Brendan Gallagher Tried To Kill A Guy To Celebrate Patrick Roy's Return To Montreal
It was a pretty emotional night at the Bell Centre last night as Patrick Roy made his return to Montreal behind the bench for the Islanders. One of the greatest goalies of all time, a guy who won 2 Stanley Cups for the Habs, was the Conn Smythe winner in both of those years, a 3x Vezina winner in Montreal, and has his number hanging in the rafters. Obviously there was going to be a lot of extra juice heading into this game.
But the game was losing some intensity towards the end there. Montreal got off to a quick 3-0 lead in the 1st period, and had a 2-goal lead with under 10 minutes to go in the 3rd.
Brendan Gallagher is a juice guy. He's a little weasel, for sure, but he's a little weasel who brings the juice. He knows that a guy like Patrick Roy deserves some more theatrics in his return to Montreal. He didn't want that game to be a complete dud. So what does he go out there and do?
Lay one of the biggest scumbag hits of the season on Adam Pelech. I mean just as greasy as they come, total piece of shit hit to the head.
Hockey is a fast and violent game. There are plenty of times where guys end up making some pretty bad hits that are totally unintentional. This…wasn't one of them.
It's not like Adam Pelech ended up changing the trajectory of his body right before the hit. It's not like Brendan Gallagher was originally looking to put his shoulder through Pelech's chest, and then accidentally caught him up high. Brendan Gallagher was a heat seeking missile and was target-locked on Pelech's skull. Threw the elbow out there just to make Patrick Roy feel like he was back in the 90s.
And for his piece of shit hit, Brendan Gallagher received a 5-minute major and game misconduct. During that 5-minute powerplay, the Islanders ended up scoring twice to tie the game 3-3 with just over 3 minutes left to play. Sean Monahan would eventually score the game winner for Montreal late in the 3rd, but the game at least got interesting there for a few minutes.
As for Brendan Gallagher? Well he should probably miss the next few games. I'd say 3 games should be minimum, 5 games wouldn't be too over the top. Or what the NHL could do is get a little creative with their punishments, and make Gallagher stay out on the ice for the full game when the Canadiens play the Islanders again on April 11th. Give the Islanders plenty of time to get a few shots in on him in return. Maybe have Patrick Roy suit up that night and fight Gallagher himself.