Phil Kessel and Jonathan Marchessault spent a good portion of their one season together in Vegas arguing about which of them would win a fight. Before a game in Ottawa, they decided to settle a smaller version of it.
The two squared off in the dressing room for a flinching contest, each trying to make the other blink first. It did not go to plan.
Both men lunged forward at the same moment and cracked heads. Marchessault came off worst, needing stitches and missing the opening warmups while the trainers patched him up. Kessel walked away with a sizeable lump on his forehead and a grievance.
“God damn it, eh. F***in’ Marchy headbutted me. Look at this massive egg I got on my head,” Kessel said, according to Jack Eichel, who told the story on the Empty Netters Podcast.
How did Phil Kessel hurt his head?
The room’s reaction wasn’t sympathy so much as alarm. Kessel was in the middle of the longest consecutive games streak in NHL history, and he had also tweaked his groin.
“Phil was flopping around complaining about his groin. Everyone was like, is the iron man streak in jeopardy?” Eichel said.
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Both players dressed that night. The remedy came afterwards, on the team’s two-hour train journey to Montreal, and it was not something any medical staff would have prescribed.
“After the game we’re taking a train to Montreal and Phil was like, ‘My head is just killing me. I gotta have a couple cokes,'” Eichel said.
By Eichel’s count, Kessel put away four or five Coca-Colas in those two hours.
Whatever it did or didn’t do, he played the next game. Kessel’s streak eventually reached 1,064 consecutive games, a record that still stands, and he won the Stanley Cup with Vegas that same season.
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