BS Ciarko Bank KH Sanok arrived in Krakow on Tuesday for their fourth meeting of the season with Comarch Cracovia. The visitors had taken all three of their previous matchups, and the Comarch fans were in no mood to stand witness to a fourth loss to the defending league champions. They were, however, willing to attend in their (two-plus) thousands in order to see Wojtek Wolski, Poland’s only NHL player.
And see him they did, as Wolski swiped the puck off an unwary Cracovian and deftly delivered it to Marcin Kolusz for the game’s first tally just before the end of the first period. Sanok went on to score two more unanswered goals in the second, Cracovia potted two on the power play in the third, and then … got creative.
Patrik Valczak took a long shot on Sanok goaltender Przemyslaw Odrobny and motored in as Odrobny came out of the crease to freeze the puck. Valczak half-heartedly put on the brakes but managed to crunch the crouching tender fairly convincingly.
And then Justice arrived:
Wolski swooped in, took Valczak to the ice, bounced up and shook his left glove free. The official slid smoothly between them, and Wolski’s right glove hit the ice. There may have been some pleasantries exchanged as well. Cue the fight, right?
Wrong. The PHL frowns on fighting, so the miscreants were herded to the sin bin. Then the stylishly-stripéd zebras held a swift conference, slapped Wolski with a ten-minute misconduct and ordered him to the showers. Wojtek sauntered out of the box, took a nice long slow glide across the rink, and then this happened:
#WojtekWolski blows kisses to a crowd roaring with hatred after confrontation with Cracovia defender Dudaś. He’ll be remembered here.
— Crestodinius (@TomCrestodina) November 27, 2012
Wolski had some remarks after the game (via GooglePolska):
“I do not care for the rules in Poland about not throwing gloves on the ice. I will always defend our goalkeeper when he is attacked … The NHL lockout continues and there is nothing I can do. I know one thing – at the holidays I will return home to Toronto. As always, I’m going to spend it with my family. What’s next, we’ll see. I do not know if I will come back to Poland.”
Full game highlights here. Many thanks to reader Beata for the links and videos!