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Matt Stienburg made his NHL debut with the Colorado Avalanche on Wednesday night, and his dad seemed to appreciate his decision to drop the gloves based on his reaction in the stands while filming his son’s first tilt in the league.
The Colorado Avalanche did not get off to the kind of start they were hoping for when the NHL season kicked off, and the team certainly hasn’t benefitted from the slew of injuries that have absolutely depleted a forward corps that’s dealing with the absence of Gabe Landeskog, Artturi Lehkonen, Jonathan Drouin, and Devon Toews.
The team was sitting at 0-3 heading into its showdown with the Boston Bruins on Wednesday, and it was forced to call up a number of guys from its AHL affiliate to fill those voids—including Matt Stienburg, who was selected by the Avs in the third round of the NHL Draft and played college hockey at Cornell before making the leap to the minors last year.
Stienburg is the son of former NHL winger Trevor Stienburg, who spent more than a decade in the Quebec Nordiques system and ultimately appeared in 77 games for the franchise.
Trevor pivoted to coaching after his career came to an end and currently works as an amateur scout for the Seattle Kraken, and he hopped on a flight from Nova Scotia to ensure he’d be able to watch Matt’s first NHL game.
The Avalance once again off to a slow start and found themselves in a 4-1 hole midway through the second period when Stienburg decided he was going to do what he could to shift the momentum by fighting Bruins defenseman Nikita Zadorov.
The 6’1, 182 lb. rookie had to know he was facing an uphill battle by dropping the gloves with the 6’6″, 248 lb. Russian with close to 650 NHL games under his belt, but he was able to get a few punches in before his opponent wrestled him to the ice—an effort his dad appeared to enjoy based on the tiny smile we were treated to while he was filming the donnybrook.
Matt Stienburg gets into his first NHL tilt and like a proud dad, pops was filming the whole thing 😅 pic.twitter.com/yjhwzbkS2s
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) October 17, 2024
The Avalanche did wake up a bit after the fight (Cale Makar netted his first goal of the season around a minute after Stienburg and Zadorov were sent to the box), but they ultimately fell to 0-4 with the 5-3 loss that Boston sealed with an empty-netter.