Fights!

If somebody had come up to me on Friday afternoon and said, "Hey, there's going to be two huge fights this weekend. Who do you think will start them?" I would have quickly responded with "North Dakota and the Russians"(FWIW, that's also the answer to "Which two teams are run by the Mafia?"). So without further ado:

North Dakota fights Wisconsin.

I don't have a huge problem with Rylan Kaip's hit. The slo-mo replay shows that it's a pretty clean hit. He keeps his elbows down and doesn't charge. It was dumb when Jack Johnson got suspended for hitting a guy too hard, and it would be dumb for Kaip to get suspended for hitting a guy too hard. He did put his hands in Brendan Smith's face after the hit, so I was fine with him getting an extra two out of the deal.

Matt Watkins wild left hook, on the other hand, was just plain unsporting. There's no fight without that punch, so if anything further comes from this, it should probably go to him. And this was like the second or third time I've seen Zach Jones try to get a fighting major and only end up with a 10-minute misconduct. The kid needs to hit the heavy bag or something.

And Russia fights the US at the U17 Four Nations Cup.

I can't really tell what started it. I'm sure there was some frustration on the US side though, that Russia ended up with a 12-2 powerplay advantage, and were also given a penalty shot, on their home ice. The Russians scored both their goals on the powerplay in the 2-1 win. Props to BC recruit Brandon Maxwell though. For a goalie, that kid can really throw.