The Chicken Nugget Incident

I'll admit that being busy usually results in me making meals at home that are quick and easy to make. Whether it be a pizza with some toppings added or some fries thrown in the air fryer, I usually don't have to wait long for a good meal. Something I usually have in the freezer are chicken fingers or chicken nuggets as those are quick and easy to make as well, and there's nothing wrong with a good chicken nugget dinner after a long day at work... unless you're Kirill Tyutyayev and the Toledo Walleye.

The Walleye were hosting the Kalamazoo Wings this morning as they welcomed a number of kids to the rink during their early-day game. These types of games don't happen often, but it's always a fun time to take the morning off school to go watch a hockey game. I believe there should be more of these types of games so guys like me can take a morning off work to go watch hockey, but it seems the world doesn't share the same enthusiasm I have for hockey games during the day. This forced me to watch online today.

In any case, the puck was dropped at 10:35am ET in Ohio, so that meant that it was likely a few kids would have bought or received lunch at the arena during the game. There are lots of options for lunch at an arena for kids including hot dogs, hamburgers, fries, onion rings, and the aforementioned chicken nuggets. That's where we'll focus today.

At the 8:43 mark of the second period with Toledo leading 2-0, this moment happened as explained on the ECHL stream of the game.

That foreign object that hit the ice was none other than a chicken nugget that entered the field of play from the stands. No one was identified as the thrower of said nugget, but Toledo's Kirill Tyutyayev took it upon himself to try and return it to its rightful owner by shooting it off the ice and over the boards back into the crowd. That's when things got weird, and the Walleyes forward learned a lesson about disposing of food thrown onto the ice.

Tyutyayev was given a ten-minute misconduct under ECHL rule 39.4, Section VI that states,

"A misconduct penalty (or game misconduct penalty at the discretion of the Referee) shall be imposed on any player who deliberately throws any equipment out of the playing area. When this is done in protest of an official's ruling, a minor penalty plus a game misconduct shall be assessed."

Yes, it seems he avoided the two-minute minor that's supposed to accompany the misconduct, but perhaps that's because the official realized that a chicken nugget isn't hockey equipment.

Let me be clear that the ten-minute misconduct assessed to Tyutyayev likely had no effect on what happened after he was sent to the penalty box because hockey is a team game. Individual players can affect the outcome, but teams still win and lose as a group due to how each team plays. I say this because, as stated above, Toledo had taken a two-goal lead in the first period thanks to a pair of markers by Chase Gresock and were holding that lead when the chicken nugget incident happened.

After Tyutyayev was sent off for his extended break, though, it seems like either the Wings woke up or the Walleye deflated. Kalamazoo rattled off six-straight goals by six different players over the final 28 minutes of the game to secure a 6-2 victory as Toledo goalie John Lethemon was victimized for all six goals. Toledo outshot Kalamazoo 31-25 in the game, so it's clear that either the Wings started this game slowly or the Walleye may have been rattled by that chicken nugget misconduct.

For safety's sake, folks, please don't throw anything on the ice. Besides the risk of potentially being a safety danger if someone were to skate over it, throwing food onto the ice surface is also presents a safety concern for the health of the individuals who need to remove said from the ice surface. As we've seen with COVID, the spread of some viruses can happen very easily, so let's keep everything bought outside the ice surface off the ice surface as well.

I honestly never thought I'd be writing about chicken nuggets in Toledo, Ohio here on HBIC, but we can cross that one off the blogger bingo card after today's ECHL contest.

Until next time, keep your nuggets off the ice!