Flames centre Markus Granlund scores a goal in the first period as Carey Price and Alex Galchenyuk look on.Jean-Yves Ahern
When the helmet of a fourth-line grunt meets the mouth of another team's skill player, familiar custom dictates something must be done.
Yet the gloves remained firmly on Sunday evening after Calgary Flames tough guy Brandon Bollig caught Montreal Canadiens winger Alex Galchenyuk up high with a first-period hit (Bollig went unpenalized, Galchenyuk went for stitches.)
It's far from clear that Bollig had ill intent, but the incident nevertheless illustrates the Habs' somewhat different approach to conflict resolution this season: When one of Galchenyuk's teammates skated over to remonstrate, no violence ensued.
Through 12 games, Montreal has just three fighting majors – one in its past six games – this from a team that had the fifth-highest fight total in the National Hockey League last season.
"There just isn't really much room for [fighting] any more. I mean, there is a place for it at certain times … but I don't see our team getting pushed around," said fleet-footed winger Dale Weise, a fourth-liner who would rather skate than scrap.
Fight totals, broadly speaking, are down across the NHL this year, as is the number of dedicated face-punchers on club rosters. It's a trend that seems to suit the Habs, who sit second in the Eastern Conference.
"I think it's an arms race. If another team doesn't dress any heavyweights, you obviously don't dress your own," Weise said. "Calgary's got one in the lineup [Bollig], but [Brian] McGrattan is up in the stands [on Sunday]. I think all the teams are starting to get away from it, they want third and fourth lines that can play. I think that's huge, that's the way to win. You have to score goals to win."
And in their quest for goals, the Habs' coaches elevated Weise to the right side of the top scoring line alongside Max Pacioretty and David Desharnais on Sunday.
It's surely not permanent, more like former coach Jacques Martin's occasional penchant for using Travis Moen and Mathieu Darche as fill-ins.
That said, the unit generated plenty of offence Sunday. In the third period, Weise (acquired from Vancouver in a January trade) won a foot race to set up Pacioretty's fifth goal of the season.
It's nice when role players can provide multiple options.
Montreal's contemporary experiments with employing one-dimensional fighters – Georges Laraque, Brad Staubitz and George Parros were brought in by successive GMs – all fizzled; the Habs' 2013 conference-final run hammered home the point that this club is better off with players such as Weise in its bottom six than, say, Parros or hard-nosed forward Ryan White.
It's not a novel approach, as any Detroit Red Wings fan will tell you, but it paid dividends last season – Montreal was a different club with speedy players like Weise and Michael Bournival in bottom-six roles – and is doing so again this year.
At least one aspect of the Habs' hot start stands in sharp contrast with last season.
After 12 contests in 2013-14, the Habs had racked up 10 fighting majors, five of them on opening night against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Montreal players logged 41 fights in 82 games, according to hockeyfights.com, a site that tracks NHL fisticuffs.
Only four clubs had more.
To this point this season, Montreal is on pace for an 82-game total of 20.5 fights (the Leafs, who led the NHL in scraps a year ago, have had just two so far; even the big, bad Boston Bruins have a modest five).
Some might point to the departure of Parros and White to explain the drop, but the team's leader in fighting majors in each of the past two seasons, Brandon Prust, is still around.
So are Moen and rugged defenceman Jarred Tinordi.
Plus, it's not as if there hasn't been plenty of anger to go around or a lack of foul deeds to avenge.
It's just that a broader, self-evident truth is asserting itself: In the NHL, points in the standings are more valuable than those on a fight card.