Once again, Brandon Duhaime answered for a dirty hit by standing up for one of his own in dramatic fashion.
The trouble started near the end of the opening frame Thursday, when Utah Mammoth winger Brandon Tanev drove Washington Capitals blueliner Matt Roy face-first into the end boards, leaving the defenseman shaken up.
Trevor van Riemsdyk, along with Tom Wilson, went after Tanev right away, yet the Utah forward — famous for once claiming he had actually spotted a ghost — appeared unwilling to drop the gloves. As he skated off toward the box, Wilson even pantomimed a turtle to ridicule Tanev for backing down.
That set the stage for the middle period. With the score knotted at 3-3, Duhaime answered the call and dropped the gloves with Tanev, a feisty Brandon-against-Brandon scrap that broke out moments after a center-ice draw.
The Brandon-on-Brandon scrap
The bout energized the rest of the Capitals, and during the broadcast timeout the entire bench emptied so the players could skate over and bump fists with Duhaime through the box glass. One teammate, however, stayed put.
Washington salutes its winger through the glass
Capitals bench boss Spencer Carbery, who once made his living as a fighter, said he adored the gesture when reporters asked whether he had witnessed anything like it before. According to Carbery, he is a soft touch for moments where players show that much gratitude and affection for a teammate who just laid it on the line for them. He recounted that a single guy, Marty, never made the trip across the ice; Marty explained he was conserving his legs, and although the others kept urging him to skate across, he insisted he had to save them.
Carbery added that the scene was striking to take in, but that it captured exactly who his team is — a tight-knit group, he said, that genuinely cares for one another, takes enormous pride in plays like that, and rushes to celebrate each other.
Respect for Duhaime had already surged within the room back in the season's earlier weeks, when he squared off against the considerably bigger Jacob Trouba during Washington's January 6 rematch with the Anaheim Ducks. Earlier on, Trouba had blindsided Ryan Leonard with a hit that cost Washington's rookie multiple weeks because of a shoulder problem.
Leonard called Duhaime's actions incredible at the time, saying he never doubted his teammate would come to his defense. That kind of bond, he noted, defines the group, doesn't slip by unnoticed, and carries real meaning.
That night, Carbery labeled the fights from Duhaime and from Dylan McIlrath, who dropped the gloves with Ross Johnston, the single biggest moment of the contest, and Washington's players got on their feet to applaud the pair back in the dressing room.
The Tanev bout was the seventh occasion this season that the player nicknamed the Doggie has gone with his fists. His other dance partners have included Jacob Melanson of Seattle, Ilya Lyubushkin of Dallas, Joel Edmundson of Los Angeles, Brayden Schenn of St. Louis, and Vancouver's Victor Mancini.