Emotions boiled over not only on the ice, but on the benches in the third period Tuesday night as the Winnipeg Jets ran away with a lopsided 8-1 win over the Boston Bruins.
Trent Frederic and David Gustafsson got a string of three fights between the two sides going at the 7:37 mark of the final frame as Frederic dropped the Jets forward with one punch. Immediately after they wrapped up their fight, Mark Kastelic and Logan Stanley went at it. And then for good measure, heavyweights Nikita Zadorov and Adam Lowry traded fists right after the ensuing faceoff.
During all of that, Jets head coach Scott Arniel got into a shouting match with the Bruins bench. Bruins interim head coach Joe Sacco seemed confused at what exactly Arniel was trying to address. And Sacco dismissed the incident after the game, saying there wasn’t any communication between the benches.
“No, not that I know of,” Sacco told reporters, per team-provided audio.
Arniel was asked what got him so hot that he felt the need to confront the Bruins bench in that situation, but he wouldn’t get into specifics.
“Something else happened that don’t need to get into it,” Arniel told reporters, per team-provided video.
It could have been Charlie McAvoy’s illegal check to the head of Cole Perfetti 6:45 into the third period that got Arniel fired up.
Regardless of what set off Arniel, he tried to send a message in another way. Even with the Jets up 5-1, Arniel sent out his second power-play unit to extend the already sizable lead and then he went to the top power-play group with the Jets leading 6-1.
“Yeah, certainly you read that right,” Arniel said. “But at the end of the day, I’m not going to sit and talk about what happened the last 10 minutes of the hockey (game). That’s detrimental for the game we played. We played a helluva hockey game against a good hockey team.”
