What looked like a routine check in Thursday’s preseason game between the Seattle Kraken and Calgary Flames turned into the most talked-about moment of the night. Ville Ottavainen didn’t take it that way at all.
Brennan Othmann delivered the hit in the second period. The Finnish defenseman responded by dragging him to the ice, then throwing several bare-knuckle punches at Othmann while he was down and unable to defend himself. The reaction online was close to unanimous.
“Don’t like this from Ville Ottavainen. He takes a routine hit from Othmann, then pulls him down by the head and feeds him punches while he’s defenseless,” one observer wrote.
“That should be a suspension,” another said, while a third called it “bush league.” Others were harsher still: “This one is absolutely suspension worthy by Ottavainen. Absolutely garbage. Back to the minors for you.”
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Kraken head coach Lane Lambert saw it differently, and he wasn’t asked twice before making that clear.
“I didn’t mind it. Othmann ran him in Calgary with a high hit and got kicked out of the game,” Lambert said, per Emerald City Hockey. “So really good job by Otto to respond to that, and I don’t have a problem with that at all.”
Othmann has a history with the Kraken that goes beyond one shift. He had been getting under Seattle’s skin when the two teams met days earlier, and it was in that game that he took the high hit Lambert referenced and was thrown out for it.
Will Ville Ottavainen be suspended?
When a reporter put it to Lambert that there might be better ways to settle a score than punching a player who is already on the ice, the coach didn’t move off his position. He argued Othmann had tried to run Ottavainen again, that there’s a limit to how long a player can keep taking runs before he answers, and that Ottavainen dropped his gloves and that was the end of it.
The NHL has not announced any decision, but the nature of the incident, punches thrown at an opponent who was down and defenseless, puts it squarely in the territory the Department of Player Safety tends to review. The full press conference is available here.
Ottavainen, 25, has spent most of his North American career in the AHL since Seattle drafted him, and is competing for a roster spot this fall. That context is exactly what several of the harsher responses picked up on.
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