It’s not often we see incidents like the one we saw in the New York Rangers and Los Angeles Kings matchup Sunday. Five years ago, Brad Marchand licked opponent Ryan Callahan in the face during a controversial argument on the ice, but what happened last night was even worse in a way.
Rangers defenseman K’Andre Miller was given a match penalty and was ejected from the game against the Kings after spitting on Kings veteran defenseman Drew Doughty. It was late in the first period of Sunday’s game when the much-talked-about incident occurred, and not many argued against the ejection.
The difference between Marchand’s lick incident and Miller’s spitting was that Marchand’s licking was fully intentional.
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Miller, however, claimed that he didn’t mean to do it.
“The kid feels bad about it,” Rangers coach Gerard Gallant said of Miller postgame. “He said it was an accident.”
K’Andre Miller wasn’t available to reporters after the game, but Drew Doughty was. The Kings’ defenseman wasn’t happy about the incident and didn’t really seem to care if it was intentional or not.
“I was just shocked obviously,” Doughty said. “I don’t even know if I said anything to him after. You don’t want to see things like that in this game. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that. I’m sure it has happened, not that I’ve seen. It’s unfortunate.
“Whether or not he meant to do it, I have no idea. It’s pretty big loogie on my face, so I was pretty (miffed).”
Although K’Andre Miller didn’t face the media postgame, it was clear that he felt bad about what had happened. Per Rangers reporter Vince Z. Mercogliano, Miller met up with Doughty to make his apologies. When the two met, Miller, according to the reports, told Doughty that it wasn’t on purpose.
It was said to be a ”good conversation.”
