MISSISSAUGA - Bryson Cianfrone insists he is no goon.

“That was my first penalty minutes of the year,” noted the Mississauga Steelheads centre. “I’m five-foot-eight, 174. So I’m not going to be intimidating anybody with my size at all.”

Cianfrone has stayed away from social media this week, after receiving some nasty tweets and facebook messages.

“Yeah I ignored all of it,” he said following Friday’s Ontario Hockey League game in which his Steelheads beat Sudbury 5-2. “If I say something bad on social media who knows what can happen right?”

Cianfrone is the other guy involved in the Connor McDavid fight.

“I hoped that he wasn’t hurt because you obviously don’t want anyone getting hurt like that,” said the 19 year-old in his first public comments about the incident. “I kind of felt bad that he did that during a fight because he’s not usually a fighter.”

Neither is Cianfrone.

“My first fight in the OHL,” he added.

“After the fight there I saw him holding his hand when he was coming to the box then I saw him leave. All the guys said he was holding his hands during intermission and said there was something wrong.”

McDavid broke a bone in his right hand in the fight. He will miss five to six weeks, and may not be able to suit up for Canada at the World Junior Hockey Championship in Montreal and Toronto.

The Otters were up 4-0 on the Steelheads Tuesday afternoon, with McDavid having scored the fourth goal to go along with an earlier assist - giving him 51 points in 18 games.

Then 6:10 into the second period, Cianfrone and McDavid dropped the gloves and fought.

There was no history of bad blood between the pair. They were teammates for a short while a few years ago – “me and Connor are kind of buddies” - when Cianfrone was with the Toronto Marlies Minor Midget team, and McDavid was called up to play some games with the squad.

“It was just a hockey play. I hit him into the boards – a little retaliation there – and then things escalated into the fight. That’s about it.

The incident has reignited the entire fighting in hockey debate. A debate Cianfrone doesn’t think is needed.

“I think fighting is a part of the game of hockey. If you take out fighting I don’t know how the game is going to be. People are going to be taking cheap shots at each other.”

While the eyes have been focused on McDavid – widely considered the top prospect for the 2015 NHL draft and seen as a generational prospect – Cianfrone has done his best to move forward in his second OHL season.

He leads the Steelheads in scoring and is captain of the team in this his second OHL season.  

“I don’t play a dirty game at all.”