CHICAGO

Heavyweights are a dying breed in the NHL but what about the guys who start the fights?

What about St. Louis Blues forward Steve Ott, who has worn a black hat wherever he’s played, enthusiastically, and took great pleasure in Game 3 by planting an elbow into the kisser of Chicago Blackhawks defenceman Brent Seabrook, then getting into the face of Jonathan Toews a little later?

In a Chicago-St. Louis playoff that has been breathtakingly good, with stars coming out at night or in Sunday’s day game — Toews, Patrick Kane, Artemi Panarin, Duncan Keith for the Hawks; Vladimir Tarasenko, Alex Pietrangelo for the Blues — Ott is that infuriating piece of work from another time.

You don’t see many villains anymore, sadly. But Ott is just that.

He was very effective in his give-a-woodpecker-a-headache way for St. Louis in their 3-2 victory and those 6 1/2 minutes he played in Game 3, in his first outing in four months since hamstring surgery, will be double that shortly because his coach Ken Hitchcock is a throwback coach. And Ott is a throwback player.

Does he feel endangered as a guy who instigates the dropping of mitts?

“Fighting’s never going out of hockey,” he said. “Fighting’s here to stay forever, guys.”

There’s fewer and fewer kids coming in who play like Ott, though.

“I don’t know about that ... they just don’t fight (as much),” he said.

Forward Andrew Shaw, Chicago’s version of Ott, is one of those younger lookalikes.

“He’s a great little player, he’s not the fastest guy but he is very effective. He’s no different than I was when I was his age, scoring 20 goals. Now, I’m used in a different role,” Ott said.

Ott is honest to the core. We should all like him. He doesn’t speak in cliches. He’s the same off the ice as he is on it.

He’s the ultimate headache that won’t go away with two Advil.

When asked Monday what he was trying to accomplish when he got Toews in a hug in the third period Sunday with some smelly glove-in-the-teeth action thrown in, he shrugged.

“I think he was trying to get me off my game. He had me in a headlock,” he said. “You guys have to watch the video a little closer.”

“He probably needs it (face-washes). There some language going on out there between the other stuff, too, and players are getting pretty angry ... so Steve must be saying some bad words,” said Hitchcock, a smile drinking the edge of his mouth.

“He’s made a career out of it so he’s obviously doing something right,” said Hawks forward Andrew Ladd. “He’s going to play his six, eight minutes but we can’t let him be a factor.”

But he is, no matter how much ice-time he gets.

From the minute Ott got to the NHL as a first-round draft pick in 2000, his demeanour on the ice hasn’t detoured. He loves to talk, learning, so the story goes, to swear in several languages as a teenager.

“I think he was using it as prep for the world junior,” said the Stars long-time TV colour commentator, Daryl Reaugh.

He’ll bait anybody. There’s a funny video on YouTube going back to 2008-2009 where he’s got his nose pressed up against the plexiglass beside Ducks forward Mike Brown, jawing with Brown, who starts muttering then leans around the glass in frustration.

“This is a wealth of giggles,” Reaugh says on the video.

There’s another story where he reportedly got on a visiting player, saying they should buy him out, but on second thought, maybe the team didn’t have the money for that so he’d do it out of his own pocket, which left the player speechless.

Has he ever run across anybody he traded barbs with who was as quick-witted?

“I’m still looking for that guy,” he chuckled. “There are some funny things said on the ice that get both guys giggling (or steamed). Some guys get pretty mad and say things out there. It’s part of the gamesmanship.

“There’s lines I won’t cross ... diseases and family. Heck, I’ve battled against some of my own current teammates in St. Louis over the years. You fight them, say some bad things. As a teammate, though, you sit down and have a beer with them.”

How many different languages can he swear in?

“That’s an old-school question there. You’ve been reading my bio,” he said. “In junior, I played with Russian kids, Swedish kids, Czech kids. You learn the lingo. Their F-bombs, and you pick up on them. Then you play Team Russia and use their words and they’re looking at you and laughing.”

Ott and Hitchcock, his first bench boss after he was drafted in Dallas, share no expense with their repartee. Hitchcock gives as good as he takes, too.

“Hitch is pretty witty. He’s tough to knock off his feet,” kidded Ott. “I’m sure I’ve driven him nuts over the last four months (rehab) but he’s such a veteran, strong coach, he handles all personalities extremely well and when you have a guy who can handle an energetic guy, a mouthpiece guy, a quiet guy like we have on our team, that’s good.”

Ott concedes the game has changed after he came in as an energy guy, fighting lots.

“I’ve been punched in the face so many times (nose pushed at all different angles),” he said.

But, he still plays the game right way. Hitchcock values his play in the corners, and playing a safe game from the face-off dots to the wall, not throwing the puck away.

As a junior, he once scored 50 goals in Windsor, as has been suggested, because Jason Spezza was passing him the puck.

“Spezza actually slowed me down. I think I had 26 in 25 games then Spezza came to our team and I had 24 in the next 35,” said Ott, jokingly.

Ott, who has played 795 games but never for a team that’s won the Stanley Cup, suffered a dastardly injury in early December when his legs splayed as he crashed into the boards after going to hit Dion Phaneuf. Their legs got locked, he did the splits into the wall before crawling to the bench.

“They did a great video on our website. They showed it about 20 times,” said Ott.

“There’s three hamstrings in each leg. It was my right leg. Two of the hamstrings go into one full tendon and the tendon attaches and the third one attaches to the other two. I ripped two off the main one,” he said.

How much pain was there?

Not quite child birth pain, but maybe as bad as a kidney stone.

“It was terrible ... there’s nothing that’s a close second and I’ve had a lot,” he said.