It started, not innocently enough, with a slash.
Well, that might be underselling it. The two-hander Brad Marchand unleashed on an unsuspecting opponent who had the audacity to try to steal his puck, his teammates said, was more like a baseball swing.
“It was minor midget and there was a guy chasing Brad down the ice,” said Andrew Bodnarchuk. “And the guy just kept hooking at Brad’s elbow and his hands trying to get the puck from him — just these little hooks that were probably agitating him — and Brad just snapped. He let the puck go and did a 180 and kind of swung his stick like a baseball bat and caught the guy right in the face.