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Emotions have started to boil over in the last two games of this series, with an increasing number of scrums and stickwork after a somewhat quiet opening game.
One of the more notable slashes came from Dion Phaneuf, who tried to chop David Backes' arm off with a cheap two-hander.
However, the Sens kept up the slashing postgame, this time with Bruins fans:
CLASSLESS BRUINS FANS THROWING STUFF AT PLAYERS AND TRYING TO STEAL STICKS pic.twitter.com/5qJ74KkoWB
— SensNation (@SensNation_) April 18, 2017
Throwing stuff at opposing players is a garbage move. There's no excuse for it. The Senators were right to be mad and concerned about it.
It's kind of hard to see from that video what started the stick incident. I can't tell if a fan reached down and grabbed a stick, or if a Senator was carrying his high and a fan tried to steal it.
Either way, a cheap move by the fan. No excuses for that behavior.
However, Erik Karlsson escalated things by chopping down on a fan with his stick, as you can see below (Karlsson's stick is the black one in the middle of the screen):
Yikes. A two-hander to a fan isn't something the league wants to see, regardless of what provoked it.
The whole incident reminds me of the end of a game in Tampa in the 2011 ECF, where David Krejci got hit in the head with a noisemaker and Nathan Horton squirted a fan with a water bottle.
Bruins fans: stop throwing trash.
Senators: keep the slashes on the ice, as you've already demonstrated that you can.