ORLANDO, Fla. – With the playoff race in the Southern Professional Hockey League as tight as it is, fans can expect passions to be high and tempers to be shorter than short as the regular season heads into its final ten games. Just ask the Columbus Cottonmouths and Twin City Cyclones. Last Friday night, the two teams met in the first of a two game weekend series at the Lawrence Joel Annex in Winston-Salem and suffice it to say tensions were very high. Now both teams will have to pay a price as the league handed down suspensions from a bench clearing brawl during the second period of the contest. “This was strictly by the book. I could care less who it is and at what time (of the year),” Commissioner Jim Combs said. “They (players) are responsible for their actions.” The brawl occurred with 2:39 remaining in the second period. Twin City had gone up 2-0 on Columbus just over a minute prior to the incident that sparked off the melee. Cottonmouths goalie Ian Vigier had his stick knocked out of his hands by Ben Manny. Will Barlow challenged Manny, bringing in Steve Obelnicki who squared off with Barlow. Tim Green took the opportunity to match up with Manny. During his battle with Obelnicki, Barlow was caught in an awkward position and fell to the ice, injuring his shoulder in the process. When Obelnicki failed to disengage, the rest of the players headed toward the pair at center ice. Columbus captain Craig Stahl, who had come off the bench to talk to referee Justin Brown, paired off with Cyclone forward Jared Siganuk. As Siganuk and Stahl were going at it, Barlow was being helped to the locker room. Obelnicki , having been left alone by the linesmen who were trying to deal with Stahl and Siganuk, was standing at the red line next to Roman Marakhovski of Columbus. Suddenly, Obelnicki turns and clocks Marakhovski, who falls to the ice on all fours with Obelnicki over him still swinging. Cottonmouth Ryan McCarthy, seeing his teammate getting clobbered, comes flying over the boards heading for Obelnicki. That brought Phil Sbrocchi onto the ice followed by the rest of both benches. The final chapter of the epic belonged to the two back-up goalies, Chad Rycroft of Columbus and Kevin Druce of Twin City. Because of space issues, Rycroft was not actually on the Columbus bench; he was sitting in a folding chair just off the ice near the Cottonmouths’ entrance. He made eye contact with Druce, who was standing at center ice, and decided to join the fray. Everything else on the ice stopped as Rycroft and Druce went toe-to-toe, each landing several shots to the other. Referee Brown sent both teams to their locker rooms for an early intermission so that he and his two linesmen could figure out the penalties. In the end, Columbus’ Stahl, Green and Rycroft were banished from the game while Obelnicki, Sbrocchi, Siganuk and Druce of the Cyclones met a similar fate. Brown hit Obelnicki with a match penalty for his hit on Marakhovski and the ensuing five minute major that covered the end of the second stanza and started the third was the difference as Columbus converted three times (once on a 5-on-3 advantage) to take the lead on the way to a 4-3 victory. Just hours before the Saturday night rematch, Commissioner Combs announced that Columbus’ Stahl, Rycroft, Ryan McCarthy and Dan Leslie would be suspended – Leslie for one game, the rest indefinitely – while Cyclones Obelnicki, Sbrocchi and Siganuk were also given the night off. Additionally, both Columbus head coach Jerome Bechard and Twin City Bench boss Mark Richards were suspended for the night for “not keeping control of their players” according to Combs. Because of the suspensions and the injuries suffered by Barlow and Brad Patterson the night before, Columbus suited up 11 skaters and Vigier as the goalie. Assistant coach Geoff Beauparlant actually did double duty as both the acting head coach and the emergency back-up net minder. The second game was much calmer than Friday night’s tilt with Twin City winning 6-5 in overtime. After reviewing the video, the league issued definitive time frames for all of the “indefinite” suspensions. On the Columbus side, Stahl received five games for coming off the bench and engaging in a fight, Rycroft got five games as well as he was deemed to have come from the locker room area to become involved and McCarthy got three games for coming over the boards. Twin City was hit as well with Obelnicki getting the worst of it with a five game suspension for his match penalty while Sbrocchi received three games and Siganuk’s sentence was one game, which he served on Saturday. Richards, the Twin City coach, also announced that Obelnicki would be put on the 30-day injured reserved list retroactive to February 20th, taking Obelnicki out of the lineup until the very last game of the regular season on March 21 against Fayetteville. Even with his team locked in a battle with Fayetteville and Columbus for the fourth and final playoff position, Richards didn’t seem that upset with the rulings from the league. “I’m sure its not going to help up playing short the next couple of games. I mean, that’s pretty obvious,” he said. “Some things just work out that way. They (Columbus) are in the same boat. They’re probably a little worse off because they have one more guy that has more games. It’s unfortunate that it happened that way but it happens once in a while. What are you going to do?” Down in Columbus, Bechard, who found out he’ll be missing one more game himself, said he found positives in the situation. “I’m looking at it as a positive. It’ll open up ice time for other guys who command more ice time – maybe guys who haven’t played as well as they need to because of a lack of (ice time) or whatever you want,” he said. “I’m looking at it as a positive to motivate other people. I think my hockey team plays better with its back up against the wall. We proved that on Saturday night playing with eleven skaters. We should have one that game.” The two teams aren’t quite done with each other during the regular season. They meet on Saturday, March 7 in Columbus and again on Thursday, March 19, also in Columbus. Contact the author at don.money@prohockeynews.com
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