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A lot of Flames haters and Kings fans saying Tkachuk shouldn't get to pick who he fights. I thought McNabb was a fair opponent; he's bigger and has 6 fights on his resume this year and has fought much better fighters than Tkachuk. Why should he fight Clifford or Andreoff? They are way out of Tkachuk's league.

It's also not like Tkachuk went after an unsuspecting Doughty. Doughty himself admitted to initiating the rivalry with Tkachuk. The elbow came from battling all season long.

According to the haters, Doughty can:

a) initiate the rivalry;
b) cry about it when it gets too heated;
c) not fight his own battles;
d) have Tkachuk fight LA's goons.

I would have preferred if Tkachuk didn't fan the flames prior to the game, but I can see why he is so pissed at the whole situation. Doughty starts it all, and then when Tkachuk fights back, Doughty whines about it, and everyone blames Tkachuk for it.

To top it all off, I don't think the elbow really hit Doughty that hard. Tkachuk has been doing the reverse hit all season long, and he's done it to Doughty before too. Doughty knew it was coming and embellished it. At first, when I saw the elbow and the big head snap, I thought Doughty would get a concusssion, but the fact that he barely even missed a shift and was fine, makes me wonder how big the impact was.

There are only two people who know how much the elbow actually connected, and judging by how pissed of Tkachuk is about the whole situation, and by how Doughty sort of marginalized it in the post game, i'm guessing he only grazed Doughty with it.