If you ever come across a 35-goal scorer with a chip on his shoulder bigger than the state of Florida, just turn around and skate the other way. Brandon Hagel has been a crucial piece of the Tampa Bay Lightning roster for over four years now—a wicked penalty killer and two-way forward who only grew in stature as a member of the Bolts’ vaunted offensive attack with the departure of Steven Stamkos in 2024 and the injury that Brayden Point suffered earlier this season. He racked up 90 points in a breakout campaign last year, and this time around he scored a new career high of 36 goals as the Lightning made their ninth straight playoffs. Hagel’s development since he was traded from Chicago symbolizes how Tampa has maintained its winning ways in the age of salary-cap crunches. He’s a downright bargain on a long-term deal while putting up superstar numbers. But the 27-year-old from Saskatchewan still carries himself like a third-line grinder stung by all the teams that passed on him when he was younger.
“I’ve been kicked in the head a lot,” he told The Athletic this week.
It’s not clear if that’s entirely metaphorical. Hagel already made an international name for himself when he squared off with his Panthers foil Matthew Tkachuk at the very beginning of USA-Canada during the 4 Nations last year. But if you still didn’t know who he was at the start of this Canadiens-Lightning first-round series, he’s made himself impossible to ignore. In Game 1, he contributed a pair of goals, including the one that sent the teams to overtime in an eventual Lightning loss. In Game 2, Hagel found the net first with a kind of screw-it-why-not shot from distance, then picked up an assist in the third period with a critical play to keep the puck from leaving the zone ahead of Nikita Kucherov’s equalizer. In between those two standout moments in Tampa’s 3-2 overtime win, Hagel got extremely rowdy, notching a Gordie Howe hat trick while further establishing himself as the guy whose smirk every Canadiens player wants to erase.
The Habs and Bolts, that classic Quebec-Florida border rivalry, genuinely seem to hate each other. Tampa goon Scott Sabourin got into fights with Josh Anderson and Arber Xhekaj in their first two regular-season games, and an increasing number of players have joined the fray since then. Just two weeks ago, they played a regular-season game that looked more like a battle royal, with the squads racking up a total of 126 penalty minutes, and this series is full of guys trying to get under their opponents’ skin. Xhekaj and Yanni Gourde were the first to get involved on Tuesday, and their trash talk carried over into the penalty box. Then a whole bunch of others decided they wanted a seat in the sin bin, too. In a massive shindig where everybody found a dance partner, all 10 skaters earned some form of punishment.
When the dust started to clear, it was Hagel, helmet off, who worked as a hype man for the home crowd. And even when forcibly separated from their enemies, he and Corey Perry played the roles of teen bully from an ’80s movie to perfection, with Hagel offering the Habs a towel to (presumably) wipe away their tears. This frickin’ guy.
You don’t love to say it, but after this chaos, the game really needed some sort of physical resolution before it could get back on track. The last half of the night was pretty light on penalties, and that’s in large part because Hagel and Juraj Slafkovsky took it upon themselves to seek catharsis in the second period. Slafkovsky is just 22 years old, a big and talented kid who technically can fight but probably shouldn’t. He might have learned his lesson against the smaller Hagel, as the more experienced brawler scored a one-punch knockdown that Slafkovsky looked totally unprepared for. I have to imagine Hagel, a sixth-round diamond in the rough, took a particular pleasure in doing this to a player who was drafted first overall as a teen. He grabbed his moment to celebrate with the “too small” before skating into the box.
You can’t make a living in the NHL anymore if you’re just a guy who fights. But if you’re the type of maniac who still wants to play in mud, even after you’ve proven yourself as an all-star caliber scorer? You’ll have one fan base that loves you forever, even if everyone else despises your guts.
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