Ville Ottavainen will likely be hearing from NHL Player Safety after losing his cool big time during the Seattle Kraken‘s 4-3 shootout victory over the Calgary Flames on Thursday night.
With 12:38 remaining in the second period, Ottavainen, a Finnish defenseman, tackled Brennan Othmann by the throat after the Flames forward delivered what seemed like a mostly pedestrian hit in the corner. While Othmann lay on the ice defenseless, Ottavainen threw his gloves off and then delivered three consecutive rights to the side of the young Canadian’s head before he was tackled and a melee broke out between both teams.
Ottavainen punches a defenseless Othmann
Officials gave Ottavainen a game misconduct and ejected him from the game, assessing him 17 penalty minutes on the play, including a two-minute instigator and a five-minute fighting major. Meanwhile, Othmann received a two-minute minor for charging and a 10-minute misconduct. In total, officials assessed 41 penalty minutes for the fracas that broke out, which included Seattle’s Curtis Douglas getting ejected as well.
“There’s times when you’re required to do that,” Kraken head coach Lane Lambert said broadly of the team’s physicality in the second period.
“You gotta obviously show you care for your teammates,” added Matty Beniers. “You don’t want anyone to get hurt. It was a good little pushback.”
Ottavainen’s sucker punches appeared to be payback for an elbow Othmann delivered four days earlier at Scotiabank Saddledome, slamming the Finn’s head into the glass. Othmann received a five-minute major for elbowing and a game misconduct.
Othmann elbows Ottavainen
Kraken enforcer Michael Hayden dropped the gloves with Othmann, avenging the hit.
When speaking to reporters after Thursday night’s game, Lambert praised Ottavainen’s decision-making and blamed Othmann for essentially taking too many whacks at a metaphorical bee’s nest.
“Well, um, I didn’t mind it,” Lambert said. “Othmann ran him in Calgary with a high hit and got kicked out of the game, you know. So really good job by Otto to respond to that. I don’t have a problem with that at all.”
A reporter suggested that maybe there was a better way to go about the play, especially when his player received an instigator penalty and punched a defenseless player.
“I don’t have an issue with what happened there,” Lambert said. “He took another run at him. You can only take runs at a guy for so long before he’ll respond. And then Otto threw his gloves off and that was it.”
In the other locker room, the Flames didn’t seem too concerned about the viral highlight of the game, instead focusing on how the physicality brought the team together.
“Hey, it’s the National Hockey League. You get an opportunity to get out there, sometimes the emotions get going,” Flames assistant coach Dave Lowry said of the physical second period. “But, you look at what started it, was a couple good really hard hits. They were clean. They were good hockey plays. We all know that when you play a certain way you’re going to have to stand up for yourself and I thought our guys did a good job of doing that.”
“It felt like rock ‘em sock ‘em out there,” added Jonathan Castagna. “It was an interesting second period. That’s hockey, that’s awesome.”
