Alzner on the closest he's come to a melee like Caps-Rangers originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington
It was a bizarre scene when the Capitals and Rangers played the second leg of their back-to-back meetings on Wednesday night.
As soon as the first puck was dropped, so too were the gloves, and three separate fights started a contest everyone expected to be contentious a game after Tom Wilson made headlines for his extracurriculars. It was quite a crowded penalty box.
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Wilson was fined $5,000 for boarding, the maximum allowed under the CBA, but the Rangers took issue and a scathing statement followed. Then, the Rangers fired their general manager and president and were fined $250,000 for taking their statement too far.
All of that culminated in what took place in Madison Square Garden. Nic Dowd, Garnet Hathaway and Carl Hagelin bravely took on the clearly furious Rangers while defensemen Zdeno Chara and Nick Jensen watched on.
It was like nothing former Caps defenseman Karl Alzner had ever seen before.
"For them to come out do what happened off the opening face-off, it leads me to believe something was said in warm up, or they knew each other, reached out and said, 'Let's do this and we'll set this thing off.' I have no idea, but either way, it was crazy, and I've never been involved in anything quite like that," Alzner said on the latest Capitals Talk Podcast.
Alzner played nine years in Washington, and only one instance rivals what he witnessed on Wednesday night.
"But there's been some times where I always think back to this one game vs. Boston, and they were always pretty tough," said Alzner, who remembered their imposing enforcers Shawn Thornton and Adam McQuaid taking issue with then-Capitals center Matt Hendricks for beating up on Gregory Campbell.
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That one game vs. Boston took place on March 16, 2013. Thornton and McQuaid were known for their fighting capabilities, often sticking up for their younger teammates during that vaunted Bruins era. Alzner, though, recalled Hendricks explaining that he only fought Campbell because he asked for it.
"I remember Shawn Thornton came after him and said you have to fight me now...And next thing you know we're on the ice for a face-off and we win the face-off, I go to pick the puck up behind the net and wheel the net, and next thing you know, I look up and I see Shawn Thornton and Adam McQuaid just circling Hendy, like both asking him to go at the same time. I'm thinking to myself, 'This isn't real. This isn't happening is it?'"
It was an incredible scene as both Thornton and McQuaid paid no mind to the puck. Instead, Thornton instigated Hendricks into fighting McQuaid.
"They're already at center ice because Hendy was supposed to blow the zone off the face-off and all I thought was 'holy smokes, you gotta get in there, you gotta go and help the guy,'" Alzner said.
"But these are two tough customers that are absolutely gonna mop the floor with me if I get in there," Alzner said, "but that's all that's going through your head -- someone asked you to fight or there's a fight going on, you still gotta jump in. You gotta do something."
In the replay, you can see Hendricks and Thornton going over the finer details of the upcoming fight. It was clear Hendricks wanted to avoid Thornton, but he certainly couldn't avoid them both.
"That was the closest I've gotten to some sort of melee like we saw last night go on, and it was still nothing like that," Alzner said.
