*NOTE: The in-game microphones picked up some colorful language. Some may find it inappropriate.*
Saturday night’s blowout between the Nashville Predators and Winnipeg Jets saw it all. It saw the largest victory margin in the NHL this season, a 7-0 win for the Predators and as many penalty minutes — if not more — than some teams have all season long.
Before watching what happened and seeing the hilarity, let’s build up to what happened. The Predators were up 5-0 in the third thanks to an opening frame that saw Nashville scored four goals on nine shots. The Winnipeg rush was blown dead due to an offside, and that’s when an unwritten rule was broken.
Jets forward Mark Scheifele put the puck in the Nashville net well after the whistle, leading to a lot of unhappy players. The first player to go after Scheifele was defenseman Ryan Ellis, and that resulted in everyone getting involved. And because of the fact that teams were in the middle of a line change, there were far more players on the ice than usual.
Now it clearly wasn’t the most intense altercation between two teams in a one-sided game, but the end result was nevertheless funny. After the penalties were sorted out — almost all of which being unsportsmanlike conduct infractions — there were 13 penalties in total called as a result of the scrum. That led to 12 players in the penalty boxes that aren’t made to hold that many people. It ended up looking like a packed clown car.
When the game was over, 35 penalties had been handed out, totaling a whopping 156 minutes. Even Predators goaltender Pekka Rinne got in on the penalty action for leaving the crease to join the “fun”.
The full penalty listing for the altercation can be found below:
Nashville Pekka Rinne – Leaving the Crease – 2 minutes (Served by James Neal)
Nashville Colin Wilson – Unsportsmanlike conduct – 2 minutes
Nashville Mattias Ekholm – Unsportsmanlike conduct – 2 minutes
Nashville Mike Fisher – Unsportsmanlike conduct – 2 minutes
Nashville James Neal – Unsportsmanlike conduct – 2 minutes
Nashville Miikka Salomaki – Cross-checking – 2 minutes
Nashville Ryan Ellis – Unsportsmanlike conduct – 2 minutes
Winnipeg Mark Scheifele – Unsportsmanlike conduct – 2 minutes
Winnipeg Blake Wheeler – Unsportsmanlike conduct – 2 minutes
Winnipeg Jacob Trouba – Unsportsmanlike conduct – 2 minutes
Winnipeg Drew Stafford – Unsportsmanlike conduct – 2 minutes
Winnipeg Andrew Copp – Unsportsmanlike conduct – 2 minutes
Winnipeg Mark Stuart – Unsportsmanlike conduct – 2 minutes