Washington Capitals forward Garnet Hathaway was tossed from Wednesday’s game against the Anaheim Ducks for spitting on Ducks’ defenseman Erik Gudbranson during a brawl that took place during the second period.
“That’s about as low as you dig a pit, really,” Gudbranson said (h/t ESPN). “It’s a bad thing to do. It’s something you just don’t do in a game, and he did it.”
When discussing the incident after the game, Hathaway expressed remorse for his actions.
“Unfortunately, spit came out of my mouth after I got sucker-punched, and it went onto him,” Hathaway said. “It has no place. It was an emotional play by me. You don’t plan any of that stuff in your head, and it was a quick reaction and unfortunately the wrong one for me to a sucker punch.”
The brawl was brewing for most of the chippy game, and things boiled over with 33.4 seconds left in the second period when Capitals forward Brendan Leipsic leveled Ducks’ Derek Grant behind the net, which set off a series of fights between the team’s fourth lines, and eventually involved all 10 players on the ice.
“It just escalated,” Ducks’ defenseman Brendan Guhle said. “It for sure was in the works. There were scrums all night. Guys were going after each other. That’s how it goes sometimes.”
“These games can get physical, and they can get nasty,” Ducks coach Dallas Eakins said. “These guys’ll throw down, drop their gloves. That stuff goes on in the game, but what I saw there I haven’t seen; I think I’ve been in pro hockey 30 years, maybe, and I’ve never seen that before. It’s just something you don’t see in the game.”
The loss of Hathaway to suspension will be a devastating blow to the Caps’ roster moving forward.
“It seems like it’s been a constant equation for us the last little while here,” Capitals’ head coach Todd Reirden said. “[We’ll] see where we’re at in terms of injured players and [the] potential situation here with whatever the league does. It’s out of my hands now.”
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