By now, you’ve probably all seen footage of the Phoenix Coyotes -- most notably Martin Hanzal and Shane Doan -- going after Kings captain Dustin Brown in the handshake line following Game 5 of the Western Conference finals.
If you’ve haven’t seen it, FF to the 1:20 mark...
Brown declined to comment on what was said, but you can assume Hanzal and Doan weren’t asking him if he knew a fourth for golf this summer.
Thankfully, talkative Kings forward Dustin Penner was also involved in the handshake line. Here’s what he told Rich Hammond of LA Kings Insider:
Question: Were you surprised at some of the stuff that was done in the handshake line?
PENNER: “Yeah, I’ve never seen that before. I got chirped in line too, for my headlock I put on Vermette in Game 2. He wanted to rehash that. I was a little surprised.’’
Question: What did you say? Did you just keep going?
PENNER: “I was really surprised. `I don’t have time to talk, right now, about this. I’ve got a flight to catch.’’’
Question: He didn’t send you a BBM or anything?
PENNER: “We didn’t exchange PIN numbers.’’
The NHL.com video feed actually caught the Vermette-Penner exchange (FF to :20)
The conversation looks short, but animated (at least from Vermette’s side of things.)
As for the convo with Hammond -- my guess is Penner realized he’d said too much and quickly bailed. I also like to think he used the “pretend phone is cutting out by making bunch of crackly static noises” move.