To say the Vancouver Canucks and Los Angeles Kings don’t like each other might be a bit of an understatement.
The Pacific Division rivals squared off Monday night, and they wasted no time getting after it. In what was the first of many, many penalties to come, Vancouver’s Zack Kassian was sent off for hooking just nine seconds into the game. Kassian took down Dustin Brown, who had run over Roberto Luongo in the last meeting between the two teams, injuring him.
Canucks forward Tom Sestito kept the referees busy moments later, earning an ejection less than three minutes into the first period. Sestito, who was credited with only 1 second of ice time, racked up 27 penalty minutes when he attempted to fight an unwilling Jordan Nolan off a faceoff. On the previous shift, Nolan had hit Henrik Sedin in the neutral zone, but the Kings forward wanted nothing to do with the feisty Sestito.
In his one second of work, Sestito received an instigator penalty, a 10-minute misconduct, a five-minute major for fighting and a game misconduct.
Despite being on the power play for almost the first 10 minutes of the game, including some five-on-three time, the Kings were unable to light the lamp, and they were actually outshot by the Canucks during the first frame. The two teams combined for 53 minutes of penalties in the first 20 minutes.
Check out some of the shenanigans in the video below.
