Vigilante Justice
If spraying Brendan Lemieux with your nasty used water bottle is wrong, we don't want to be right
On Sunday night, Los Angeles Kings forward Brendan Lemieux returned to the ice following a five-game suspension for biting the hand of Brady Tkachuk last month. After the incident, Tkachuk went absolutely nuclear on Lemieux, saying the quiet part loud as he outed Lemieux as the NHL’s least-liked guy.
Unfortunately, good things happen to bad people all the time. It’s not the exception, it’s the rule. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. So when “Pepe” Lemieux scored against the Wild in his return on Sunday, it was to the surprise of absolutely no one. Of course he did. Like Lemieux, the universe is a troll.
What came next, however, was pretty fun.
After the goal, Lemieux made sure to skate by the Wild bench—itself a jackass move reserved for jackass guys—and was promptly met with a faceful of water courtesy of Wild winger Marcus Foligno. Here’s hoping he spit in that bottle first.
After the game, Foligno backed up his act of liquid justice with a statement that, while not quite as eloquent as Tkachuk’s, echoed many of the same sentiments:
"Just him being him. Scores one goal and then comes by our bench and thinks he's Sidney Crosby out there. That stuff bothers ya. It sucks, it's so late in the game. You'd like to see a response but he's not really out there anymore. So it's just one of those things where it's just you gotta forget about that guy. He's an agitator, and not a very good one at that."
So there you have it, folks. Absence does not, in fact, make the heart grow fonder and Brad Marchand, for all his faults, is no longer the most-hated player in hockey. We’ll keep you up to date with more bad blood as it develops.