Dustin Byfuglien channels Marshawn Lynch: 'We've just got to stick together as a team'

With Dustin Byfuglien's Winnipeg Jets team down 0-3 to the Anaheim Ducks in their first round Stanley Cup Playoff series, the blue liner channeled a champion in Marshawn Lynch.

In his Tuesday morning media session at the MTS Centre, Byfuglien was asked 10 questions and answered them all with one similar answer, "We've just got to stick together as a team."

Clearly, he's been studying at the Marshawn Lynch School of Media. 

Was there anything he liked from an epic Game 3 battle with Anaheim? "We stuck together and we battled."

Is there a difference between playing forward and defenseman in the postseason? "Nope. As long as we stick together as a team we'll be all right."

What happened with Corey Perry? "As long as we stick together as a team we'll be all right."

Byfuglien is rightfully frustrated. After the Jets led in the third period of Games 1-3, the Ducks mounted tremendous comebacks, winning Game 3 in Winnipeg in overtime in the first playoff game the city has seen in 19 years. Byfuglien has zero points and is a minus-4 with four PIM.

Fresh off a four-game suspension for a crosscheck to the head on Rangers' forward J.T. Miller, the 30-year-old defenseman narrowly avoided another punishment after a cheap shot on Perry in Game 3. After Perry scored to put the Ducks up 2-1 in the second period, Byfuglien skated up behind Perry and cracked him in the back of the head, slamming him down to the ice in mid-celebration. The league decided not to fine him or assess further penalties than the two-minute roughing minor he received in the game.

While Byfuglien may look a little sore loser-ish in his recent actions, his coach, Paul Maurice, doesn't see anything wrong with the Marshawn Lynch approach.

"Here's where I'm losing this argument before it even starts: You're going to find one of 650 other NHL players who would've handled that nicely and been contrite and everybody would've thought that was good," said Maurice before the team's Tuesday practice. "He's a very, very competitive man, not particularly happy about the result. More than anything else wants to win badly, did everything we asked him to do."

The incident, and his coach's response, only further underscores Lynch's original point: There is a schism existing between the media and athletes.

"So he doesn't like the fact that he has to speak to the media today?" Maurice said. "I'm reading the Twitter pop-ups: 'Guy makes so much money, he should be happy to stand in front of the media and talk to them.' There's a certain dynamic there between media and some players that you feel that he has the absolute obligation to come out and answer for everything because of the gift and the joy that is to play professional sports and the amount of money that a man would make. And at some point as a competitive man he has the right to come out here and say that. 

"I want you to fully appreciate the number of F-bombs that he dropped on you in the back of his brain that didn't come out."