The Stanley Cup Playoffs Don't Officially Start Until Alex Pietrangelo Takes A Brutally Dumb Penalty. So Welcome To The Playoffs
Glenn James. Getty Images.What you are looking at here, folks, is the face of the dirtiest player in the league. It's not Tom Wilson. It's not Jacob Trouba. It's not a rat like Tkachuck or Marchand. At least when those guys take dumb penalties, you can at least make the case it's just because they're playing the game on the line.
When Alex Pietrangelo takes stupid penalties, it's difficult to even consider it hockey. Like I wouldn't be shocked if Dana White has a UFC contract ready to go for Pietrangelo after this penalty on Tyler Seguin last night. Robbie Fox is going to have to spend an entire segment on Spinning Backfist on it.
Two minutes, well worth it.
The fact that you can draw blood by sucker punching a dude in the face and only sit for 2-minutes, but accidentally getting your stick a little too high and clipping him lands you in the box for 4-minutes is rather silly. But it doesn't matter, because the Stars didn't need Pietrangelo to get a double minor here. A 2-minute powerplay was all they needed to take advantage of Pietrangelo's dumbassery.
Game tied 2-2. Series tied 2-2. And Alex Pietrangelo just gift wrapped game 5 for the Stars. Bad idea!
Now last year was a bit of a different story. Alex Pietrangelo got his name on the Cup for the 2nd time in his career last year as Vegas went on to win the whole thing. But he didn't get a chance to play in every game those playoffs since he got suspended for this slash on Leon Draisaitl in game 4 of the 2nd round.
Down 4-1 and just tries to take Draisaitl's arm off for no apparent reason besides being a psychopath. Maybe he was just trying to get suspended again last night. Clearly it worked out in the long run last year. Why fix what ain't broke?
Or Dallas could end up closing out this series in 6 and we can always look back at that spinning backfist to Seguin's jaw as the reason Golden Knights players are taking up all the tee times in Vegas next week.