Will the brief melee at the end of Monday's game in Arizona spill into tonight's puck drop between the Flyers and Coyotes at the Wells Fargo Center?
"I hope so," Robert Hagg, who's currently fourth in the NHL in hits, said. "It's going to be a fun game. We will see what happens."
With 20 seconds left in the game, Shayne Gostisbhere nudged Lawson Crouse in the back, which fueled a chain reaction of events that saw Christian Folin come to Gostisbehere's defense and cross check Crouse into the boards. The Coyotes forward was the biggest culprit as he trucked Nicolas Aube-Kubel and was slapped for a roughing minor and interference minor against Folin.
Then, just as time expired, Dale Weiss fired a meaningless wrist shot on goaltender Darcy Kuemper that defenseman Kevin Connauton found unacceptable, and that led to an all-out skirmish between the remaining players on the ice. Wayne Simmonds jumped in and eventually Radko Gudas and Connauton wrestled each other to ice without actually exchanging punches.
Gudas and Connauton were handed double roughing minors while Jordan Oesterle was hit with an unsportsmanlike penalty. Those two sequences can be seen here:
#Coyotes vs #Flyers scrums at the end of the game #PHIvsARI #OurPack #NHL pic.twitter.com/0qh9xKf5bm— Ronnie Laybold (@CoyotesGlendale) November 6, 2018
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It could create some interesting theater with a noticeable edge in the second half of a home-and-home series at the Wells Fargo Center.
"You know why not," Gudas said. "Playing back-to-back, it got a little chippy at the end. I think it was pretty chippy during the game too. It's going to be a hard, physical game. They have some guys who play a big, physical game and so are we, and we want our fans to know what kind of team we were on the West Coast."
Typically, the first game back from an extended road trip can create some malaise for the home team, which is what the Flyers hope to avoid when they kickstart the first game of a five-game homestand.
"I would assume that would carry some emotion straight over into this game," head coach Dave Hakstol said. "The energy level when you come off a 10-game trip and turn around and play pretty quickly at home, that's the area you have to focus on."
The Flyers will be anxious to carry the energy and momentum from a 3-0-1 Western Conference swing back onto home ice, where they haven't been successful this season and have been outscored, 10-2, in their last two games on South Broad.
"We just got to set that tone that we're a winning hockey club," Gostisbehere said. "Hopefully, we can put a good 60 minutes together and get this home crowd back into it and give them what they deserve - some hard-fought wins at home."
Hard-fought wins on a team that hasn't had a hard-fought scrap. Interestingly, the Flyers and Coyotes are the only two teams in the NHL officially without a fight this season.
There's reason to think that could all change tonight at the Wells Fargo Center.
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