Halloween is an odd time of the year. People dress up in all kinds of strange outfits, kids are encouraged to take candy from strangers, and Sidney Crosby gets himself into a fight. Good for him.
After Crosby was knocked into the boards by Marek Zidlicky, he may have been feeling slightly irked. Then when the puck came back around and Zidlicky was back up in Sid's grill, Sid decided to give Zidlicky a slash, and got one back for his efforts. Finally, the tensions came to a head and the two went at it.
Well, more like Crosby went at it. With helmets shaken off, Crosby started pounding on Zidlicky and pulled his jersey over his head, Kenny Wu style. The linesmen were very, very quick to get into this melee and split the two up, and each man got 7 minutes - 5 minutes for fighting and 2 minutes for slashing.
And this brings up an issue I've never really thought about. When someone like Eric Godard or Colton Orr drop the gloves, the linesmen let the two go at it until one either goes down or exhaustion forces them to stop. However, when Crosby jumped in swinging, the linesmen were in almost immediately. I honestly haven't gone looking to see if this is common for the 'star players' around the league, or this was an isolated thing, but there was definitely a different reaction here.
Up next for the Pens is the Anaheim Ducks, who had three fights against Phoenix last night. Two of which came from James Wisniewski, who received an instigator and misconduct for his first fight, and still came back for a second. In 82 fights last season, the Ducks only had one against the Pens - a win for Paul Bissonnette.