Anthony Stolarz Finally Breaks Silence on Incident Involving Nick Cousins in Warm-Up

Game 3 started off hot and that was before the puck even dropped. Anthony Stolarz and Nick Cousins were involved in a pregame incident where the Ottawa forward decided to lob a puck in the direction of a warming up Stolarz, which ended up costing both Cousins and the Senators a bit of cash.

It was a big controversy that was berated by fans, defended by coaches, and punished by the league. It was a brazen display of unsportsmanlike conduct, and things could have gotten very bad, very quickly if some Maple Leafs players took exception.

Ottawa has tried to be a nuisance all series to Stolarz, and besides Ridly Greig trying to take his legs out, and constantly hounding his crease, he now has to worry about things before the game even starts.

So how does he feel about everything? Apparently, it's not a huge deal.

Stolarz explained that Cousins was more than likely being a nuisance with one goal in mind; break the ice (no pun intended). The two have played together before, and are very close, something the Maple Leafs goaltender touched on:

Ottawa coach Travis Green seemed to echo those sentiments as well, laughing things off and believing it was much ado about nothing:

Both men were actually the Lehigh Valley Phantoms' All-Star representatives in 2016 when they were both with the Philadelphia Flyers organization.

There certainly didn't seem to be any animosity between the two, and both of them also just won a Stanley Cup together with Florida last year as well; the two go back nearly a decade, and friends are gonna do silly things sometimes; it's levity not malice.

So cooler head clearly prevailed even though the NHL did decide to punish Cousins. While it wasn't necessarily the smartest move, he didn't mean to hurt Stolarz or make him feel threatened.

It was something they'd do in beer league, and was just a couple of friends having some fun.