One great thing about the sport of hockey is that bad blood can develop when you least expect it — like, say, in the middle of a standard Bruins-Islanders matchup on a Tuesday night on Long Island.

After a sleepy first period, Bruins defenseman Nikita Zadorov ramped the intensity by going after No. 1 overall pick Matthew Schaefer behind the Boston net. Zadorov bullied the rookie a bit, offering a few high shoves and getting hit with an interference minor for knocking Schaefer down to the ice.

At that point, Zadorov doubled down and bopped Schaefer right in the face. Bedlam ensued.

Zadorov picked up six penalty minutes from the sequence — two minutes for interference and a double-minor for roughing — but the Islanders didn’t score on the power play. The Bruins eventually won in a shootout.

After the win — the Bruins’ fourth straight victory — Zadorov said he felt compelled to up the energy inside UBS Arena.

“We needed to create our own energy because the crowd was sleeping tonight a little bit,” Zadorov said. “So I felt like we had to go out there and create our own energy, get everybody going on the bench, get excited.”

Well, as it turned out, Islanders fans didn’t love seeing their star rookie get bludgeoned on the ice, so a number of them decided to send some angry direct messages to Zadorov on Instagram.

The 30-year-old Zadorov opted to respond en masse to all those messages by posting a screenshot to Instagram with the following message: “Get out of my DMs and go to the rink to cheer for your team. That was place was [a] library tonight!”

After Nikita Zadorov was called for roughing against Matthew Schaefer on Tuesday, he shared a screenshot of his DMs after the game, and a message for the fans who sent them to him 🤫😅

(via IG/zadorov_16) pic.twitter.com/dWhUCFhRWG

— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) November 5, 2025

Islanders fans will have the opportunity to heed Zadorov’s advice in just a few short weeks, as the Bruins and Islanders are set to meet for the third and final time of the season on Nov. 26.

Zadorov will be drawing some added attention for going after the rookie and the fan base, and that Thanksgiving Eve affair will surely be a bit louder.