Paul Bissonnette has built a second career on being one of hockey’s sharpest talkers. During his playing days, the traffic went both ways, and he says opponents nearly always came at him from the same angle.
“On my end, people would usually roast my playing time, saying I’m usually a plug,” Bissonnette said in a Bleacher Report AMA.
One line landed better than the rest, and it got a reaction from someone who wasn’t even involved.
“Once someone asked if it was my first shift of the game when I was out there, and even the ref started laughing at that,” he said.
How much ice time did Paul Bissonnette get?
The chirp worked because it wasn’t far off. Bissonnette spent his career as an enforcer, a role that by definition came with short nights, and the numbers back it up in the most extreme way when you look at the postseason. He appeared in four playoff games across 2011 and 2012 with Phoenix, totalling 12 minutes and seven seconds of ice time across all four combined.
READ MORE: Paul Bissonnette’s proudest chirp came at a star’s expense
Those same numbers came back around recently. After Bissonnette predicted on Spittin’ Chiclets that the Minnesota Wild would miss the playoffs this season, Wild president of hockey operations Bill Guerin used a live TNT interview to point out that “usually it takes somebody that’s been in the playoffs to comment on playoffs.”
Bissonnette’s response was essentially the same defense he’s been mounting for 15 years.
“I played in NHL playoffs though,” he wrote on X. “Someone has to have the shift I played somewhere.”
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