Rinaldo admitted as much one day later when going over his state of mind when he saw McQuaid get drilled by Sill. “Obviously you don’t want to see anybody hit like that, but especially [McQuaid] because he’s the first guy to go to somebody else’s defense, and protect his teammates,” Rinaldo told CSNNE.com. “I was out there [on the ice] at the end of a two-minute shift. I was gassed. I didn’t know what was going on. I saw the hit, but it was at the end of the two minutes where I’m not thinking properly.
“I’m thinking if I do go over there and drop the gloves, I get an instigator with a 2, 5 and 10 [minute penalties]. I think half the guys on the ice thought it would be a penalty, a five-minute power play and a game misconduct [against Sill]. So that was going through my mind: I was tired, and if I go over there and get beat up then we give them the energy. That was the longest shift, man.”