Everyone’s favourite goalie to hate is back at it.
Just seconds before the second intermission in Thursday’s game against the Colorado Avalanche, St. Louis Blues netminder Jordan Binnington got involved in a scrum after his net was knocked off its moorings. It ramped up to the point that Binnington swung his stick at Avs forward Nazem Kadri’s head, after shooting the puck at opposing goaltender Darcy Kuemper.
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Binnington was handed a 10-minute misconduct for the altercation. Being the consistent agitator that he is, Kadri skated back to the Blues goalie with a mouthful of words to spit at him, and the officials gave him an identical misconduct as well.
After the 4-3 win over the Blues, Kadri was bewildered and genuinely confused when asked why he received a misconduct and why the goaltender threw a temper tantrum as he swung his stick at him.
“I have no idea,” he said. “I don’t know why I got a 10-minute penalty there. I stayed out the scrum. We exchanged some words. I got a stick swung in my face. Then I end up with a 10-minute penalty. I’m not quite sure what it was for.
“I started skating towards him but I’m about 50 feet away from the guy. I’m getting misconducts for just talking now. Not quite sure what that’s about. What are you going to do?”
Unfortunately for Kadri, his own boss didn’t quite have his back in his argument against the officiating.
“It was the right call,” Colorado head coach Jared Bednar told reporters. “That would have been a big goal for us. Kadri, you can’t continue to try and escalate an altercation. It’s no different from getting into a fight. …Sometimes they’ll let you get away with it but that had dragged on long enough. You can’t go back and try to fire things back up.”
The Avalanche were holding onto a two-goal lead when the altercation occurred, and considering that the Blues found themselves back in it with a goal just minutes into the third, Bednar is right that getting any time on the man advantage due to Binnington’s short fuse could have proven to be useful.
There is certainly a heated rivalry beginning to sizzle between these two Central Division clubs, as Kadri knows all too well since he had to serve an eight-game suspension for hitting Blues defenseman Justin Faulk in the head during the Game 2 of their first-round matchup last postseason.
Unfortunately for all of us, we’ll have to wait until April 26 for the next battle.
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