Purinton Wipes The Ice With Ivanans

In last night's pre-season dispatching of the Kings, one Avalanche player (at least, he's an Av for now), decided to put a wannabe tough guy in his place.

First, a little background.  A couple of weeks ago, the Battle Of California posted a gushing entry about what a huge badass Kings enforcer Raitis Ivanans was just because he's tall, heavy and has huge frickin' biceps.  Fear him, they said.  Cower before him, they said.

Fast forward to yesterday when journeyman minor leaguer Dale Purinton, somehow still playing in the pre-season with the Avalanche despite the fact that he's not a good hockey player, decided he had nothing better to do than stomp the living crap out of Ivanans AND his biceps (bottom of the page).

After doing so, Purinton got tossed from the game completely for what can only be the NHL equivalent of the NFL's "excessive celebration" rule.  According to the Denver Post article linked above, Purinton strutted around like he was Tie Domi or something.

Which is all fine and good, since Ivanans got beat up and the Avalanche won the game.  Purinton got to play a whole two and a half minutes and all is fine in the world.