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VANCOUVER -- It was an ugly throwback to another time. The Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames engaged in a wild first-period brawl Saturday night which later carried over to Canucks coach John Tortorella being involved in an altercation in the hallway outside of the Flames dressing room. The opening minutes of the NHL game, which the Canucks won 3-2 in a shootout, was like a scene from the movie Slapshot. It brought back memories of when teams like the Broad Street Bullies and Big Bad Boston Bruins waged wars on the ice. "I dont think anybody expected that," said Flames defenceman Chris Butler, one of eight players ejected from the game. "Its been a while since something like that happened, five guys pairing off." The Flames raised a red flag by putting their fourth line on the ice to start the game. The Canucks countered with their tough guys. Game on. Just two seconds had ticked off the clock when all five skaters from each team taking the opening faceoff dropped their gloves and began throwing punches. Calgary heavyweight Brian McGrattan was left bloodied in a fight with Vancouver tough guy Tom Sestito. After the fight Sestito patted McGrattan on the back of the head. Minor league callup Kellan Lains first game as a Canuck was brief. He was tossed for fighting with Calgarys Kevin Westgarth, who has no points in 21 games for the Flames. Also receiving game misconducts were Vancouvers Dale Weise plus defencemen Kevin Bieksa and Jason Garrison. Shown the door for Calgary was Westgarth, Blair Jones, Ladislav Smid and Chris Butler. "They started their goon squad over there," said Sestito, who leads the NHL with 167 penalty minutes in 47 games. "I just dont think were going to be backing down from guys." Ironically, Sestito and McGrattan remained in the game. In the aftermath of the brawl Tortorella could be seen yelling at the Flames bench. Later in the period, Calgarys Mark Giordano punched Vancouvers Alex Burrows in the face. Burrows was wearing a facemask to protect a broken jaw. It was his first game since Dec. 1. The bad blood wasnt confined to the ice. At the end of the first period CBC cameras captured Tortorella attempting to go into the Flames locker room at Rogers Arena. McGrattan pushed him away. Flames goaltender coach Clint Malarchuk came out of the Flames dressing room after Tortorella and McGrattan were separated. Malarchuk followed Tortorella, but was restrained by several members of Calgarys staff and McGrattan. Much of the altercation appeared off camera, but another camera showed Vancouver defenceman Chris Tanev pulling Burrows back toward the Canucks dressing room. Tortorella refused to comment on the incident but made no apologizes for the lineup he started. "I know the other guy across the bench," he said. "Its easy for people to say well put the Sedins out there and its deflated. I cant put our players at risk like that. "With the lineup that he had, Im not going to put those types of players at risk and thats what ensued. Im not proud of it. Ive apologized to every one of the players involved in it. I dont feel great about it at all." Flames coach Bob Hartley was left shaking his head over Tortorella charging his teams dressing room. "I just dont understand," he said. "I got out of there. I dont need to get suspended or fined. "There is nothing to be settled there. I just dont understand what was going on." Hartley also defended his starting lineup. "Those guys are playing well for us," he said. "They got a goal last game. Were not scoring many goals. We had zero intentions there. "As far as I know they were the home team. They had the luxury to put whoever they wanted on the ice." The teams combined for 188 penalty minutes in the first period. 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"I think I took the fall for a lot of things," said Gay, reflecting on his short time in Toronto ahead of Wednesdays game against his former club. David Wright Mets Jersey . The incident occurred at 6:28 of the first period in Anaheims 6-3 home win over Dallas on Sunday. Garbutt left the penalty box and skated at Penner before leaving his skates to deliver a check.For the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, they will have to play on what we call a short week. They will play a game only five days after their previous game. This is something every team in the CFL will have to deal with at some point and being able to handle these short weeks is crucial to being a contender for first place. When I was a head coach and the newest schedule would come out, I would evaluate and break the season down by how many days off between games. For example, you wanted to know that we have five days between games twice, six days between games three times, seven days between games eight times and so on. I would do this for not only my team but also all the teams in the League and be able to see how each teams schedule was set up for days between games. If we had four, five day turnarounds between games and no other team had more than two, I was going to take that up with the CFL schedulers and ask for that to be changed in the next version to match the other teams five day turnaround schedules. Lets talk about some of the things that affect a team playing on a short week. One of the first things that would happen the day after a game is you get an injury report from the athletic training staff and that will tell you the status of players injuries and whether they will be ready to play. Short weeks make it very difficult for injured players to get healthy in time to play. In a seven or eight day work week, you can have two or three extra days to get an injured player ready to play. That could be all the time in the world, for the training staff to get him ready to play. So one of the biggest downfalls of short weeks is injured players may have a hard time being ready to play. Another thing that has to be adjusted is the practice schedule for the week. With only five days between games, you really have only four days to prrepare because the fourth day is the travel day.dddddddddddd Most teams do one of two things on the day after a game on a short week. Most teams would bring the players in the day after the game and review the previous nights game and correct mistakes and evaluate the film with the players. Some teams may give the players the day after the game off and will show a few corrections to be made the following day. That leaves you with only two days and you have to combine what are usually three games of practice into two days. So the team will get less reps of their base offense usually and will still have to work on all situations. (Goal line, Red Zone, Backed Up etc.) So it is very hard for the coaches to communicate and teach the game plan with one fewer day to prep the players. I never had the players put the pads on during five day turnarounds because the players are still sore from the previous game and I wanted to do my best to make sure the players are ready to play the next game. From a game planning standpoint, coaches will actually try to do as much work as they can before the previous game knowing that they will have such a short turnaround the following week. Scouting reports and video breakdowns and whatever early paper work can be done is finished before the previous game. Another thing about game planning on a short week, many teams will have a smaller package of plays because they dont have time to practice and teach it all. I have found that is actually a good thing because we as coaches tend to put too much into our game plans. One advantage of the short week is if you lost the previous game, you get a chance to play again quickly and get back on track with a win. Short weeks have to be planned out and structured the right way, but are part of the unique scheduling of the Canadian Football League. ' ' '