- Ville Ottavainen threw three punches at a defenseless Brennan Othmann during Thursday’s Kraken-Flames game
- Kraken coach Lane Lambert said he “didn’t mind” it and defended his defenseman after the game
- Read below for the full penalty breakdown and what sparked the ugly second period
Ville Ottavainen lost it on Brennan Othmann Thursday night, and his coach has no problem with it.
With 12:38 left in the second period of Seattle’s 4-3 shootout win over Calgary, Ottavainen tackled Othmann by the throat after taking what looked like a fairly ordinary hit in the corner. Othmann hit the ice, and Ottavainen threw three straight right hands into his head before another player tackled him off and the benches cleared.
Watch the sequence:
Officials hit Ottavainen with a game misconduct, a two-minute instigator and a five-minute fighting major, 17 penalty minutes in all. Othmann drew a charging minor and a 10-minute misconduct. The whole mess added up to 41 penalty minutes, and Kraken forward Curtis Douglas got tossed too.
Lambert faced questions about the second period’s physicality after the game, and he didn’t dodge them.
“I didn’t mind it,” Lambert said. “Othmann ran him in Calgary with a high hit and got kicked out of the game, you know. So really good job by Otto to respond to that. I don’t have a problem with that at all.”
A reporter suggested there might have been a cleaner way to settle the score than punching a player who couldn’t defend himself. Lambert wasn’t buying it.
“I don’t have an issue with what happened there,” he said. “He took another run at him. You can only take runs at a guy for so long before he’ll respond. And then Otto threw his gloves off and that was it.”
The beef didn’t start Thursday. Four days earlier at Scotiabank Saddledome, Othmann, who signed with Calgary as a restricted free agent this month, drove Ottavainen’s head into the glass on a high hit that cost him a five-minute major and a game misconduct of his own. That’s the play Lambert kept pointing to.
Flames assistant coach Dave Lowry wasn’t bothered by any of it either. “Hey, it’s the National Hockey League,” Lowry said of the second period’s tone. “You look at what started it, was a couple good really hard hits. They were clean. They were good hockey plays. We all know that when you play a certain way you’re going to have to stand up for yourself.”
Here’s the penalty parade in full:
The NHL hasn’t announced a hearing for Ottavainen, but three consecutive punches to a defenseless player rarely gets waved off once games start counting.
