By Brad Hubbard | @bradhubbard
152 penalty minutes and eight ejections just two seconds into the game.
The penalty box was more crowded then a Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on Friday night.
That was what came out of the line brawl at the start of the game between the Vancouver Canucks and the Calgary Flames Saturday night in Vancouver. It didn’t end there. Canucks coach John Tortorella went after the Calgary coaching staff during the first intermission.
You don’t see this stuff a lot anymore at any level of hockey. When you do, a Tortorella coached team is usually involved.
This is some ‘old school’ hockey and something we don’t see a lot of anymore. The new school however took over when it came to letting people know about it.
This was instantaneously on twitter. TSN had the video on their site before the first period was over.
The Canucks YouTube page had multiple videos up by Midnight (game time was 7:30pm PST) including Tortorella’s press conference (Calgary places all of their video on Flames.tv). Best part was they promoted the opening face off where the brawl took place during Tortorella’s press conference.
The Canucks, the networks and the NHL could have easily shied away from this saying that ‘this isn’t what the game is about’ and so on.
They’re not. They are embracing it. This happened, here it is for you to see and here is the reaction afterwards. This was great execution by the teams, networks and league.
For the record, the Canucks won 3-2 in a shootout.
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