BOSTON — Milan Lucic may not end up on Santa's naughty list for his actions two days before Christmas, but the Bruins winger will definitely be hearing from the league. He just hopes he's not the only one.
Lucic took exception to a high hit from Atlanta defenseman Freddy Meyer with 4:06 left in the third period of Thursday's 4-1 win over the Thrashers. Andrew Ference immediately grabbed Meyer, igniting a huge brawl and a series of fights to the delight of the sellout Garden crowd.
But the melee could prove costly to Lucic, who was given a match penalty after decking Meyer with a solid right hand in the scrum. The match penalty carries an automatic suspension until it is reviewed, which could put Boston's leading goal-scorer in line for an unpaid vacation.
"It was a high hit for sure" Lucic said. "I was bleeding from the lip and after a hit like that, I mean, that was the second time he has done that. He's hit me late. He's hit me cheap. Now that's the second time. I mean, you can't give a guy a free pass too many times, but I'm happy that we stuck together as a group and as a team."
As for getting the match penalty, Lucic didn't want to discuss the call too much.
"Whatever, I mean the refs call what they see on the ice, so you can't comment too much about it," said Lucic, who later added, "I mean, it is the second time he has done that to me. I am not going to let a guy like him who never fights do something like that to me. So, that's basically it."
That wasn't quite the end of it for both coaches. Bruins head coach Claude Julien and Atlanta counterpart Craig Ramsay shared a bench the past three seasons as Ramsay served as Julien's assistant before taking the Thrashers' job this summer, but they certainly didn't share the same views on this incident.
Ramsay argued after the game that Meyer's hit was clean, and he shouldn't have had to answer for it, let alone get decked by Lucic.
"Freddy laid a good hit," Ramsay said. "That is what happens, you throw a big hit and you have to have a fight. We are taking hitting out of the game. He gets a penalty for a good hit. They started all the fights and I thought we should have had a power play for the rest of the game, maybe a two-man advantage. Our guys just responded. They didn't try to do anything. At least our guys all stood up for each other. Unfortunately, that is part of the game that you have to respond as a team and I thought our players did a very good job sticking up for themselves."
Julien saw things just a little differently, and he's hoping that Meyer will be meeting with the league as well as Lucic.
"Nobody saw that coming until that dirty hit, and that was a dirty hit," Julien said. "I mean, I've looked at it again and it's a cheap hit. Hopefully it is seen that way. You know, if you're a player with all the head injuries we've had, the concussions and all that stuff that's happened to our team whether it’s [Patrice] Bergeron or whether it's [Marc] Savard and other things and we're talking about cutting down on head shots, you can't blame a player for reacting to those kind of things and I think everybody kind of reacted and that's what happened.
"But you know," Julien added, "I'm going to stand here and say our guys stood together for something that was, to me, a real cheap shot and uncalled for and hopefully the league sees it that way, too."
