Saturday's Wild Avalance tilt took a bit of an ugly turn early in the third period when Wild rookie, Brandon Duhaime, cross checked Bowen Byram who crashed awkwardly into the boards. Nathan MacKinnon took exception to the hit and dropped his gloves and squared off with Duhaime.
The two threw a couple of punches before Duhaime wrestled MacKinnon to the ice. The two were given roughing minors rather than fighting majors which was clearly the case. This allowed MacKinnon to remain in the game as he was most definitely the instigator in the altercation.
I find it amusing that he wants to play judge and jury of the NHL rule book when he was the beneficiary of the wrong call being levied against him.
Either way this became the turning point as the Wild had to kill a 5-minute major but worse was that MacKinnon was allowed to stay in the game himself and actually find himself on the ice for the conclusion of the Avalanche man advantage.
The game itself was very closely contested, for the most part with Colorado delivering the dagger with the powerplay marker on the aforementioned 5-minute major penalty. That is how the game plays out somtimes and it was not a bad call to send the Wild down a man, the question here is how was this not a fight affter the original penalty along with an instigator penalty being tacked on to the one who clearly started the altercation.
The NHL as they do with all 5-minute major penalties assessed, reviewed the play and felt that no further discipline was due to Duhaime. It does set the tone for the future Wild Avalanche encounters which should be amped up even more as the season wears on.
Kirill Kaprizov and Kevin Fiala again were held in check Saturday night. The Wild's top offensive threats need to figure it out sooned rather than later because these contests with the league's upper echelon teams is where they need to shine if the Wild are to indeed take the monumental leap forward they are anticipating.
Next up for the Wild is Ottawa tomorrow night in St. Paul, as they look to end their two game skid.