Pre-Game 4 News And Notes

Looking forward to the game tonight. A few notes:

* AJ reporting on TEAM 1200 20/20 updates that Mancari will be a game-time decision, but Mancari himself is quoted in an article in the Ottawa Sun written by Don Brennan today (67's coach crying wolf?) saying that he will definitely play.

"I'm going to play (in tonight's Game 4)," he insisted. "Nothing like this is going to keep me out."

Just gotta love him.

* Bickell, who confronted Musselman after his cheap shot hit on Mancari suffered the most I think. Saw him on the local news sports pkgs last night. His eye looks the worst, but according to Brennan’s art, his nose suffered too:

When 67's winger Bryan Bickell jumped in, Musselman started beating on him. Bickell wound up with a broken nose, a black left eye and a cut under his right eye. He did pass concussion tests, however.

"I kinda came in as a saviour and I think I took the worst of it," said Bickell before taking the ice for practice. "(Musselman's hit on Mancari) was a cheap shot ... Foligno put him on the ice for one reason. I didn't want to fight him, I thought the refs were going to step in, but he started throwing punches."

Yep. He’s really impressing me – and he’s from my hometown to boot.

* The Wolves are trying to get past the incident as well. From the Sudbury Star Scott Mitchell writes, Wolves reel from ‘The Punch’. A few interesting tidbits, starting with the coach:

“These players look out for each other and our guys care about each other. Kyle (Musselman) did what he felt he needed to do to get something going and I didn’t really see the incident, to be honest with you, as of right now I still haven’t seen the incident.”

It’s hard to believe that Coach Foligno hasn’t seen the incident on video, considering the OHL bigwigs are holding a hearing to review it (and it was all over the sports news shows). You’d think the coach of the involved player would want to come prepared . . . or maybe he doesn’t plan on attending. I’m not sure what exactly happens in these cases.

Some of the Wolves players comments:

Rafal Martynowski said the team wants to concentrate on hockey and called every game from now on a must-win game.

“It was one of those games where everyone got frustrated, especially on our team. It got a little ugly, but you’ve just got to put it behind you and get ready for the next game,” he said.

[. . .]

Despite the team’s penchant for earning trips to the penalty box, Chaumont said they are not a dirty team.

“A lot of things happened in that game that we want to forget,” he said.

“We really didn’t play a very solid game yesterday. Things happened, we got into penalty trouble again and we just weren’t ourselves yesterday.”

* Less than 400 tickets remaining for tonight’s game (as of 1200h)! Awesome. The Civic Centre will be rocking.