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Joe and Karen were checking in on the game on-line that night from the family’s home in Eagan, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Joseph is their youngest of four children.

“As a parent, those are obviously stressful moments to watch,” Joe said over the phone Monday afternoon, as Joseph was in Vancouver preparing for the Canucks pre-season match-up that night against the Arizona Coyotes at Rogers Arena. “It’s a tough sport. Players run into all sorts of tough circumstances. Players can get injured in various ways.

“When he got into the fight, we didn’t know how badly he was hurt. We found out soon enough exactly what had happened. And, when he came back and scored that goal, it was pretty rewarding.

“Photographs (of the fight and the aftermath) still come up. None of us like looking at them. The fights are not fun to watch. You can ask his mother — it’s far from her favourite part of the game.”

LaBate says now that he wasn’t aware initially that he was even cut during the fight with Morin. It was likely from his visor when the pair crashed to the ice. LaBate says he needed 15 stitches afterwards.

“There was so much adrenalin,” he recalled of the evening. “One of the little stick boys came over and he was like, ‘Holy smokes, that guy was huge,’ and then ‘You’re bleeding so much.’

“I didn’t really realize it until I got into the trainer’s room. It was just a cut. I was fine.”

LaBate has drawn rave reviews from Canucks coach Willie Desjardins, prompting the Canucks coach to give him another shot on Monday.