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Coyotes Keith Yandle accuses Lightning defenseman Pavel Kubina of dirty hit

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If you caught mention of Shane Doan going a bit nutty in our recap of last night’s action and wanted to know why he went off, here’s what happened. Coyotes defenseman Keith Yandle cut into the Lightning zone and was about to slip past Lightning defenseman Pavel Kubina when Kubina appeared to stick his leg out and hit Yandle with a knee-on-knee hit. Doan saw the play right away and grabbed Kubina to fight him. Kubina got a minor penalty for kneeing, meanwhile both he and Doan went to the box for fighting. Doan got the extra two minutes and a 10-minute misconduct for instigating. You can see video of the hit and fight here on YouTube.

After the game, Yandle was vocal about what he thought of the hit as Damian Cristodero of Lightning Strikes shares with us.

“It was such a dirty hit,” Yandle said. “He sticks his knee out deliberately. I had him wide and he stuck his knee out deliberately. There’s no room in the game for that.”

But Kubina, who said he had not yet watched a replay of the hit, said there was no intent.

“No, not at all,” he said. “I didn’t try to knee the guy. I was going to back up first and then I tried to hit him and he skated right into me. That’s all I can say.”

A little bit of, he said/he said action from the two interested parties involved and that’s to be expected in a situation like this. Kubina doesn’t have a questionable history when it comes to this stuff. It’s not as if Pavel Kubina is Bryan Marchment here. Still Yandle’s got a bit of a gripe here as it certainly looks bad. At least Yandle can take solace in the fact that he wasn’t injured on the play and that captain Shane Doan had his back.