Nikolaj Ehlers drops the gloves with Ryan Getzlaf.

No that was not a mistake in the title, you read it correctly, it does say Nikolaj Ehlers.

In what has to be one of the most unexpected moments of the entire 2019 - 2020 National Hockey League the Winnipeg Jets forward decided he was going to stick up for himself and decided he would do so by taking on one of the toughest customers in the game, Anaheim Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf. Now to be clear here there is no question that it was Getzlaf who instigated the entire incident on this occasion, but you have to give credit to Nikolaj Ehlers here for being so unwilling to take any guff even though he was clearly outmatched. 

The Jets and Ducks faced off on Sunday during one of the NHL's early games and not 15 minutes had expired on the game clock before things got heated between these two teams. This particular incident kicked off as the result of a two handed crosscheck on the part of Getzlaf, one that was delivered with seemingly little intent on the part of Getzlaf. The Ducks forward was chasing Ehlers, who had full control of the puck at the time, back into his own end only to see Ehlers casually ignore him and dump the puck off to another teammate, resulting in the crosscheck from what was perhaps a frustrated Getzlaf. 

That was all it took for Ehlers however as the Jets veteran immediately took exception to the cheap shot and went to give Getzlaf one of his own in return. The move seemed to catch the Ducks veteran by surprise but that only lasted for a moment. The two men then exchanged words, likely exchanging thoughts about their favorite Sunday morning cartoons, and the gloves quickly came off as the two squared up at the blue line. Surprisingly here Ehlers was not completely dominated by the physically imposing Getzlaf and even managed to get a few solid hits in for good measure, but Getzlaf was clearly the better man in this aspect of the game. The big Ducks forward landed the stiffer and cleaner shots in this exchange but to his credit Ehlers seemed to be entirely unphased by it all.