There’s something special about playoff hockey. After playing an entire season’s worth of games, the players still manage to find a way to get a little more physical game after game and turn the intensity up about five notches every single night.
Some teams meet a little more than others throughout the regular season and develop different relationships on and off the ice with different teams throughout the league. In the Swedish Hockey League (SHL), Linköping HC and HV71 are going head-to-head in the playoffs and you can tell the two teams don’t like each other very much just by watching the players warm-up.
It all started when Linköping HC’s Emil Sylvegård decided it would be a good idea to skate into the HV71 zone and that’s where he was greeted by Marc Zanetti and Sebastian Wännström. Instead of backing down he decided to get his opponents even more riled up by skating by goalie Fredrik Pettersson-Wentzel and putting the puck between his pads while he was warming up.
That was just the beginning, though. After exchanging some words with Zanetti around centre ice the rest of the team ended up getting involved and started exchanging some shots. Linköping HC defenceman Almen Bibic attempted to take a swing at one of his opponents, who ended up with Bibic’s stick and tossed it all the way into the HV71 zone, forcing Bibic to retreat it on his own in enemy territory which made for a pretty amusing sight.
You’ve got to love playoff hockey.
(H/T r/hockey)
