Deslauriers and Gabriel both busted open after heavyweight showdown.

This one was a banger.

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HockeyFeed
Published 3 years ago
Deslauriers and Gabriel both busted open after heavyweight showdown.

Oh boy this was truly a heavyweight showdown and unfortunately for both of these men they were both showing signs of their clash after it was all said and done. 

On Friday night the Anaheim Ducks faced off against their California rivals the San Jose Sharks and frankly it was a really ugly game for the Ducks. The Sharks took an early lead in the first period and never looked back, eventually shutting out the Ducks in a 6 - 0 blowout, but perhaps even more frustrating for the Ducks was the play of Sharks forward Kurtis Gabriel.

The veteran winger delivered several punishing hits early on, hits that clearly got the attention of the Ducks, and that would eventually lead to him being challenged by the Ducks forward Nicolas Deslauriers. Now you would think that the performance you're about to see from Deslauriers would have inspired his team a little, but as you can tell from the scoreline in this one his effort may have been wasted.

To his credit though Deslauriers punished Gabriel for his physical play early on, delivering several thundering punches to the head of his opponent and unquestionably doing the most damage in this one. In fact it looked for a while like Gabriel was going to do nothing but be a punching bag for Deslauriers in this one, but when things were about to come to a close he managed to land one devastating blow that drove Deslauriers' visor into the bridge of his nose, leaving him with a pretty bad cut relatively speaking. 

Gabriel however was also left busted open and in his case it was not from a visor, but from that early flurry of heavy blows from Deslauriers. I personally still feel like Deslauriers takes this one especially since the damage he dealt was entirely from his fists rather than from his opponents visor, although it is very likely that the cut on Deslauriers' nose will prove to be slightly more annoying for Deslauriers than Gabriel's will be for him.

All in all this was an excellent heavyweight showdown between these two men, the quality of which we don't get very often in the NHL anymore, and as a result it was the fans who truly won in this exchange.


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