Tkachuk to Wings, "who the @!%$ wants it?" answer- nobody

[yave1964]

  

  Huge game between the Wings and Senators, very chippy early, both teams playing hard for their playoff lives.  Sens started pulling away late in the second with three unanswered goals to go up 4-2 with an awesome cmbo of speed and power. As time expired at the end of the second Pius Suter of the Wings fired a puck down the ice at Talbot and Tkachuk took exception and pushed and shoved while Suter stood there looking like a fainting goat.

  

 THEN. Tkachuk swaggered over to the Wings bench, challenging the entire team, spreading his arms wide and grinning a menacing smile, all six fot four two hundred twenty pounds of nasty yelled, "who wants it, who the @^%# wants it?" a few Wings players on the bench dismissively waived him aside, the rest either stood there or scurried down the runway. Tkachuk got two minutes for roughing.

 

  That should not have been the end of it, especially after Ottawa scored again. And then again. 6-2 he swaggered around the ice trying to make eye contact with any Wing who would look his way but all averted his gaze. This was the first of back to back in consecutive nights, he sent a message challenging the entire Wings team and got zero push back. None nada. It was shameful or as the coach in letterkenny says

'Its f-ing embarrasing.

 

  Chiarot, Bertuzzi, Larkin, Perron, none of the team' leaders' challenged him to try to regain momentum heading into tonights game. I have said all year that the Wings are the softest team in the game today, losing Rasmussen likely for the year hurts as he is one of the only Wings to play with any type of heart and commitment every shift, but someobdy, anybody shoulda stood up and told Tkachuk, challenge accepted. Stick a fork in the season.That one period of Hockey skating around trying not to make eye contact with Tkachuk sums up the Wings season. 

 

  Stick a fork in them, the Wings are officially done. 

[yave1964]

Two other quick comments

 

 I wouldnt want to fight Tkachuk either. He is arguably the nastiest piece of work in the game today, which is why he is far and away my favorite player in the game today. I have him in all my fantasy leagues as a justification to watch a damn fun Senators team play whenever possible. 

 

  I expect it to end tonight with Tkachuk squaring off with someone within the first few minutes and then a Hockey game to ensue. Rumor is the Wings are considering calling up Soderblom which I am not against the idea but you dont want to call the kid, an inexperienced but gigantic player to fight Tkachuk. It would be a bit like years and years ago, I remember the Habs had a very nice prospect named John Van Boxmeer who they threw to the Lions, AKA Dave Schultz. Schultzie simply ruined the kid, beat the Hell out of him, Van Boxmeer was really never the same. He hung around for quite awhile although he was quickly dispatched by Montreal to the Lowly Rockies but never recovered his reputation. A veteran leader needs to challenge Tkachuk, win lose or draw and then move on and try to recover two points. 

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

4 minutes ago, yave1964 said:

Two other quick comments

 

 I wouldnt want to fight Tkachuk either. He is arguably the nastiest piece of work in the game today, which is why he is far and away my favorite player in the game today. I have him in all my fantasy leagues as a justification to watch a damn fun Senators team play whenever possible. 

 

  I expect it to end tonight with Tkachuk squaring off with someone within the first few minutes and then a Hockey game to ensue. Rumor is the Wings are considering calling up Soderblom which I am not against the idea but you dont want to call the kid, an inexperienced but gigantic player to fight Tkachuk. It would be a bit like years and years ago, I remember the Habs had a very nice prospect named John Van Boxmeer who they threw to the Lions, AKA Dave Schultz. Schultzie simply ruined the kid, beat the Hell out of him, Van Boxmeer was really never the same. He hung around for quite awhile although he was quickly dispatched by Montreal to the Lowly Rockies but never recovered his reputation. A veteran leader needs to challenge Tkachuk, win lose or draw and then move on and try to recover two points. 

 

Wings don't have much to throw at Tkachuk in terms of fighting....closest they have would be Ben Chiarot (he fought Ryan Reaves while in Minnesota back in December), or Tyler Bertuzzi, although I think Bertuzzi is more a middleweight and likely would be out of his element against Tkachuk.

I also agree that calling up some young guy from the minors with the express intent on fighting a Brady Tkachuk would be seriously detrimental to that callup's career.
Unless he is some sort of freak of nature, it would almost be like signing his NHL career death warrant