ANAHEIM — Troy Terry is over it. The swelling around his left eye has gone down. The bruises are now turning a deep shade of purple that’s almost black. The cuts near his eye are starting to heal, too. So, he would like to stop thinking and talking about the pummeling he received from Jay Beagle last Friday.
After sitting out of the Ducks’ loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Sunday because the swelling near his eye limited his vision, Terry was back in their lineup for Wednesday’s game against the Calgary Flames at Honda Center. His vision was normal and there were no facial fractures.
“It wasn’t a concussion or anything,” Terry said, explaining his absence from Sunday’s lineup. “I just had some issues with swelling and being able to see properly. It was kind of my problem. I feel good. I’m ready to just play and stop thinking about it and stop talking about it.”
Terry acknowledged watching the video of his one-sided fight with Beagle in the closing minutes of the Ducks’ victory over the Arizona Coyotes on Friday night. He seemed conflicted about what happened, ready to blame Beagle one moment and willing to forgive him in the next.
The incident began when Ducks teammate Trevor Zegras attempted to poke a loose puck into the net. Beagle delivered a late, hard cross-check to Zegras’ back, sending him flying. Terry arrived to stick up for Zegras, but he wasn’t prepared for the flurry of right hands to his face.
Terry never got his gloves off and never got his hands in front of his face to defend himself. He was, at that point, a bloodied non-combatant. The Ducks were furious at Beagle, believing he violated hockey’s unwritten code because he continued to punch an unwilling participant.
“I’ve watched the video,” Terry said. “I don’t know if ‘Z’ touched the goalie, and that’s the thing. I know it’s a 5-0 game and I know how I get when we’re losing. I thought the cross-check was outrageous. I wouldn’t change going in there. I would change how I went in there. It’s a learning lesson.
“There’s two sides of it, to me. There’s the side where I feel it’s a little much the way it went. I clearly was not trying to engage in a fight. But then the other side of it, for me, is that it was a learning lesson. If I go in there, I need to be more ready to handle that situation. It goes both ways.
“I’m not mad at him. It is what it is. It was just the situation. I’m kind of ready to move on from it. There’s two sides to it that I’ve been battling with. Is it wrong? Is it something I just need to learn? At the end of the day, it’s hockey and I took a punch to the face. A few punches. I’m all good.”
Terry said he received a “text indirectly” that Beagle “was sorry” for injuring him.
“It’s just kind of blown out of proportion now,” Terry said. “I don’t want to say the wrong things right now. I would say it didn’t sit well with a lot of guys (on the Ducks), which is fair to say. At the end of the day, I’m going back and forth on what to say because I don’t want to start anything.
“I’m done with it.”
TERRY ON GETZLAF
Terry had this to say about retiring teammate Ryan Getzlaf, the Ducks’ longtime captain: “I don’t even know where to start with him. I came (into the NHL) as a pass-first guy. That’s what he’s been labeled as his whole career, so he kind of took me under his wing. He’s meant so much to me on the ice.
“It’s just everything. The way he is with his kids. The way he handles his body. The way he treats (his wife) Paige. One of the best things he’s told me is that it’s always good to say, ‘It’s nice to see you,’ and not ‘It’s nice to meet you.’ Little things like that. I can’t talk enough about how much he’s meant to me.”
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