Kings' Lemieux to have in-person hearing for biting Sens' Tkachuk

Los Angeles Kings forward Brendan Lemieux received a 10-minute match penalty after Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk said Lemieux bit him during a scrum Saturday.

Lemieux will have an in-person hearing via Zoom on Tuesday to answer for the incident, the NHL Department of Player Safety announced. The in-person offer gives the league the option to suspend him for more than five games.

The dustup between the two players occurred in the third period. Once the referees separated them from a lengthy wrestling match, Tkachuk showed the officials his bare hand.

Both players received two roughing minors on the play as well.

Tkachuk didn't mince words postgame.

"This is the one time I'm going to answer this," he said, per Postmedia's Bruce Garrioch. "It was the most gutless thing somebody could ever do. This guy, you can ask any one of his teammates, nobody ever wants to play with him. This guy is a bad guy and a bad teammate, he focuses on himself all the time.

"The guy's just a joke. He shouldn't be in the league. This guy's gutless. No other team wants him, he's going to keep begging to be in the NHL but no other team is going to want him, he's an absolute joke. I can't even wrap my head around it. People don't even do this. He's just a bad guy."

Tkachuk continued to go off on Lemieux.

"It's outrageous. Kids don't even do that anymore. Babies do that," Tkachuk said. "I don't even know what he was thinking, he's just a complete brickhead. He's got nothing up there. Bad guy, bad player, but what a joke he is."

Lemieux has been suspended twice in his career: once for hitting Vincent Trocheck's head in 2018 and again for a late hit on Joonas Donskoi in 2020.

The last known biting controversy in the NHL occurred in 2019 when P.K. Subban claimed he was bitten by Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, who didn't receive any discipline from the NHL's Department of Player Safety.