[ernie]

On the Kassian "incident" last night.

The Oilers never tried anything until a minute or so left in the game where Perron tried to run Kassian as Kassian was going to the bench. Kassian hadn't said a word or done anything at that point. Perron then very quickly ran away looking for a linesman to jump in which happened. With the linemen involved Gadzic "stepped up" and "challenged" Kassian and chirped. Perron chirped. The Oilers bench started chirping. THEN Gagner ran down the bench to chirp at Kassian. Around this time Kassian finally opened his mouth and made a comment and no one really knows if it was in response to Gagner chirping or in response to Gadzic's chirping (his bad neck beard the target of the comment). Kassian was always looking at Gadzic so the neck beard thing could have been the case or it could have been Gagner. Not that it really matters as in the end the Oilers did all the chirping at the beginning including a guy running down the bench to do so and then spend all the time whining when some chirping came back the other way.

It's trash talking and provided it didn't involve racial slurs or comments about family anything goes. And does go. Every night. That probably wasn't even the worst thing said or done on the night. It just happened to be caught on camera but it was all precipitated by the Oilers.