Video: David Backes and Joe Thornton have an epic beard pulling battle

St. Louis Blues captain David Backes tried an unusual way to get under the skin of San Jose Sharks forward Joe Thornton. Near the end of the first period of Game 1, Backes pulled on Thornton’s big, woolly beard. Thornton attempted to fight back by grabbing Backes’ much less developed facial hair.



Thornton’s beard is the most impressive in recent playoff memory. Thornton started to grow his beard in mid-December. He says he got the idea to grow a large beard from teammate Brent Burns.

Burnsy was kinda doing it so I thought, I’ll try it with him and here we are. Mine’s big, but his is at a different level. His is really, really big. Mine’s much greyer than his. He calls me ‘the 1970 Dodge Charger, with the racing stripe down the middle.