Tuesday nights game between the Pittsburg Penguins and the Philadelphia Flyers was a fight filled chapter in the ever growing rivalry between the two teams. According to one Pittsburg columnist the title of that chapter fight be "The Steakhouse Conspiracy". Pittsburg columnist Dejean Kovacevic wrote that he heard it mumbled after the game Tuesday night that the Flyers combativeness was an orchestrated effort.
Claude Giroux and a few of his mates met at a local steakhouse and decided this night, this opponent would make the perfect foil for turning their season around. That they'd go out and do that thing they've always done, 40 years after it last worked, and raise a circus tent over the proceedings.
He went on to refer to the Flyers as,
"the most repugnant franchise in professional sports with all due apologies to Bill Belichick's Patriots."
It may all sound ridiculous, but this quote from Zac Rinaldo referring to the hit he laid on Kris Letang that saw Rinaldo ejected, Letang leave with an injury and everything get heated, makes it sound a little less crazy.
"I changed the whole game, man. Who knows what woulda happened if I didn't do what I did?"
Orchestrated or not, Tuesday nights game may just have the result that Giroux was looking for and this rivalry got even more interesting.
