Call it testiness, feistiness or just mutual disdain. There was plenty of it between the Black Hawks and the Philadelphia Flyers in the third period Sunday at the Stadium.
The teams exchanged pot shots, cheap shots and assorted slurs toward the end of the tight-checking game. Nothing too serious. Just a barb or two. Or three.
One coach didn`t like what an opposition player did. The other coach didn`t like what the first coach said. And neither coach was ready to have dinner with the other. It was just fun at the old ice pond in front of 17,535.
The Hawks` Denis Savard joined in, too. More about him later.
It`s hard to tell who won the verbal war, but neither team was a winner. The Flyers escaped with a 2-2 tie thanks to a third-period power-play goal by Ilkka Sinisalo.
The bad blood surfaced when Flyers` coach Mike Keenan took exception to a third-period check that Hawks` center Troy Murray applied to Pelle Eklund. Murray claimed he had been unjustly restrained by Eklund and responded with a hands-on check to Eklund`s back.
As Murray came off the ice, Keenan had a few words for him. He wasn`t asking Murray how to get downtown, but he did, in so many words, tell him where to go.
”I made a remark to Troy Murray after he two-handed Eklund over the head,” Keenan said. ”(Hawks` coach Bob) Pulford responded to that. I didn`t pay any attention to Pulford. I thought Murray`s play was very uncalled for.” What did Murray have to say, Coach? ”The usual response you get out of any hockey player,” Keenan said. ”You can fill in the blanks, but you can`t write it.”
Pulford heard Keenan berating Murray and decided he`d join the discussion. ”He was yelling at Troy Murray, and I just told Keenan to shut up,” Pulford said. ”That`s all. I didn`t see what Troy did, but whatever he did, Keenan didn`t like it too much.”
”It was just a spontaneous thing that happened,” Murray said. ”We were just yelling back and forth. He didn`t like it. It was an intense game, a physical game. There were two pretty big teams on the ice. I don`t see why Keenan would get so upset about one thing. There was a lot of clutching and grabbing. When that happens, the sticks tend to come up a bit.”
Later in the period, Savard was heading toward the bench after he had been hit with the puck. More trouble.
”I got hit in the ribs, and I went to the bench and somebody on their bench cheered, `Glad you`re hurt,` ” Savard said. ”I got mad, and I swung my stick toward the bench. It was really stupid. I shouldn`t do that kind of thing.”
Flyers` winger Rick Tocchet was the near-recipient of Savard`s errant slash. ”Somebody on our bench said something to him, he swung his stick and it almost hit me,” Tocchet said. ”There`s nothing you can do about it when you`re in a tough game. It`s a perfect example of playoff hockey, high tension.
”I think both teams have a lot of respect for each other. Today was the chippiest game of the three with them. It was just high-tension hockey.”
The Hawks had lost their previous two games with the Flyers, 5-2 at the Stadium in October and 6-2 in Philadelphia in November.
There`s still more about this game. With 40 seconds left in the overtime period, Behn Wilson and Tocchet went at it for a few miuntes behind the Hawks` net. The Hawks` Darryl Sutter and his brothers, Rich and Ron of the Flyers, were also nearby.
”When you get Behn, one of the best punchers in the league, I was just trying to get in there and cool things down,” said Darryl, whose first-period goal tied the score 1-1.
”Darryl and me push and shove a little bit, but we`re smart enough not to do anything stupid,” said Rich Sutter, whose line was on against his brother, Tom Lysiak and Keith Brown.
Rich Sutter, ejected from the game for being the third man in the fight with Wilson, thought the Flyers were getting the best of the Hawks.
”I thought we started to get the upper hand on them,” he said. ”They started to tire. Behn got a little excited. The reason I got in there was there were two guys on Ronnie, and he`s only one. I think Darryl was trying to be the referee.”
This game needed a couple of extra ones, on and off the ice.
