be adversary went down under a pile of Leafs.
The whole thing combusted into an instant line brawl—including a goalie fight, which is a clumsy, wondrous spectacle for which we should always be grateful—and Kessel drew a more appropriately sized adversary in 6-foot-1, 180-pound Buffalo centre Brian Flynn.
When it was all over, 205 penalty minutes had been dished out—including a match penalty with an automatic suspension for Kessel’s lightsaber routine and 27 penalty minutes for Scott—and the Leafs ultimately won 5-3. David Clarkson will pay the steepest price, with a possible 10-game suspension for launching himself off the bench and into the fray.
“I guess they figured they needed two guys to take down John (Scott),” Ryan Miller said afterward.
Seems like a reasonable calculation.