Has anyone noticed a more physical type of play this year across MNL? Years and years of gritty players playing against each other has bubbled over during the 2024/25 season. Dickie was on assignment in Cleveland covering the Za’Darius Smith trade to the next Super Bowl champion Lions, so he sent young cub reporter Thomas McPhillips to expound on the activities during the Scouts v Nordiques tilt. The following has not been edited….

Late in the game, Andrew Spicey Hetes made a physical play against the beleaguered superstar Shawn Sugar Hardy and there were 2 interpretations:
– A) Hetes made a 50/50 play for the puck and collided with Sugar’s head accidently and non-maliciously.
– B) Sugar had the puck and Hetes checked him in the head with his shoulder or helmet, a viscous and reckless shot to a defenseless puck carrier. Then, Sugar just brushed it off because he is a way better player and more important to this team, and then the game ended.

Sike……..!

What happened next is how the game tragically ended:
• You could immediately tell Sugar was unhappy with the contact to his head and he closed the distance to Hetes and…chose to blatantly trip him at center ice in front of both refs and all of humanity (he literally just used his stick to pull Spicy’s skate out from under him like in a cartoon or being pulled off the stage with a hook)
• Sugar made some complaints on his way to the box, and Hetes was talking mad shit about the whining (as if he would never do something like that. He was basically doing a Woodsie imitation).
• The Scouts scored almost immediately on the PP and Hetes got even louder, trash talking the Diques bench which infuriated Sugar.
• A couple minutes later the Scouts officially had the W and Hetes was the loudest person in Hazel Park . Reports were that he could be heard gloating all the way in the other rink.

I guess I didn’t realize this league was full of douchebags… I would have never joined!

Captain Tom Phillips / Dickie Dunn