Goaltender Riku Helenius was only playing in his second North American game since 2009-10 on Saturday night as the Syracuse Crunch squared off with the Binghamton Senators in the second game of a three game road trip this weekend. And it wasn’t going all that well. 5 goals allowed on 13 shots… That’s rather ugly.
But in a chippy contest between the Crunch and the Senators, frustrations started to boil over during the second period. How much so? How about Helenius finding himself in a fight with Senators goalie Robin Lehner at mid ice?
Now there’s something you don’t see every day…
UPDATE: Much higher quality video from the AHL Live feed (via Puck Daddy):
That led to Helenius’ ejection. He’ll likely get a shot at redemption tomorrow versus Wilkes-Barre/Scranton… Unless Crunch head coach Jon Cooper decides otherwise and puts Dustin Tokarski in.
As of this writing, the Crunch are trailing Binghamton by a secore of 5-2 after two periods. Cory Conacher and Mark Barberio with the goals for the Crunch.
[Note by John Fontana, 10/20/12 10:06 PM EDT ] As was noted with the original post, it was 5-2. The Binghamton Senators originally had a 5-0 lead, but the Conacher and Barberio goals started shifting the game the other way. Syracuse went on to score three more unanswered goals in the third period, from Brett Connolly, Ondrej Palat, and J.T. Wyman to tie the game at 5 and force overtime.
And to top it off, Richard Panik nets the game winner in overtime. An improbable comeback for the Crunch. Was the Helenius goalie fight a catalyst? It had been a chippy game as was… Whatever the case, the Crunch are now 3-0-0-1 with their contest against the Baby Penguins set for tomorrow.
