Gerard Gallant Calls Peter DeBoer A "Clown" For Saying He Talks Too Much Trash To Players

The Golden Knights have squandered a 3-1 series lead against the Sharks and must now win Game 7 in San Jose tonight to advance, so it’s understandable if everyone on both sides is a little on edge. Even Sharks coach Peter DeBoer and Knights coach Gerard Gallant are squabbling in public.

After Game 6, DeBoer was asked whether the Sharks would benefit from a less verbally combative series, and he called out Gallant for taunting the opposing players from the bench. Specifically, after Vegas’s Jonathan Marchessault slashed San Jose’s Logan Couture in Sunday’s game, Gallant yelled from his bench about Couture not getting called for embellishment. Couture briefly left the ice but came back to show the officials the damage to his mouth. Here’s what DeBoer said about Gallant’s tone in general, via the San Jose Mercury News:

“I don’t know if it works in our favor. I mean, there’s still chatter. Their coach is chattering. He’s probably doing the most chattering. He’s talking to our players constantly during the game, which I haven’t seen before.

“That’s probably where most of the chatter’s coming from now. The players are playing.”

Gallant, who was asked about the beef this afternoon, started his answer by saying, “I really don’t want to talk about that,” before talking about it plenty. The coach called DeBoer “that clown,” and said he was actually yelling “at the referee” about the lack of an embellishment call, not Couture. (It wasn’t embellishment, though.) Gallant said that the other time he was chirping at an opposing player, it was in response to San Jose’s Evander Kane.

It’s a damn shame that the guy named Gallant, who’s supposedly so good at talking trash, didn’t even call his counterpart “Goofus.”