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Bruins enforcer Brian McGrattan does not care much for Ottawa’s Chris Neil

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The enforcers community in the NHL is generally one built upon respect for other enforcers since they know how hard one another’s job is in the league. After all, playing the role of public defender of your teammates on the ice and designated brawler with other enforcers is a tough job despite not logging a lot of minutes on the ice. Of course, when a player goes astray and breaks the rules of “the code” especially with players who aren’t enforcers, that tends to stir things up in the fighting community.

Case in point, Chris Neil of the Ottawa Senators picking a fight with Dennis Seidenberg of the Bruins on Saturday night in the final five minutes of the Sens 4-0 loss to the Bruins. You can see video of the scrap here on YouTube. Bruins enforcer-in-waiting Brian McGrattan, who was just called up from a conditioning assignment, was asked about his former teammate Neil picking a fight with noted non-fighter Seidenberg and much like how he plays on the ice, McGrattan pulled no punches with his thoughts on Neil as Fluto Shinzawa of the Boston Globe notes.

“I heard about it,” McGrattan said of Neil’s actions. “That’s typical Chris Neil. I had to protect that guy for three years when I was there. He’d do that and I’d have to fight all his battles for him the next time we’d play a team after he’d do something stupid like that. It doesn’t surprise me.”

Neil and Seidenberg were tagged with fighting majors. Neil was given an additional two minutes for roughing.

“That’s the way he does it,” McGrattan said. “He’ll do something where he knows he’ll get kicked out of the game and won’t have to come back and fight anybody. I’ve been around him long enough to know he does that. Then I’m the one who usually has to fight his battles the next time. It’s typical.”


Neil’s reputation amongst virtually anyone in the league is about as sparkling as this scouting report from McGrattan seems to indicate. All McGrattan was missing from this was calling Neil a few colorful names and insulting his family. Perhaps that chatter gets saved for on the ice.

The one advantage that Neil has over McGrattan is that Neil has somehow carved himself a decent NHL career out of being a fighter and agitator. Meanwhile, McGrattan’s lone skill is throwing punches with other players and has the distinction of holding the AHL single-season record for penalty minutes. If you were going to give me the choice of which guy I’d lay my fake money on to take a fight, I’d put it on McGrattan over Neil. There’s not many fights McGrattan has said “no” to in his career while Neil has developed the knack for picking on guys that are either smaller than him or guys that don’t fight at all in which to brawl with.

This is just a lot of mindless banter for now, but should McGrattan get to suit up for a game against Ottawa, Chris Neil had better be ready for action. McGrattan seems to have a bit of a long memory for these things.