Senators’ Mathieu Joseph Provides Clarity – Red Wings’ David Perron Suspended

While there’s been an umpteen amount of vitriol launched on social media sites between Ottawa Senators and Detroit Red Wings fans since Saturday evening, it was Mathieu Joseph’s turn to face questions Monday morning from assembled media.

The Senators forward responded to questions regarding the incident, which left Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin lying unconscious, face-first flat on the ice after Joseph appeared to catch the unsuspecting player with a glancing blow to the side of his facial area.

Joseph explained, “I mean, obviously, it’s happened so fast. During the game, you’re on a penalty kill. You just see a guy and the puck is right there. You’re just trying to box him out in front of your net. You know, obviously, the refs made a decision on how they wanted to put the penalties around. I didn’t even know what happened at the time. I think I was just trying to box out. The guys talked about it after the game. We’re just trying to get the puck out of the net, really, and don’t really know who’s in front and who’s not. I think it was an unfortunate situation and you know, you never want something to happen to anybody like that.”

Joseph added he had reached out to Larkin.

Hockey is a sport fuelled by emotion. There were suggestions on social media that Joseph was attempting to exact revenge on Larkin. Larkin was suspended in October 2021 for a sucker punch to the then-Tampa Bay Lightning player in retaliation to a nasty hit into the boards.

Logic says Joseph was attempting to get to a loose puck in any manner possible after being entangled in front of the net during a penalty kill. The 26-year-old shoved Larkin inadvertently into Senators’ teammate Parker Kelly, who also caught the Red Wings centre in the facial area with his arm/glove prior to the player crashing to the ice.

In what was literally a milli-second, it’s doubtful Joseph formulated “a revenge plan” towards Larkin, though a select few may think differently.