Hockey Players Fight Team Mates
Date: 2008-07-04 14:45:09
Source: http://www.canada.com/topics/sports/story.html?id=...
Submitted By: Fight Videos
OTTAWA -- If the Ottawa Senators spent a little more time fighting for each other instead of fighting with each other, they might be winning more games. They got it wrong again Sunday in practice, though. Near the end of the session, goalie Ray Emery and winger Chris Neil almost came to blows and had to be separated by defenceman Andrej Meszaros. Defenceman Luke Richardson then took Neil aside for a few words. Toronto's Dominic Moore knocks the puck past Ottawa goalie Ray Emery as the Leafs skated to 4-2 win Saturday over the Senators.View Larger Image View Larger Image Toronto's Dominic Moore knocks the puck past Ottawa goalie Ray Emery as the Leafs skated to 4-2 win Saturday over the Senators. Fights at Senators practices are actually getting to be more common than fights in their games. Emery-Neil was added to the list that included recent altercations between Emery and Brian McGrattan and Neil and Wade Redden. While head coach John Paddock generally doesn't mind these skirmishes, he said Sunday's shouldn't have happened and pinned the blame on Neil. Paddock also suggested ominously that the conflict between the two players was deeper than one player taking a few more swipes at a loose puck than the other thought was warranted. "I sort of know, but I didn't hear anything (Sunday), and I don't have any comment on it other than that," Paddock said. Emery played down the confrontation, joking that it had to do with each player's pick for the Super Bowl. After his recent misadventures, he said he wasn't going to call more attention to himself. "I definitely wasn't going to get into an altercation there," he said. "I might have been on the front page of a couple more papers." Joking aside, he said there wasn't a deeper problem between him and Neil. "No, no," he said. "He was poking at a puck. Guys are kind of frustrated here, just losing and having to practice on a Super Bowl Sunday," he said. "It's kind of an edgy group. "Sometimes that kind of stuff gets to the boys." The practice was always on the schedule, but there had been speculation Paddock would cancel if the Senators had won Saturday in Toronto. Neil treated the incident as a byproduct of practice and said Paddock hadn't talked to him about it. "What can you say?" he said. "The puck was lying there. I kind of went to whack it away. I don't know if I caught him or what, but he had a couple of words to say, and I'm not one to back down from anything." Though it was clear that Neil hasn't been happy with Emery's various misadventures, he said there wasn't any lingering dispute between them. "Not that I know of," he said. "If you look at what's gone on in the past week and months, and even going back to last year, as a team you stick by one another, you take the good with the bad. "We go out there, we stick up for one another, and that's what it's about. That's what brings teammates closer together. We're all brothers in here."
