Last night in the final minutes of the third period against the St. Louis Blues, Minnesota Wild captain Jared Spurgeon went for an unfortunately uncharacteristically ugly cross-check at Pavel Buchnevich’s ankle.
Dean Evason reacted (pretty generally) on this hit, as well as on Kevin Fiala’s high-sticking, and Marcus Foligno’s fight near the end of the game, saying, “we’ve got to play between the whistles and forget about the crap. We don’t need to do that… They’re avoidable penalties.”
Evason’s absolutely correct here. I’m not anti-fighting, I think the idea that one might have to be on the other side of a Foligno superman punch if they get up to any funny business is well, a kind of fun deterrent and something that I think makes hockey an especially fun sport.