Michael Pezzetta pulled up the second Lucas Condotta's helmet came off at the Bell Centre, and the Maple Leafs forward got plenty of credit for it.
The two of them shared a Montreal dressing room once. That mattered more than whatever started the thing.
It was Pezzetta's first trip back into that building since the move to Toronto. The crowd got its moment, just not the one it expected.
His line from the night reads strange. One assist, 17 penalty minutes, and 4:50 of ice time.
That's a full evening's work compressed into five minutes. Nobody puts up a sheet like that by accident.
Condotta walked away with 7 penalty minutes of his own across 11:16 on the ice.
Plenty of people expected sparks with a Xhekaj instead. Arber played 21:31 and took a minor, and that was the extent of it.
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Hutson scored and added 2 assists from the blue line. Everything Montreal did well ran through him.
He logged 24:50 getting there. Nobody on either side came close to that kind of night.
Cole Caufield, Ivan Demidov and Juraj Slafkovsky handled the other Montreal goals.
Caufield put 4 shots on net. Demidov added 3 of his own and looked comfortable doing it.
Jacob Fowler took the win after stopping 9 of 10. Jakub Dobes handled 11 and allowed a pair.
Henry Rybinski had a goal and an assist for Toronto. Colton Sissons got one as well.
Artur Akhtyamov and Samuel Hlavaj each faced 15 shots and each surrendered 2. Split the night right down the middle.
Montreal took it 4-3 in overtime. That's two preseason wins in the column now.
Ottawa visits the Bell Centre on Monday. Toronto gets the Senators on Wednesday.
So why does a gesture like that travel so far? Respect inside a fight works like a handshake at the end of an argument. It undoes nothing, and everybody remembers it anyway.
Pezzetta will hear about those 17 minutes for about a week. He'll hear about the other thing considerably longer.
Should fighters always stop when an opponent loses his helmet?
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