Steven Stamkos reveals the real reason he fought Auston Matthews in the 1st round!

The Toronto Maple Leafs managed to get past the Tampa Bay Lightning in Round 1 of the postseason, but captain Steven Stamkos made sure superstar Auston Matthews wouldn’t be tempted to run over any more of his teammates. In Game 3 of the tight series, Stamkos initiated a fight with Matthews after an incident along the board that saw teammate Brayden Point crash hard into the boards.

Earlier this week, Stamkos was a guest on the ‘Clearing the Crease’ podcast with James Cybulski, Andrew Raycroft and Mike Commodore and finally explained what led to the NHL’s first fight among two 60-goal scorers.
Stamkos was so candid about the fight and offered an interesting perspective about his scrap with Matthews.

“We saw Brayden Point go head-first into the board and he was moaning and screaming and it kind of looked like a dangerous hit. So there had to be a response,” Stamkos said. “Kuch (Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov) got in there, I got in there. I kind of said to myself, ‘Listen, like’ at that point I thought it was a dirty play. I didn’t have a chance to watch the replay and understand it was just kind of a tough luck type of thing.”

Stamkos thought the Bolts had lost Point for the remainder of the game and decided something needed to happen to Toronto for taking him out. Already without defenseman Erik Cernak for the series after the defenseman was the recipient of an elbow to the head from Maple Leafs forward Michael Bunting, Stamkos wanted to send a message. Point did return to the game, but the captain didn’t know it would be the case when he dropped the gloves with Matthews.

“It looked like he’s probably done. And there was a little skirmish and I’m like ‘screw this, I’m just going to grab Matthews and see what happens,’” Stamkos said. “I mean, obviously, he’s their best player and one of our best players just went into the boards. Screw it, let’s just start to throw rabbit punches and see what happens. It was nothing against Auston Matthews other than he was right there and he’s their best player. It just kind of happened.”

The Maple Leafs defeated the Lightning in six games to win the first round series, but that fight initiated by Stamkos remains one of the highlights of that matchup.

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