GALLANT FLIPS AND GARBAGE FLIES

The most emotion that the Saint John Sea Dogs showed yesterday afternoon at the Moncton Coliseum was in the dying seconds of the third period.

Moncton Wildcats head coach Danny Flynn pulled his star goaltender, Nicola Riopel, from the net in favour of backup Shane Owen over the fear that things may get out of hand. This after some rough stuff ensued along the boards following a Spencer Metcalf hit.

Flynn also pulled Riopel in game one of the series on Friday. That set off Sea Dogs head coach Gerard Gallant.

Gallant began screaming on the bench before leaping onto the sheet of glass that separates the two benches, pointing his arm at Flynn. He was hauled back down by assistant Mike Kelly.

Saint John was given a bench minor on the play.

"It showed no respect,'' said Gallant to the Telegraph-Journal after the 9-3 shellacking at the hands of the Wildcats. "It's two nights in a row he's done that (Owen entered the contest in the late going of Game 1). Like I said, win or lose, you don't do that. It's showing no respect for my coaching, like I'm going to run his goalie over or something like that.

"If I had done that in the past, that would be different, but it really upset me. I'll take it once, but not two nights in a row. Is my team a dirty team? (Did) we do something stupid? We took a couple of penalties, but there was nothing vicious. The last game he did it, that's fine. I can live with it, but two nights in a row in a 9-3 score. It's saying that Gerard Gallant is an idiot coach and he's going to try and run my goalie. That's what it's saying to me. You can ask him, but that's what it is.''

Flynn believes Gallant received the wrong message from his actions.

"It's no reflection on Gerard Gallant and Mike Kelly whatsoever that we took our goalie out with 20 seconds left," said Flynn to the Times & Transcript. "We rested our top guys upfront and on defence in the third period. (Gabriel) Bourque and (Kelsey) Tessier didn't play the last eight or nine minutes.

"The game was clearly decided and the play was getting chippy on both sides. We just thought it was the right thing to do instead of losing your starting goalie with an injury that's suffered in a scrum at the net."

Wildcats beat reporter Neil Hodge looked at it this way:

This emotional outburst by Gallant really seemed more like a desperate tactic by a head coach who's looking to somehow ignite a fire in his team after two bad games.

Was Gallant looking to be clever and create something for the Sea Dogs to rally around in preparation for Game 3? Was he looking to take media and fan attention away from his club's lousy play and instead have people talking about his confrontation with the opposition's head coach?

But Gallant’s outburst was not the only story that had fans and players upset. When tempers began to boil over, several fans started throwing garbage on the Sea Dogs bench with security taking several minutes to get at the hooligans.

Our Moncton Wildcats reporter, Dexter, witnessed the events live.

Well, we couldn't see a lot. We had no idea what set Gallant off. But, he and a Moncton assistant (couldn't tell who) were REALLY getting into it. After he jumped up and tried to get into the Moncton bench, then people started throwing stuff at the Sea Dog bench. Probably the weirdest incident which seems to have flown under the radar was a Sea Dog fan beside the Wildcat bench threw something at the Cats and it hit Gormley. Gormley turned around and BLASTED his stick on the glass and the team was jawing back and forth with that fan while the Gallant stuff was going on on the other side.

News 91.9’s Shaun McKenzie sent us this on Twitter:

Several witnesses have said that Saint John players began squirting water at the fans behind the bench.

It certainly isn’t the first time such an incident has happened to the Dogs. During the 2007-08 season, Lewiston fans poured several beverages on players’ heads as they left through the tunnel swing some fists along the way.

The Telus webcast, which had picked up the Rogers TV feed for the game, had excellent footage of the debacle.

The video of the play can be seen at 5:05 of this film.

A photo of the incident was plastered on the cover of today’s Telegraph-Journal. The same pictured was picked up by RDS, The Globe and Mail, and Journal de Quebec. A story about the events were also on the front page of today’s Times & Transcript.

Were Gallant's actions enough to awake the sleeping Dogs? We'll find out shortly.