According to hockeyfights.com<\/a>, Tkachuk has 38 fights in his career.<\/p>\nHe suffered the thumb injury in the club\u2019s third game of the regular season against the Nashville Predators on Oct. 13 and returned in late November with his thumb taped up for every game.<\/p>\n
This was the first time Tkachuk had spoken since the incident. He was getting treatment on Saturday after the game and wasn\u2019t able to discuss what happened with Stanley, who was given a one-game suspension by the National Hockey League\u2019s department of player safety on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Midway through the second period, Tkachuk got in a wrestling match with Stanley near the Ottawa bench.<\/p>\n
Tkachuk made it clear he couldn\u2019t fight, but Stanley gave him a sucker punch to the head. Tkachuk wasn\u2019t paying attention because one of the linemen had stepped in, trying to break the two up.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, I was still watching the play and then out of the corner of my eye, I just see the punch coming, which caught me by surprise,\u201d Tkachuk said.
\u201cI didn\u2019t really expect it. It\u2019s all good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Somehow, Tkachuk was assessed a 10-minute misconduct while Stanley only received two minor penalties.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t happy getting suckered, but the league made its decision, but I\u2019m over it and I couldn\u2019t care less now. I\u2019m over it now. I think I showed that I wasn\u2019t happy. A lot of that other stuff I can\u2019t control, so I\u2019m moving on,\u201d Tkachuk said. \u201cI don\u2019t shy away from anybody, but I\u2019ve got tape on my hand, I can\u2019t fight. The wires crossed that just happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Between periods, Tkachuk told his team to make sure they got the victory and not to worry about making Stanley pay the price by having somebody go after him during the third period.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt that point, you\u2019re not thinking about retribution,\u201d Tkachuk said. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to put your team at risk. All that mattered was finishing off the game and getting the two points. That was our focus going into the third period, and all that other stuff will be dealt with in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Jets and Senators won\u2019t see each other again this season unless they meet in the Stanley Cup final, which is nearly impossible because Winnipeg is sitting in last place in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n
Was the suspension enough?<\/p>\n
\u201cThose decisions aren\u2019t up to me. One game, five games, three games, I\u2019m not the one making the call,\u201d Tkachuk said. \u201cThat\u2019s their department, their job and, if they\u2019re satisfied with it, that\u2019s not for me to comment on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Related<\/p>\n
Stanley hasn\u2019t reached out to Tkachuk, but that doesn\u2019t bother him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t feel it\u2019s necessary,\u201d Tkachuk said. \u201cStuff in the game happens. You never need to receive a text. It\u2019s fine by me.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Tkachuk unable to fight, the Senators have had other players step up in different situations.<\/p>\n
Give Drake Batherson some credit. He dropped the gloves with Justin Sourdif of the Washington Capitals on New Year\u2019s Day. Batherson stepped up on behalf of teammate Thomas Chabot, who had taken a hard hit from Sourdif behind the net earlier.<\/p>\n
It was Batherson\u2019s first fight in nearly three years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other night Drake stepped up and did an awesome job; he\u2019s done that in the past. Told him I\u2019ve never been more proud of him for stepping up for a teammate like that,\u201d Tkachuk said. \u201cI think we\u2019re learning and growing in that area as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
bgarrioch@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brady Tkachuk never has been afraid to drop the gloves in his National Hockey League career. He isn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5104],"tags":[536,1744,5,15094,4492,231,285,4,72,25,5157,73,832,109,18],"class_list":{"0":"post-392341","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ottawa-senators","8":"tag-brady-tkachuk","9":"tag-drake-batherson","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-justin-sourdif","12":"tag-logan-stanley","13":"tag-nashville-predators","14":"tag-national-hockey-league","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-ottawa","17":"tag-ottawa-senators","18":"tag-ottawasenators","19":"tag-senators","20":"tag-thomas-chabot","21":"tag-washington-capitals","22":"tag-winnipeg-jets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115844379181765356","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}