A brawl between the Colorado Avalanche and St. Louis Blues escalated in the closing seconds of the second half on Thursday when goalkeeper Jordan Bennington skied toward Nazim Qadri and swung his baton in the Colorado midfield.
Bennington, who was on the wrong end of the avalanche’s 4-3 victory, bounced his nets off their moorings and jumped into a corner kick.
An official grabbed the goalkeeper and removed him from the emerging group of players. Bennington skated before approaching the blue line and pretended to shoot an invisible puck toward Colorado goalkeeper Darcy Comber – standing at the opposite blue line. Bennington turned back, sprinted close to where Kadri and his St. Louis teammate were standing and banged his stick in the direction of Kadri’s head.
“Kind of the heat of the moment,” Bennington said Friday, at NHL.com. “Scrum started and kind of lasted and there were little things from the past happening there, but I might have taken it too far. I don’t want to condone swinging the wand.”
The stewards caused Bennington’s 10-minute misbehavior, which was sent by Robert Portozzo, and Qadri was handed one also to skate near Bennington – then back in the crease – after the contact ended.
“I have no idea,” Qadri said. “I don’t know why I got a 10 minute penalty there. I stayed out of the scrum. We exchanged some words. I got a stick swinging in my face. Then I ended up with a 10 minute penalty. Not quite sure why. About 50 feet away from the guy. I’m getting misbehaving just for talking now. Not quite sure what this is all about. What are you going to do?”
For Bennington – who opened the 2021-22 season with a 4-1 score, 0.916 saves and an average of 3.02 goals – the situation was another example of his nerves getting on the ice. After being pulled from a game against the San Jose Sharks in February, he pretended to push his baton towards the head of defender Eric Carlson before showing a goalkeeper punch. Devan Dubnik On his shoulder with his glove.
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