It's not too often you get to see Sidney Crosby mixing it up with some punches, but Thursday night's Sharks-Penguins game offered just that.
Things got awfully testy in the third period of that contest when the two teams engaged in something of a line brawl during a break between play. As the two sides gathered by their respective benches, San Jose's Evander Kane got into a shoving match with a Pittsburgh player, then other players followed suit.
Things escalated pretty quickly and most of the attention turned to Crosby, who got involved in an altercation with Sharks defenseman Brenden Dillon. Crosby appeared to take exception to Dillon's shots on Pittsburgh defenseman Marcus Pettersson and he responded by taking some (gloved) swings at Dillon.
Crosby continued to take shots as players swarmed around them, getting a few gloved punches into Dillon's face as he was being restrained. San Jose's Micheal Haley, who was acquired by the team on waivers on Wednesday, tried to come to Dillon's defense and fight Crosby. The Penguins captain didn't seem particular interested in that idea, as he went down to the ice pretty quickly.
In the end, the chaos resulted in over 50 penalty minutes -- including misconducts to Crosby, Dillon, Pettersson and Haley. Penguins coach Mike Sullivan was also ejected from the game after arguing with the officials over their handling of the incident.
Sullivan is asked if he can describe what happened at the end: "No."
Or what led to his ejection: "No."
— Wes Crosby (@OtherNHLCrosby) February 22, 2019
After the game, Kane revealed that the entire thing was sparked when he attempted to get a look at the Penguins' whiteboard as they strategized on the bench.
"I was just standing there, looking at their bench, just looking at their board that they were using and one of their players, not really sure who it was, jumped over and tried to do something about it and it just kind of escalated," said Kane.
Unfortunately for the Penguins, that's about as much fight as they put up all night. The Sharks left PPG Paints Arena with a 4-0 win.
