from Iain MacIntyre of Sportsnet,

Apparently, you can lead a Panther to water but you can’t make him fight. Something like that.

The Vancouver Canucks tried Sunday to engage Panther defenceman Mike Matheson for injuring star rookie Elias Pettersson on a bodyslam behind the play Oct. 13 in Florida.

Matheson, whose subsequent two-game suspension by the National Hockey League was only one-third the time Pettersson missed due to a concussion, refused in the first 10 minutes of the rematch — exactly three months later — to fight Canucks Jake Virtanen or Antoine Roussel.

Virtanen was assessed the only minor penalty at 9:26 of the first period when he crashed into a post-whistle scrum in which Roussel already had hold of Matheson, who reiterated before Sunday’s game that he never intended to injure Pettersson.

The Canucks were excoriated on social media for not attacking Matheson three months ago, when his takedown of Pettersson occurred largely unwitnessed in the third period of a game Vancouver coach Travis Green ordered his players to focus on winning.

At this stage of NHL’s evolution, no one fights if he doesn’t want to and many players no longer abide by quaint code – if they’re aware of it at all – that you should make yourself available to some degree to back up your actions if you play tough against a skilled opponent and injure him.

Matheson is a 24-year-old who has played 207 NHL games and fought once. He wasn’t going to double that total on Sunday.

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Below, catch the game highlights of Vancouver's 5-1 win over Florida plus a fight between Erik Gudbranson and Micheal Haley.