Two months removed from his controversial behavior during the handshake line following the Boston Bruins - Montreal Canadiens series, Milan Lucic still isn’t ready to apologize for his actions. He told the Hockey News that he’s at least willing to admit that he was out of line, though.
“I’m not going to apologize for how I acted or what was said,” Lucic said. “But at the end of the day, thinking about it now, maybe I definitely could have handled the situation better than I did. But more than saying what I said to the players, I was upset with losing. I was upset with losing to them. We had such a great team that had won the Presidents’ Trophy and that being the end and losing the way that we did, I think it all just accumulated to me losing my cool in the handshake.”
For those hoping that he’ll admit some wrongdoing, this is a step in the right direction after outright denying any regrets shortly after the incident.
Here’s a video reminder of what took place:
To some, this is really just a matter of Lucic being unwilling to conjure up dishonest feelings toward bitter rivals, really. (One would assume he feels better about the situation than Dino Ciccarelli did about shaking Claude Lemieux’s hand back in 1996 ... and it’s not like we haven’t seen the occasional cold shoulder during the pleasantries.)
There’s probably a good number of people who don’t care either way, but consider this: it’s an added reason to get excited about the next regular season meeting between the Bruins and Canadiens. Fans won’t need to wait very long into the 2014-15 campaign for that bout, either (assuming Lucic will be fully healed from wrist surgery), as the teams face off in Montreal on Oct 16.