Remembering five of history’s weirdest draft classes

The NHL draft starts tomorrow, and I can’t tell you what’s going to happen, because Cory Pronman already did. But I can make two predictions with confidence: Every team is going to tell us that they’re thrilled with their 2020 draft class, and the whole thing is going to be weird.

The weirdness will come from the setting, as the league ditches the big everyone-in-one-building draft floor (for obvious reasons) and shifts to a virtual setup. And the teams will say they love their draft classes because teams always do that. The next GM who walks out of a draft saying “Man, we messed up, these guys are a bunch of bums” will be the first, and also my new hero.

So today, let’s get ready for a weird draft full of great classes by mashing those two concepts together into one: Weird draft classes from NHL history. We’ll revisit five times that a team went into a draft and came out with something that, in hindsight, was kind of remarkable.

There aren’t the best classes ever, or the worst, or the most important. It’s just five interesting stories to kill some time on a Monday before your team drafts a new franchise player and/or screws up everything forever. Let’s remember some NHL draft oddities.

1977 Montreal Canadians, aka In Crease Increase

Imagine you’re a scout for the 1977 Montreal Canadiens. You’ve just come off what might very well have been the greatest season in NHL history, a 60-8-12 masterpiece that ended with your second of what will turn out to be four straight Cups. You have the best coach ever (Scotty Bowman), the best GM ever (Sam Pollock), and an absolutely stacked lineup. Oh, and your goaltender is Ken Dryden, who was just a first-team all-star for the third time in four years. And he’s only 29.

What’s your draft plan? Apparently, it’s “draft all the goalies”, because the 1977 Canadiens took seven of them.

Seven! In one draft. I’m all for having a strategy and sticking to it, but that seems extreme.

It’s not quite as crazy as it might seem to modern eyes – remember, this was back when the draft could go on forever. The Canadiens used 27 picks that year, stretching out to a 15th round, so it’s not like they only took goalies. But still… seven? When you only have one net, which is currently occupied by a legend in his prime? (And in case you’re wondering, their backup goalie was Bunny Larocque, who’d led the league in GAA that season.)

So how’d they do with all those goalies? Not great. Their first goalie pick, fourth-rounder Robert Holland, only played two NHL seasons, neither with the Canadiens. They did a little better with seventh-rounder Richard Sevigny, who was a part-time starter in Montreal for five seasons in the 80s. Mark Holden played eight NHL games. And the other four goalies they took never made the big leagues at all.

It was all part of a decidedly mixed bag for that 1977 Habs draft. They found a future Hall-of-Famer at the end of the second round in Rod Langway. But they also spent a third-round pick on Moe Robinson, the younger brother of Larry, who lasted one game. And they used the 10th overall pick on Mark Napier, passing on a fellow right-winger who was a hometown kid from Montreal. Some guy named Mike Bossy.

1983 Detroit Red Wings, aka Toughen Up

The most famous Red Wings draft of all time came in 1989. That was the year they found two Hall-of-Famers who’d form the core of a Cup team (Nicklas Lidstrom and Sergei Federov), plus two more 1,000-game NHLers (Mike Sillinger and Dallas Drake), plus Soviet star Vladimir Konstantinov in the 11th round. Not bad. But not my favorite Wings draft.

No, that would be 1983. It’s a draft every Detroit fan remembers fondly, because it saw the Wings land Steve Yzerman with the fourth overall pick. That took a bit of luck – the North Stars spent the first overall pick on Brian Lawton and the Whalers took Sylvain Turgeon, leaving both Yzerman and Pat LaFontaine on the board for the Sabres and Wings at three and four. That’s the draft, though. You do your homework, and hope a franchise player drops to your pick.

And what do you do when it all breaks right and you get that franchise player? Well, if it’s 1983 and you play in the Norris Division, you make sure you protect him. And you do that by drafting three of the most legendary tough guys in hockey history.

The Wings got started in round three, grabbing big winger Bob Probert from the Soo Greyhounds. Probie would go on to become the NHL’s all-time heavyweight champ, but the Wings apparently figured he could use some backup, so they used a fifth-round pick on Saskatoon Blades’ wrecking ball Joey Kocur. And just to make sure nobody got any ideas when both those guys were in the box, the Wings added some insurance in the 10th round, taking Stu “The Grim Reaper” Grimson from the Regina Pats.

To be clear, none of those guys were one-dimensional enforcers coming out of junior. (Probert in particular was really good, with 72 points in 44 games for the Hounds.) And as it turned out, Grimson never signed and went back in the 1985 draft, where he was taken by the Flames. He’d eventually end up in Detroit for a few years in the mid-90s, but by that point Kocur was winning Cups in New York and Probert was on his way to Chicago.

So no, Yzerman never got to suit up for a game knowing all three guys were behind him, although I’m guessing that the Bruise Brothers provided enough protection on their own. But the effort was there. To this day, only 44 players in NHL history have racked up more than 2,100 PIM over their careers, and at the rate the game is going that list might not grow. It’s an exclusive club. And three of them were picked by the same team in the same draft.

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1993 Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, aka This Guy Looks Familiar

This was the first draft in Anaheim franchise history. And they got off to a strong start, managing to pick the leading scorer in the draft.

Any Ducks fan knows how the team spent its first ever draft pick. The Ducks had the fourth overall pick, and after watching Alexandre Daigle, Chris Pronger and Chris Gratton go off the board, they grabbed the reigning Hobey Baker Award winner. That would be Paul Kariya, and while his career was shortened by injuries, he was easily the best forward in the draft, and his 989 points in 989 games was the most by any player taken that day.

But he’s not the leading scorer I was referring to.

Kariya was the leading scorer from the 1993 draft. But I said the Ducks took the leading scorer in the draft. Which they did.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Friday Grab Bag: Good news on the CBA, new rules for 2019 and how to prank an L.A. King

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- This week's CBA news was a good thing, but let's not celebrate yet
- I try to stay positive about this year's new rules
- An obscure player with lots of (Scrabble) points
- The month's three comedy stars
- And Survivor contestant Tom Laidlaw pranks the 1991 Kings, a team he was not on

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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I cheered as a generation of NHL players gave each other concussions. What do I owe them now?

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I’m​ going to warn​ you​ up​ front​ that​ this​ post is​ going to be​ heavy on the​ questions.​ It’s going to​​ be a lot of smaller questions, all piling up toward one bigger question. And the answer is going to be unsatisfying, because the answer is going to be: I don’t know.

Maybe I should, because I’ve been struggling with this for years. Maybe you have too. And if so, I wish I could wrap it up for you with a nice easy answer we could all agree on. That’s where I wanted this to end. I didn’t get there.

But I still think there’s value in the questions because for too long most of us didn’t ask them at all. Or at least, we didn’t ask them out loud, even as they might have been lingering somewhere in the background.

I have questions about concussions, the players who are still feeling their effects, and the shared experience of being a hockey fan and what that should mean. I find myself asking those questions a lot these days. But to get to right now, first I need to go back almost three decades.

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It’s 1989, and I just finished opening up my Christmas presents. I don’t remember exactly what I got that year, but I’m sure there was a nice pile of clothes, books and computer games. I do know which gift I want to turn to first: a VHS copy of “Don Cherry’s Rock’em Sock’em Hockey.” I’ve been getting hockey tapes for years now, but this one is different. It’s the first in the series, before we even knew there would be a series, and it isn’t just the usual bloopers and silly sketches. This is Grapes. This is going to be good.

And it is good. All the hockey fans in the house quickly gather around the TV to watch the hits and goals and other highlights. Then comes a segment of big hits, after which Cherry thanks us for watching and gives a big thumbs up as the screen fades to black. There are probably a few puzzled looks for a second or two, but then Cherry is back and he chuckles at the fake out. “Hey you, folks, I know what you’re thinking out there. What’s a Don Cherry video without the odd tussle?”

But before we get to that, we arrive at what Cherry would eventually start calling “tea time.” That’s where he gives all the “sweethearts” out there who don’t like fighting a chance to turn off the TV. At my house, nobody even thinks of turning it off.

First up is a scrum involving a clearly uninterested Wayne Gretzky that’s played up for laughs, complete with rag-timey piano music. Then comes “two guys that aren’t fooling”: Bob Probert and Craig Coxe. The fight is from early in the 1987-88 season, more than two years before this time, but in the days before YouTube or 24-hour sports highlights, most fans have never seen the whole thing start-to-finish.

Coxe and Probert go toe-to-toe for nearly a full minute, and it’s all bombs. Cherry says there are 71 punches thrown; it seems like more. A lot of them don’t land. A lot of them do. “Way to go, Craig, and way to go, Bobby,” Cherry exclaims when it’s over. I’m sure I was nodding along.

Next up is another super heavyweight bout, this one featuring John Kordic and Jay Miller. Then another non-fight that’s played for laughs, and the video ends. I can remember feeling vaguely disappointed. Only two real fights? I thought there’d be more. Ah well, let’s rewind and watch Coxe and Probert again.

That scene became an annual tradition at my house. Christmas day was about stockings, family and a nice turkey dinner. But it was also the day to tear open the latest “Rock’em Sock’em” and gather around the TV to watch Grapes walk us through another season of goals, saves, crushing hits and, at the end, the odd tussle. I’m willing to bet there were plenty of families across Canada that did the same.

Bob Probert died in 2010. The cause was heart failure, but he donated his brain to researchers who found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease that’s been linked to blows to the head. His wife described him as experiencing memory loss and uncharacteristic behavior in his final years in an article in the New York Times. Click that article today, and you’ll be greeted by a photo of Probert in mid-fight, blood pouring out of his forehead, while a young fan beams just a few feet away.

John Kordic died in 1992 after a drug-fueled altercation with eight police officers in a motel room; the official cause of death was listed as heart and lung failure. He’d abused steroids during his career and had long battled drugs and alcohol. He’d attributed his struggles in part to his father, who never approved of his role as an enforcer because he wanted his son to be a real player. Sports Illustrated wrote about Kordic’s passing in the weeks after it happened. They ran the article under the headline “Death of a Goon”.

Should we have turned it off?

Even then, even as a kid, I can remember feeling just the slightest twinge of guilt over watching players absorb haymakers. Or maybe I didn’t, and I’m just wishing that part into existence. But if it was there, it was easy enough to extinguish. This was hockey, after all. These guys knew what they signed up for. As Coxe and Probert are pummeling each other, Cherry bellows what we’re all thinking: “Two tough guys going at it. They want to go, let ’em go!”

And then, the fight fans’ mantra: “They’re not hurting anybody but themselves.”

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Grab Bag: The problem with letting the players police the game

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- If you want players to police the game, be honest about what that means
- I have suggestions to improve the only good page on the NHL web site
- An obscure player from maybe the greatest stat spoiler I've ever seen.
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a look back at a wild 1998 line brawl and goalie fight

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

Ten fun facts about the 1993-94 Maple Leafs' record start

Twenty-five​ years ago tonight,​ the​ streets​ of​ Toronto​ were​ flooded with​ delirious fans celebrating​ one of the​ greatest​ wins in the​​ city’s sports history. It was a truly epic moment, one that stills resonates to this day if you were lucky enough to be in the middle of it.

So today, let’s look back on the game that touched off that city-wide celebration: The Toronto Maple Leafs setting the NHL record for consecutive wins to start a season.

Oh, right, there was also some sort of baseball game that night. That was probably cool too. But since Canadian law dictates that everything has to be about the Maple Leafs at all times, I’m sure that most of those fans were there to celebrate the Leafs’ win over the Tampa Bay Lightning. It was the team’s ninth straight win to open the season, establishing a new record on the way to what would ultimately become the first 10-0-0 start in league history.

I’ve occasionally been accused of droning on endlessly about the 1992-93 season. But that’s unfair; I’m actually a multi-talented writer who can also drone on endlessly about the 1993-94 season. Let’s do that today, as we relive 10 fun facts about the Maple Leafs’ record-breaking start.

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Fact #1: It all began with something strange: Actual optimism

Every Leafs season starts with generic optimism. You know the kind – the team comes out of the gate with one good period and suddenly everyone is making “plan the parade” jokes. But the 1993-94 season was different. For the first time in a generation, there was actually a legitimate reason to believe that the Maple Leafs might be good. And not just “sneak into the playoffs with 65 points because it’s the Norris Division” good. Actually, honestly, legitimately good.

The team headed into the season still riding the high off a 1992-93 playoff run that you’ve no doubt heard all about if you know any Maple Leaf fans, because we bring it up immediately whenever we’re asked a question like “What was your favorite NHL season?” or “How are you?” or “Why are you wearing that tattered Wendel Clark jersey and how did you get into my house?” With the reigning Jack Adams winner behind the bench in Pat Burns, the Hart Trophy runner-up on the top line in Doug Gilmour, and a Calder finalist in goal in Felix Potvin, there was plenty of reason to think the Leafs could build on that momentum and maybe even contend for a Cup.

Opening night featured a visit from the Dallas Stars. This was actually the first road game in Dallas NHL history, coming just a few days after the recently relocated Stars’ home opener (which readers may remember as the space cowboy fiasco). Dallas would turn out to be a decent team, finishing the year with 97 points. But on opening night, the Leafs handled them fairly easily on the way to a 6-3 win over a young Jon Gruden Andy Moog. Dave Andreychuk had two goals, Gilmour added three assists, and the streak had begun.

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Fact #2: It was nearly over before it really began

The second and third wins both featured tight games and late winners. Wendel Clark’s goal with 10 minutes left in regulation held up in a 2-1 win over the Blackhawks for win No. 2, while a road trip to Philadelphia featured John Cullen’s tap-in with less than two minutes left.

That left the Leafs at 3-0-0, which was nice, but not especially remarkable; the Devils, Blues and Flames all started the season with three straight wins of their own.

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Fact #3: Things got easier in Game No. 4

The streak didn’t feature many blowouts, but the Leafs did enjoy a laugher back at home for Game No. 4. They faced a Washington Capitals team headed into the opposite direction; the Caps would begin the year 0-6-0 as part of a slow start that would eventually cost coach Terry Murray his job.

On Oct. 13, the Leafs earned their fourth straight win by pumping the Capitals by a 7-1 final. Toronto got two goals apiece from Wendel Clark and Rob Pearson. That’s not all that interesting; I just like to remember that Rob Pearson existed. I thoroughly enjoyed the Rob Pearson era.

Speaking of 10-game streaks, this one featured future Leaf Don Beaupre giving way to a third-period relief appearance from a young Olaf Kolzig, who was still four years away from becoming a full-time NHL starter. From 1989 through 1994, he made 10 appearances for the Capitals, often in mop-up duty, and Washington lost every one. Kolzig didn’t get to participate in an actual NHL win until January 1995, almost six years after he’d made his debut.

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Fact #4: The main event came in Games No. 5 and 6

With all due respect to the Stars, Hawks, Flyers and Capitals, most Leaf fans were already looking ahead to Oct. 15 and 16. That was when the schedule served up the season’s first rematch with the Red Wings, in an old-fashioned Norris Division home-and-home.

The Wings, of course, had been the team the Leafs had knocked off in the first round of the 1993 playoffs. That was viewed as an upset at the time, especially after Detroit had romped to blowout wins in Games 1 and 2, even though the two teams hadn’t finished all that far apart in the standings. Still, Toronto fans wouldn’t get too excited about their early-season success until the Leafs proved they could measure up against the Wings.

They did. The Leafs took the opener on home ice by a 6-3 final, scoring four times on 12 shots to chase Chris Osgood from his first career start. As with most home-and-homes from that era, the game ended with some message-sending, including an ugly stick-swinging incident between Bob Rouse and Bob Probert. Both players were handed four-game suspensions by Brian Burke.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

Grab bag: We have a trade to announce

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- Holy crap the NHL actually had a major trade
- Canada is torn apart by a political controversy involving a Bob Probert fight
- An obscure player from the biggest three-way trade ever
- The week's three comedy stars
- And a classic YouTube clip of the time David Poile turned down the Maple Leafs GM job

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Beyond Steven-for-Shanahan: Five more forced RFA compensation trades

Last week, we looked back on the league’s long history of arbitrators having to sort out messy cases. One of the biggest was the 1991 case that saw Scott Stevens awarded to the Devils as compensation for the signing of Brendan Shanahan. It was part of the league’s old RFA system, under which some players who signed with a new team weren’t subject to a right to match or draft pick compensation, but rather to a forced trade in which each team submitted what they felt was a fair offer and an arbitrator picked one.

It was, to put it bluntly, a fantastic system. Oh, the players hated it, and so did most of the teams. But for fans, it was a great source of entertainment. It was all sorts of fun to debate the teams’ offers, come up with ones of your own, and speculate over which side the arbitrator would ultimately land on. The system lasted until 1995, when Gary Bettman’s first lockout ended with a new CBA that ushered in new RFA rules. This excellent blog post contains a detailed history of the old system; it’s fair to say we’re unlikely to ever see it return in the NHL.

So today, let’s look back on five more cases where RFA signings resulted in an arbitrator forcing a trade as compensation. None were quite as big as the Stevens-for-Shanahan blockbuster, but each had its own impact on hockey history.

The battle of the enforcers

Despite having just two seasons and 69 games under his belt, Troy Crowder was one of the league’s most feared enforcers in 1991. That was almost entirely due to a single fight, one that came on opening night of the 1990-91 season. Crowder’s Devils were hosting the Red Wings, and midway through the game Crowder found himself squaring off with the league’s undisputed heavyweight champion, Bob Probert. The legendary Wings’ tough guy had a nearly spotless record over the years, but Crowder won the fight handily, a shocking result from a virtually unknown contender. When the two split a pair of January rematches, Crowder cemented his status as one of the league’s best.

And so, during the 1991 offseason, the Wings went out and signed him. The logic seemed sound – if this was one of the few guys in the league who could give Probert trouble, the Wings would make sure their big dog wouldn’t have to worry about him. The Wings offered Dave Barr and Randy McKay as compensation. But Lou Lamoriello and the Devils responded with the same strategy they’d used in the Shanahan case: swinging for the fences. They demanded Probert himself as compensation.

This time, the arbitrator wasn’t having it. Just days after they struck gold with the Stevens ruling, the Devils lost the Crowder case, and settled for McKay and Barr. Probert remained in Detroit for four more years, while a back injury limited Crowder to just seven games in Detroit.

Graves consequences

Today, Adam Graves is a Rangers legend. He was a key part of the 1994 championship team and once held the franchise record for goals in a season, and in 2009, the team retired his number.

But back in 1991, Graves was still a highly regarded prospect who hadn’t done much in the NHL. At 23 years old, he’d yet to so much as crack the 10-goal mark in four NHL seasons. So it was a mild surprise when the Rangers targeted him during the offseason, signing him away from Edmonton and opening the door to a compensation ruling.

The Oilers asked for Steven Rice and Loui DeBrusk, while the Rangers offered Troy Mallette. None of those were especially big names, and in some corners of the hockey world the Graves case didn’t get much attention. When the arbitrator sided with New York and sent Mallette to Edmonton, most fans shrugged.

But the ruling turned out to be a crucial one. The Oilers had had their eye on Rice and DeBrusk as part of a far bigger deal, one that would send captain Mark Messier to New York. That trade had been rumored for months, but had taken a backseat during the Graves case. But when Messier announced his intention to hold out in an attempt to force a trade, the Oiler had to make a move. And so, on October 4, 1991, they made a deal with the Rangers. In exchange for Messier, they’d get all-star center Bernie Nicholls and the two players they’d targeted in the Graves case, Rice and DeBrusk.

Would the Messier deal have still happened if the Oilers had already landed Rice and DeBrusk? It’s tough to say. In hindsight, it seems impossible to imagine Messier winding up anywhere other than New York. But he could have, if we’d seen a different decision in an arbitration case over a little-known prospect.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

Beyond John Scott: A brief history of NHL enforcers turning out be more talented than we thought

Even as the regular season resumes, the hockey world is still buzzing over John Scott’s all-star weekend. Voted in by fans at least partly on the assumption that he’d be embarrassed by the 3-on-3 format, Scott instead scored a pair of nifty goals and earned MVP honors in a scene straight out of a movie script.

It all made for a great feel-good story. But maybe we shouldn’t have been quite so shocked. After all, Scott’s not the first NHL tough guy to step outside of his comfort zone and deliver an impressive performance. The enforcer role may be fading from the NHL, but the guys who’ve done the job over the years have a long history of being surprisingly multi-talented.

So for this week’s top five, let’s go beyond the All-Star Game and look at some other areas where NHL tough guys unexpectedly made their presence felt.

5. In a pro wrestling ring

The hockey world has seen plenty of cross-overs with pro wrestling; former Ranger Ted Irvine’s son did pretty well for himself in the ring, and Mean Gene Okerlund’s son once suited up for the Islanders. And who could forget about this guy?

But perhaps wisely, this generation of sports entertainers have tended to stay away from hockey’s tough guys. One notable exception: the time one WCW villain decided to go after a Chicago Blackhawks owner.

While it didn’t feature many punches, legend has it that that scripted battle was nearly preceded by the real deal. The lesson, as always: Bob Probert didn’t take any nonsense from anyone.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News

When goaltenders attack

The Montreal Canadiens are off to a great start. They’re the league’s only undefeated team at 7-0-0, just about everyone on the roster is playing well, and they’re on top of any set of power rankings you can find.

But all of that pales in comparison to the undisputed highlight of the season: Carey Price doing this to Chris Kreider.

It’s worth remembering that there’s some history here. Two seasons ago, Kreider ended Price’s season in an ugly collision during the conference final. So was this payback? Price denied it, but nobody believes him. It’s just more fun to assume it was on purpose, because goalies attacking players never fails to be awesome.

So today, we’re going to flip through the pages of history and offer up some advice for those goalies out there who might want to exact a little revenge of their own. We won’t include any goalie-on-goalie violence, partly because it doesn’t fit the theme, and partly because goalie fights deserve a post of their own someday. No, today is about goalies lashing out at everyone else — especially those big shots in their fancy skates and comfortable pads, always scoring goals and sucking up glory and getting hats thrown at them. They could use a stiff trapper upside the head.

And luckily, history has provided us with plenty of examples of just how a jilted goalie could go about it. There are a dozen distinct ways for a goaltender to go on the attack, and we’re going to review them all.

The “Accidental” Bodycheck

The move: Skate behind your net. Wait for an incoming opponent to try to cut by, knowing he’s not allowed to touch you. Then drop your shoulder into his chest and send him flying.

The master: Carey Price, apparently. Who knew?

Let’s watch it again, this time in GIF form:

Carey Price’s Revenge pic.twitter.com/WOPM5yFA2Y

— Stephanie (@myregularface) October 16, 2015

So good. But you have to wonder: Wherever did an upstanding young Montreal goaltender learn this sort of anti-Ranger behavior? Oh. Oh, right.

Pro tip: The hit itself is nice, but I think we can all agree that it’s the stare-down afterward that really makes it.

The Retaliatory Punch After a Collision

The move: It’s one of those unwritten rules of goaltending: If a player collides with you, even accidentally, you’re legally allowed to do pretty much anything you want to them for a period of five seconds.

The master: Literally everyone. I don’t care who the goaltender is — as soon as he’s knocked over, all bets are off. Anytime a player goes hard to the net and you hear a whistle, there’s a good chance the next thing you see will be an enraged goaltender awkwardly crawling on top of him with arms flailing. It appears to be an instinctive territorial thing. If you strapped a set of pads on Mother Teresa and somebody accidentally slid into her and nudged her legs, she’d be all “%&#*@#$% needs to eat some blocker!”

This rule applies outside the crease as well, by the way. I’ve always been partial to Don Beaupre’s swinging backhand.

Pro tip: Don’t feel like you have to aim for the face. Remember, this is a free shot; it’s OK to get creative.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

It made sense at the time: A brief history of jerseying

Hockey history is a rich tapestry of traditions, trends, and innovations. Many stuck around to become part of the game’s enduring fabric. Others … not so much. Today we will look back at one of the odder things that used to be part of the NHL’s culture and wonder how exactly it made sense at the time and that everyone was OK with it.

Have you ever been in a fight with a Canadian? Probably not, since we’re generally a friendly and non-threatening bunch. But there are certain lines that you just cannot cross, like disparaging socialized medicine or saying you thought Shawn Michaels was better than Bret Hart, and crossing those lines can lead to the nearest Canadian setting aside the Margaret Atwood novel they’ve been pretending to read and throwing down.

And when that happens, you’ll notice that while fighting a Canadian is a lot like fighting anyone else, there are certain key differences. We apologize after every punch. We pause every few seconds to take a sip of our double-double. And, at some point in the fight, we are going to try to yank your shirt up over your head.

That last one may seem a little odd, but don’t worry; we’re just instinctively reverting to what we grew up with. That’s because every Canadian is raised on a steady diet of watching hockey, and for several decades, that shirt-yank move was standard operating procedure in any hockey fight. It even had a name: “jersey,” used as a verb. As in “I was losing the fight, but then I jerseyed him and went to town.”

Jerseying is rarely seen these days thanks to the introduction of the tie-down, a small strap that connects the back of a player’s jersey to the top of his or her hockey pants. Today, the NHL has a rule that makes tie-downs mandatory for any player who fights, so with only rare exceptions, you don’t see a player’s sweater come off during fights anymore.

And that’s probably good news, because man, the whole “jersey over the head” thing really did get progressively weirder over the years.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

The Heavyweight Belt of NHL Rivalries

The Championship Belt is one of my favorite recurring Grantland features, having covered everything from NFL quarterbacks to MLB pitchers to action movie heroes. But we’ve never broken it out for hockey, even though it feels like a natural for the sport. That ends today. After all, it’s the offseason, which is one of the times during the year that hockey fans like to argue with each other.

But for what? We could go with the obvious, like handing out a championship belt for the best player or top goaltender, or maybe best team. We could even do the championship belt of the actual pugilists, from Dave Schultz to Bob Probert and beyond. In fact, let’s be honest, we’re absolutely going to do that last one someday. But that day is not today.

No, today we’re going to crank up the degree of difficulty with something a little trickier: the heavyweight belt of NHL rivalries. Hockey has always been made for inspiring hatred between teams; it’s practically why the game was invented. But at any given time in league history, which one rivalry reigned supreme?

First, a few ground rules. We’re looking for rivalries between teams — there’s no individual category here. We’re also limiting this to NHL rivalries, so we won’t be including international rivalries like Russia vs. Team USA, Russia vs. Canada, and Canada vs. Sad Americans Getting Silver Medals.

So what makes a rivalry? This being hockey, bad blood will obviously be a key factor, but it’s not the only one. We’re looking for some staying power — one random brawl won’t be enough to earn the crown — and the stakes matter, too. Two teams may hate each other, but if all they’re fighting over is last place in their division, it’s probably not much of a rivalry. Finally, we’ll invoke what we can call the Ric Flair rule — to be the man, you have to beat the man, so in the case of any close calls, the reigning champ keeps the belt.

Sound good? Then, as legendary enforcer Dave Semenko would say, let’s go for a canoe ride. Anyone want to help set the mood? Ah, yes, I see we have a volunteer.

Thanks, Tie. Let’s head back a few decades, and start at the beginning.

The Original Six era: Canadiens vs. Maple Leafs

Two key points here. The first is that this is a fairly easy call, since the Leafs and Habs were the two best teams of the era. They combined for the most Stanley Cups, they met in the most finals, and they had the best regular-season records. In a six-team league where everyone is a rival to some degree, this is the one that always stood out.

The second point is that, somewhat surprisingly, this is the last time we’ll see this particular combination show up on our list. While the Leafs-Habs rivalry is to this day considered by many to be the greatest in hockey, that’s almost entirely based on history and their rabid fan bases, as opposed to anything that’s happened on the ice. That’s largely because the teams last met in the playoffs in the ’70s, and then spent almost two decades in different conferences, not to mention that the Leafs have been terrible for much of the past 35 years. They nearly met in the Stanley Cup final in 1993, which would have been insane, but it didn’t happen, and despite some recent near misses they’ve yet to meet in the playoffs since. If they ever did, they would probably take the belt back by default, but that’s a debate for another day.

Leafs-Habs will always be an important rivalry, even if it’s just simmering under the surface, and a Saturday matchup between the teams should be on every fan’s bucket list. But if it’s still considered the greatest in the sport, that’s more out of force of habit than anything, which is why the belt won’t be returning here in the post-1967 world.

Runners-up: Wings vs. Hawks, Habs vs. Bruins, and the other 12 rivalries that were even possible in a six-team league.

1968-1973: Bruins vs. Canadiens

Now here’s an Original Six rivalry that didn’t miss a beat once expansion arrived. These teams combined to win each of the first six Stanley Cups of the post-expansion era. The first three of those were anticlimactic; thanks to the league’s ridiculous decision to put all six expansion teams into one division and guarantee one a berth in the final, Montreal and Boston got to take turns stomping the overmatched Blues from 1968 to 1970.

When they weren’t rolling the Blues, they were often facing each other in the playoffs, with the Canadiens winning all three matchups during this era. The best of those came in 1971, a seven-game classic that featured Montreal’s memorable comeback win after trailing 5-1 in Game 2.

Runners-up: Canadiens vs. Black Hawks, Blues vs. North Stars, the NHL’s divisional formatting vs. common sense.

1974-76: Flyers vs. Rangers

You couldn’t do a list like this without prominently featuring the Broad Street Bullies. The question is who to pair them with, given the Flyers were hated by just about every team in the league (and even beyond). In fact, it’s tempting to just say “Flyers vs. Everybody” and be done with it.

But that feels like a cop-out, so let’s give the other spot to the Rangers, the team that came closest to derailing the Flyers during their back-to-back Cup-winning years in 1974 and 1975. That came in the 1974 semifinal, when the teams met in a seven-game classic in which the home team won each game, and which featured enough animosity that even dropping the puck for a simple faceoff ended up being an adventure.

Runners-up: But seriously, the Flyers vs. Everybody.

1977-79: Bruins vs. Canadiens

Boston and Montreal regain the title thanks to a pair of meetings in the Stanley Cup final, both won by Montreal. But perhaps the most famous moment of the rivalry’s long history comes in 1979, when the teams met in the semifinal (with a slam-dunk finals matchup against the Rangers awaiting the winner) and played one of the most famous Game 7s the league has ever seen.

Runners-up: Rangers vs. Islanders, which was just getting started. Speaking of which …

1980-82: Rangers vs. Islanders

This is one of those classic rivalries that has to find its way onto our list somewhere. While the teams had been division rivals since the Islanders entered the league in 1972, and had met in the playoffs for the first time in 1975, the rivalry as we know it didn’t really begin until 1979. That was the year Islanders defenseman Denis Potvin broke the ankle of Rangers forward Ulf Nilsson, all but ending the latter’s career as a productive NHLer and leading to the introduction of perhaps the most famous chant in NHL history: “Potvin sucks.”

The teams faced each other in the playoffs that season, with the Rangers winning in six. That would be the last series the Islanders lost for almost five full years, as they launched into a dynasty that saw them win four straight Cups from 1980 to 1983. Along the way, they faced (and beat) the Rangers every year from 1981 to 1984. That was the last time the Isles would beat the Rangers in the playoffs, although their fans would still get another decade of use out of the withering “1940” chant.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Grab bag: When Leaf fans attack

In the weekly grab bag:
- Comedy all-stars, including Mike Milbury getting caught with his head down
- Phil Kessel snubs the media; my modest proposal for a new rule for handling these stories
- An obscure goalie who got to back up two Hall-of-Famers at the same time (and also once attacked Brendan Shanahan)
- Something that annoys me about "your" team's P.A. announcer
- Maple Leaf fans litter the ice with their team trailing 8-0. No, not on Tuesday... 24 years ago.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

The end of enforcers

When I was growing up as a hockey fan in the ’80s, I knew every enforcer on every team. I could rattle off 30 or 40 names if you asked me to, and quite possibly even if you didn’t. I had them listed in order of ability on a page tucked away in the back of a notebook, and when I got bored during class, I’d update the rankings based on the most recent fights.

I got the latest release of Don Cherry’s Rock’em Sock’em Hockey for Christmas every year, and still do to this day. I own a custom-made Craig Berube no. 16 Toronto Maple Leafs jersey, quite possibly the only one still in existence. I can remember going into the bank with my allowance to figure out how to buy a money order so I could mail away for the Wayne Gretzky Hockey fight disc. In college, without easy access to cable TV and long before the days of YouTube, I learned how to connect with VHS tape traders so my friends and I could get caught up on the latest bouts.

I tell you all of this not out of pride or embarrassment or even because I think it’s all that interesting, but because I want you to know that when it comes to hockey fights, as George Carlin would say, my credentials are in good order. That’s important, because I loved enforcers back then, and even more, I hated lectures from snobby anti-fighting sportswriters who clearly had never enjoyed a good honest scrap in their life and had no right to talk down their noses to those of us who did.

All of which makes it a very strange experience to write these words: The NHL’s enforcer era is coming to an end, and I’m happy about that. I don’t want those guys in the game anymore.

Let’s start with some recent background for those getting caught up with the shift in the landscape. The NHL has always been a copycat league, and these days the trend is toward teams that can roll four lines that can all be trusted with meaningful ice time. That doesn’t leave much room for designated fighters, and teams have begun dropping them from the lineup. And because the tough guys are there at least part to neutralize other tough guys, each one that loses a job makes it tougher for the next guy to justify his. This summer seemed be the tipping point. The Bruins moved on from Shawn Thornton, the Maple Leafs demoted Colton Orr, and longtime tough guys like Krys Barch, Paul Bissonnette, and Kevin Westgarth all find themselves out of the NHL.

We’re not talking about the end of fighting altogether — at least not yet — but rather of the one-note heavyweight, the guy who’s there to drop the gloves and maybe throw a hit or two, and not much else. The job hasn’t been entirely eliminated; a handful of teams are still holdouts, especially in the Western Conference, and there are more than a few dissenting voices. But when even longtime advocates like Mike Milbury are jumping ship, it’s hard not to see this as less of a temporary trend and more of a permanent change.

All of which takes me back to those days of worshiping the game’s heavyweights, when we’d devour the highlights of the latest matchups and wage impassioned debates over whether Kocur could really hold his own against Kordic. Back then, I couldn’t have imagined a world in which I wouldn’t want those guys in the league.

Not everyone agreed; even then, there were always plenty of media voices railing against the NHL’s culture of violence. But most fans didn’t listen and most of the league’s decision-makers didn’t seem to care. The game needed its enforcers, the thinking went; they kept the rest of the players honest. Hockey was a dangerous game, but you were more likely to keep your stick down and your elbows in if you knew there was a monster at the end of the other bench waiting to hold you accountable.

That was most people’s arguments, but it was never mine. I didn’t doubt it, since it was everywhere, but it wasn’t my case to make, because I never played at a high enough level to know whether it was true of false. And it didn’t really matter, because I had a better reason to cheer on the enforcers and the chaos they caused: It was fun. It made the game more entertaining.

Some people recoil at that sort of argument, as if enjoying a fight just for the sake of it was unseemly. I never really understood why that was. The NHL, like all pro leagues, is an entertainment product; as much as we’d like to assign a higher purpose to our sports, the fact is that as soon as people stop enjoying them and wanting to pay to see them, they go away. If something makes the game more entertaining to enough people, then by definition it has value.

And as a fan, I always thought the enforcers were just about the most entertaining guys. I loved the whole package: the debates over who was the heavyweight champ, and who was next in line in the top contender’s spot; the quick scan of the lineup cards in an attempt to figure out who might pair off; the buzz in an arena when two tough guys lined up next to each other on a faceoff. The third period of a 6-1 blowout could be boring and unwatchable, but mix in a little bad blood and the possibility of a score to settle and it became can’t-miss TV.

That the enforcers were often the smartest guy on the team, and inevitably seemed to be the most active in the community, only added to the appeal. They’d serve up those patented death glares on the ice, but big smiles off of it. They loved their jobs, which is how you knew everything was OK.

When fighting started to drop, the game’s entertainment value dropped in my eyes. I know I wasn’t alone — find any classic scrap on YouTube and check the comments for disaffected fans bemoaning the loss of what the NHL used to be — but it quickly became apparent it wasn’t the sort of thing you were supposed to say out loud. So we argued about safety and rats and “policing the game” instead.

That stuff was important, but it wasn’t really the point. Fighting was just fun, and that was all that mattered. And I felt that way, and I made that case whenever I could, right up until it wasn’t fun anymore.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

Get In The Ring: Probie, the Wings, and the unforgettable madness of the Norris Division

It seems like an odd thing to say about a franchise that came of age with Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay, and Alex Delvecchio, and later went on to 23 straight playoff appearances and four Stanley Cups, but my favorite Red Wings team of all time was the 1988-89 edition.

That was the year a 23-year-old Steve Yzerman made the leap from very good player to unquestioned superstar, posting a remarkable 65 goals and 155 points, both Red Wing records. This was in the middle of the Gretzky/Lemieux era, so Yzerman didn’t even make a postseason all-star team, but his fellow players named him best player in the league.

Gerard Gallant scored 93 points, his best total from a nine-year run in Detroit that ended when he was 29 (even though I could swear he’s in his late thirties in every single memory I have of him in a Wings uniform). Two future NHL coaches, Adam Oates and Paul MacLean, both topped 70 points. The goalies were Greg Stefan and Glen Hanlon, whom I could never tell apart.

It was a good team, good enough to end the regular season in first place in its division with … well, with 80 points. Yes, they won a division title by finishing .500. That’s because the ’88-’89 Red Wings were part of the greatest collection of misfits and madmen the NHL has ever known: the Norris Division.

♦♦♦

It’s hard to explain the Norris to hockey fans who weren’t around to appreciate it. You can try to piece it together with old newspaper clips and YouTube videos, but it doesn’t quite work. You can talk about the brawls and the crazy stories and riffle through the old names, but that takes you only so far.

Or you could just put it this way: For a time, the Norris Division was hockey’s answer to Guns N’ Roses. Stay with me here.

The Norris wasn’t the best division we’d ever seen, just like GNR was never quite the greatest band. Neither won many awards. And with both, there was never any shortage of very earnest people who wanted you to understand that the whole deal was completely ridiculous and maybe even a little bit embarrassing, and those people were almost certainly right.

But the Norris and GNR were fun, dammit. And they offered an element of danger, or at least could give off the illusion of it. And, in both cases, we haven’t seen anything remotely like them since.

So here goes: The St. Louis Blues were Duff, so steady and dependable that you could sometimes forget they were there. The Minnesota North Stars were Steve Adler, hanging around as long as they could until there was no choice but to replace them. The Tampa Bay Lightning were Dizzy Reed, because they joined in the early ’90s and nobody counts them. And the Toronto Maple Leafs were Izzy, the dysfunctional mess and cautionary example that somehow served as the heart and soul of the whole thing.

The Blackhawks were Axl — the loudest and craziest of the bunch, still kicking around to this day. OK, the Blackhawks are still kicking around successfully to this day. I never said the metaphor was perfect. But any team that was built around Eddie Belfour and Mike Keenan and J.R. and the Grim Reaper and a young Dominik Hasek and The Stadium — that team gets to be Axl.

And the Detroit Red Wings? The Red Wings were Slash. They were the cool one.

>> Read the full post on Grantland

The pros and cons of fighting in the NHL

Kill him! But, uh, you know, don't hurt him.

The debate over fighting has returned to NHL circles. And if you're a fan of the occasional scrap, you probably didn't have a very good week.

Players like Rick DiPietro, Colton Orr and Derek Boogaard are still on the sidelines due to serious injuries suffered in fights. Then word came last week that the late Bob Probert was suffering from a degenerative brain disease believed to be caused by repeated head trauma. Before fans could fully absorb that news, Edmonton Oilers' number one overall draft pick Taylor Hall had his rookie season ended by an ankle injury suffered in his first career fight.

So here we go again. It seems that the fighting debate has been raging for decades. And while it's lead to hours of heated rhetoric, there's little evidence of anyone ever actually changing their mind.

But maybe that can change. I've spoken to experts on both sides of the issue, and I've captured their best arguments below. For the first time, here are both sides of hockey's greatest debate presented side-by-side. Maybe, just maybe, we can settle this once and for all.

Pro-fighting: Banning fighting would eliminate the chance of a fight between Matt Cooke and Sean Avery that the linesmen could just "forget" to break up.

Anti-fighting: Fights are nothing more than quasi-exciting but ultimately demeaning sideshows that don't showcase any actual hockey skills and have no place in the game, and these days we have the shootout for that.

Pro-fighting: Without the threat of fighting, noble enforcers like Jody Shelley and Trevor Gillies would be unable to protect their teammates from despicable cheap-shot artists like Jody Shelley and Trevor Gillies.

Anti-fighting: Let's face it, nobody really likes having fighting in the game except for ignorant know-nothings like fans, most general managers and coaches, and virtually every single player.

Pro-fighting: Getting rid of fighting would just result in every episode of Coach's Corner being nothing more than a seven-minute diatribe about no-touch icing,

Anti-fighting: If punching somebody in the face at a hockey game is outlawed, only outlaws will punch somebody in the face at a hockey game. And Flyer fans. Actually, mostly Flyer fans.

Pro-fighting: If we just hold off on doing anything to address the rapidly growing list of players lost to concussions for another year or two, all of us will eventually get to play in the NHL for a few games.

Anti-fighting: Mike Milbury has historically been pro-fighting.

Pro-fighting: Wait, Mike Milbury is now apparently anti-fighting.

Anti-fighting: Fighting is an outdated concept that may have made sense for previous generations but has no place in the modern game, like goalies playing without masks or an NHL team in Winnipeg.

Pro-fighting: The inability to regularly write simplistic and condescending anti-fighting columns could spell the end of the already struggling newspaper industry.

Anti-fighting: Studies have shown that a total ban on fighting would increase hockey viewership by 20% in the southern United States, because Tom says he's pretty sure he'd start watching.

Pro-fighting: Hey, remember when they had fighting in NHL 93 and then they took it out for NHL 94? Which one did you like better? Exactly.

Anti-fighting: In addition to being overpaid and overrated based on last year's Cup run, Niemi is known to snore loudly on team flights and often plays bad Finnish pop music on the Sharks' team stereo. (Editor's note: Wait, sorry, this should have been listed as an "Antti fighting" argument.)

Pro-fighting: Players engaging in fights face the possibility of devastating injury and even long-term disability, which is a risk that I as a fan sitting in my easy chair have decided I am willing to accept.

Anti-fighting: Eliminating fighting would send a strong message to impressionable children that settling a dispute by knocking somebody unconscious with your fists is unacceptable; instead, use your rock solid shoulder pad like a gentleman would.

Leafs vs. Wings - My night at the ACC

Photography is hard.

Saturday night, I was at the ACC to watch the Leafs take on the Red Wings.

This was a big deal. While I did manage to make semi-regular trips to Maple Leaf Gardens, I've been living in Ottawa for the entire ACC era. I got to one game in the early days, but nothing since.

So this game marked only the second time in a decade that I've seen the Leafs play a home game. Unless you count every game they play in Ottawa. Which I do.

An occasion like this deserves a play-by-play. So here's an in-person breakdown of the Leafs first home win of the season.

6:50: We settle into our seats. The fans around me for this evening will include: "Guy who keeps yelling 'MONSTER' after every Gustavsson save"; "Guy who ends every sentence with the word 'yo' "; and "Guy who complains 'he cost us our future' every time any current or former Leaf is shown on the scoreboard"

And finally there's... well, there's really no nice way to say this... there's "nice young female Red Wings fan who doesn't seem to realize she's showing the entire section her butt crack every time she stands up". She's sitting directly in front of me, by the way.

On the bright side, the preceding paragraph was the first one in history to include "Red Wings" and "crack" but not "Bob Probert".

6:55 - True story: my phone refuse to connect to twitter from within the ACC. You win this round, Burkie.

6:58 - The Leafs show a clever pre-game video highlighting the eight-decade rivalry between the Leafs and Wings. It somehow leaves out Mike Foligno and Nikolai Borschevsky, but it does include a shot of Wendel Clark pummelling Probert, so I'll give it a B+.

7:00 - The Hall of Fame ceremony begins, with the introduction of various living Hall of Famers.

9:15: The Hall of Fame ceremony ends.

(I kid, I kid. Great ceremony. We all enjoyed every second of it.)

7:05 - Brian Leetch is introduced to the crowd. "He cost us our future!" protests the guy behind me, in his best Adam Sandler's mother voice. I can see his point. Maxim Kondratiev and Jarkko Immonen turned out to be awesome.

7:07 - The inductees drop the puck for the ceremonial faceoff. The Leafs are represented by Johnny Mitchell, in what may be the single best argument for maybe picking a real captain once and for all some time soon.

7:10 - The ceremony ends. All the inductees leave the center ice area, except for Brett Hull who circles around waiting for a breakaway pass instead of backchecking.

7:12 - Your referee for tonight's game: Kerry Fraser! I immediately start trying to figure out how many security guards I could fight off. Answer: zero.

7:15 - The game begins. Our seats are in the corner, four rows back of the glass. I'm literally a few feet from the ice, watching everything from the comfort of my seat. I feel like Vesa Toskala.

7:35 - The Leafs get on the board first, as Wayne Primeau beats Chris Osgood cleanly on a two-on-one. I'm not an NHL goaltending coach, but I'm pretty sure "getting beat clean by Wayne Primeau" isn't a good sign for the rest of the night.

7:42 - Gustavsson looks sharp tonight. "MONSTER" guy two rows behind me is already getting hoarse.

7:50 - I get to see Phil Kessel's first goal as a Leaf from about 20 feet away, as he swats home a Jason Blake shot that was going to go in anyways. This leads to an awkward post-goal celebration right in front of us, as Kessel apologizes and Blake pretends he doesn't care, then barely fights off the urge to smash his stick over Kessel's head as soon as his back is turned.

7:52 - Speaking of Jason Blake, is his "Come on Toronto, let's make some noise!" scoreboard appearance available as a standalone DVD? Because I'll buy it. Seriously, MLSE, name your price.

7:58 - The first period ends. Time to go figure out what everyone in the platinum seats is doing during intermission that keeps them from getting to their seats in time for the start of the next period.

8:03 - Fun fact: the restaurant below the platinum section serves a "Platinum Burger" that costs $38. It comes with foie gras torchon, sautéed shallots, and a picture of the starving African child you could have fed for a month with $38.

8:06 - People are walking into the restaurant, sitting down and ordering full course meals. During the first intermission. I'm seriously considering flipping over some tables.

8:11 - On the way back to our seats, we walk by the fabled platinum lounges. These underground bunkers can best be described as standard NHL luxury boxes, but without an actual view of the ice. For many hockey fans, that would be considered a problem. The folks at the ACC don't seem to notice.

8:15 - The teams switch sides for the second period, meaning Jonas Gustavsson will be guarding the net right in front of us. So if you're hoping to read any more close-up descriptions of goals, you're going to need to skip ahead.

8:27 - Jeff Finger scores to put the Leafs ahead 3-0. First Primeau, now Finger? If Rickard Wallin scores tonight, Osgood may hang himself.

8:32 - Every time Kessels on the ice, "He cost us our future" guy is borderline apoplectic. I'm desperately trying to think of a way to get within earshot and casually mention the Owen Nolan trade.

8:35 - Highlight of the period: Gustavsson freezes a shoot-in with his glove. After a delayed whistle, referee Eric Furlatt skates over to have an extended conversation with Gustavsson about delay of game rules. A few seconds into discussion, Gustavsson turns away, rolls his eyes, and pretends to be deeply interested in his water bottle. Furlatt keeps talking to the back of his head, leading to Mike Komisarek eventually coming over and subtley steering him out of the crease. As far as I know, Furlatt is still lecturing Gustavsson from Philadelphia right now.

8:50 - "MONSTER" guy is looking a little flush.

8:55 - Second intermission. Under advice from my doctor, I decide to stay in my seat.

9:17 - The Wings pull to within 3-1 on an early goal by Dan Cleary. I call the ACC game day staff and cancel my "Jonas, will you marry me?" scoreboard message.

9:28 - The Leafs restore the three goal lead when John Mitchell tips in a Phil Kessel shot. Wait, no, that wasn't accurate, let me try again: Phil Kessel's shot happens to hit John Mitchell's stick on the way into the net. Seriously, Mitchell had no idea. He stole that move from me, by the way. Except instead of going into the net, the puck ricochets into the corner. And instead of my stick, it's usually my groin.

9:32 - Gustavsson crosses the 30-save mark. "MONSTER" guy is no longer wearing pants.

9:36 - Despite a lifetime of attending live sporting events, I've never caught a puck or a foul ball. But my luck may be changing. Tonight, I caught Jason Williams' fibula.

9:45 - During the dying moments, Gustavsson skates over the Leafs bench, punches Toskala in the face, and returns to his crease in time to stop a 3-on-0.

9:50 - The final buzzer sounds, and Osgood storms off the ice. Or, more accurately, he storms over to the door leading off the ice -- and then gets rejected by an usher, who refuses to open the door because there's going to be a post-game ceremony and the Red Wings aren't allowed to leave yet. Apparently nobody told them.

So we get to see the entire Wings team forced to line up on the blue line to watch Gustavsson get "player of the game" honors. As Gustavsson awkwardly tries to figure out how to accept a trophy from Johnny Bower, the Wings look at each other with "wait, are we allowed to leave yet?" expressions on their face. High comedy.

10:00 - We file out of the ACC. After an almost ten-year absence, I've witnessed Kessel's first goal, Gustavsson's best game, and the first Leafs home win in seven months.

Is all of that completely, utterly, 100% due to me being there? No, of course not. The real percentage is probably only in the 80-90% range.

But let's not take any chances, ACC -- get those comped season tickets in the mail now. I'll be there for you. I'm all about the team.

The definitive guide to the Wendel Clark "All Heart" video

As long time readers know, I believe that the All Heart video is perhaps the ultimate artistic achievement humanity has ever produced. Last year, it made my list of the top Wendel Clark moments of all time. And in that post, I promised that some day I'd do a frame-by-frame breakdown of the entire video. Some day.

Almost a full year later, some day is here.

Thanks to a copy of the original video file, the power of Google, and a tireless work ethic, I've managed to source every clip in the entire video. Oh, I also had a detailed set of production notes from the video's creator. That part helped too.

So grab a cup of coffee or a cold pop and settle in, because we're going to be here a while. Ladies and gentlemen, the definitive guide to the greatest thing on the internet.

(Open video in new window.)

The history
Dan Christopher created "All Heart" several years ago. He spent six months of scouring through VHS tapes from ebay and teaching himself video editing software from scratch. Dan wrote a guest post last year where he explained how and why he created the video.

Bottom line: If Dan ever has buy his own beer on game night again, shame on you Leafs Nation.

The music
The soundtrack is supplied by Metallica's "Hero of the Day", from the group's 1996 album "Load". It is generally considered the second greatest heavy metal song of all time, trailing only "everything ever recorded by Guns N' Roses", which was tied for first.

Here's the song's bizarre official video, and here's the band performing a live version with a symphony orchestra. Yes, really.

The clips
By my count, All Heart contains over 60 different clips. And if you'd like to see each and every one of them analyzed at a Zapruder level of detail, you've come to the right blog.

0:00 - The opening shots are views of Wendel's farm in King City, Ont. Harry Neale's comments about the "heavyweight champion from Harvard" losing "a decision to the farmboy from Saskatchewan" is a reference to a 1986 fight between Clark and the Flames' Neil Sheehy, who had been a heavyweight boxing champion in college.

0:12 - Wendel puts on a Leafs jersey for the first time after being chosen #1 overall in the 1985 NHL entry draft. The old guy next to him is Harold Ballard. If you watch closely, you can see Ballard mouth the words "Dear Norris Division, you are going to die."

0:16 - The classic "dressing room shot", taken from the second greatest Wendel compilation of all time: the CBC's "Only the Strong Survive". (Don't miss the classic Demers/Brophy exchange at the end. God I miss John Brophy.)

0:21 - Two shots of Maple Leaf Gardens (a.k.a. "Wendel's House"), followed by the aftermath of an unidentified fight. Note that every Wendel Clark fight ends this way -- with Clark skating slowly off the ice, casually glancing around to see if anyone else wants any more, with a linesman nearby but afraid to touch him, and the Jaws of Life driving by in the background to help his opponent.

0:29 - Normally, the person carrying the puck is on the receiving end of the hit. Not Wendel, as this unfortunate Wings defenceman (Doug Halward?) found out.

0:31 - A happy Harold Ballard high fives a fan. Seconds later, the fan's hand turned into a cluster of vampire bats and flew away.

0:33 - Classic Clark fist-pump. Take note, Jason Blake.

0:34 - Clark hugs Vincent Damphousse.

0:35 - Clark body slams fellow rookie Jim Johnson of the Penguins. Fun fact: This was Clark's first ever regular season NHL fight.

0:37 - Clark vs. Behn Wilson. For those that don't remember him, Wilson was one of the greatest fighters of the 80s, and perhaps of all-time. This was one of the first times Clark took on a certified NHL heavyweight, and the result is an absolute beauty. If you've never seen it before, watch it now. If you have seen it before, watch it again. After this fight, Don Cherry told the world that Wendel was worth "a million bucks".

0:45 - Apparently bored with punching people in the face, Clark decides to turn Brad McCrimmon's kidneys into paste.

0:49 - Clark destroys Dave Barr of the Blues during the 1986 playoffs. Clark had five post-season fights that year.

0:53 - This is a quick shot from the memorable pre-season fight between Clark and Craig MacTavish. After pairing off with Clark, an overmatched MacTavish tried for a takedown only to have Clark roll through and then continue to maul him. The Oilers weren't happy about this one, with Glenn Sather accusing Clark of being "not very smart". Clark is rumored to have replied "Ask me again about which one of us is smart in 20 years when he signs Wade Redden as a free agent."

0:55 - Clark eats the soul of Dave Mackey. I wrote about this one here.

0:56 - Clark TKOs Washington enforcer Alan May in about three seconds. Full fight is here.

0:57 - A classic open ice hit delivered to Dino Ciccarelli.

1:00 - Clark crushes a young Scott Stevens.

1:01 - Clark beats up on one of the best hockey names of all time: Ed Beers.

1:02 - A one-punch KO on the Rangers' Mark Hardy. Full fight (complete with ridiculous Ranger homer commentary) is here.

1:03 - A 1992 scrap between Clark and Chicago's Jocelyn Lemieux. Clark had just returned from an injury and was rusty -- he couldn't get his arm free, allowing Lemieux to land several jabs early on. Then Clark does get his arm free. Then Lemieux's face explodes. The end. Full fight is here.

1:05 - Wearing the "C", Clark hustles across the ice at the Gardens. This clip may in fact be actual speed.

1:09 - Clark was named to the Campbell Conference all-star team as a rookie in 1986. Thanks to injuries he wouldn't play in another all-star game until 1999, giving him the NHL record for longest stretch between all-star appearances. Here's Clark, oddly wearing #15, being introduced during the pre-game ceremony.

1:13 - Wendel heads to the dressing room after a fight, presumably to wait for the homicide investigators.

1:24 - Clark sends Steve Smith through the end glass at the old Chicago Stadium.

1:30 - Clark has stitches. I don't know who gave them to him, but I'm sure the memorial service was lovely.

1:33 - One of my favorite clips in the entire video, as Gord Dineen pretends to want to fight Clark while hiding behind a linesman. That works brilliantly right up until the linesman gets fed up and leaves, at which point Dineen moves to Plan B: backing into the boards and turning his entire body horizontal. Interesting strategy. Full fight is here.

1:46 - Jeff Chycrun figures he can handle Clark since he's a full five inches taller. He would be wrong. It's actually amazing how often Clark's opponents ended up facing the wrong direction during a fight. Full fight is here.

1:50 - Clark's memorable obliteration of Mike Peluso, which I wrote about here.

2:00 - Wendel KO's Dirk Graham (yes, he was originally a North Star). This is quite possibly the greatest moustache-vs-moustache fight of all time.

2:01 - Clark TKO's David Maley (not to be confused with David Mackey).

2:02 - Ho hum, another Wendel TKO. This one is from 1993, and this time the victim is (future Leaf) Kris King. The full fight is here. And now it's time for three of the greatest Wendel moments of all time in rapid-fire.

2:03 - The infamous "waster" on Curtis Joseph. I named this the #12 Wendel Moment of All-Time, and there was nearly universal agreement that it should have been higher.

2:08 - Clark vs. McSorley. Quite possible the greatest fight of all-time. Almost definitely the greatest moment of Wendel Clark's career. Without question the greatest moment of my life (unless my wife is reading this, in which case wedding day, birth of what's-her-name, blah blah blah.)

2:14 - The Bruce Bell hit. Rumor has it that to this day whenever Wendel Clark sneezes, one of Bruce Bell's lungs explodes.

2:17 - Hey look, it's our old friend Gord Dineen from 1:33! Remember how he tried to ninja his way out of their first fight by going horizontal? Maybe he should have stuck with that, because he stays upright here and gets absolutely destroyed. You could always tell when Wendel was really mad at a guy, because he would make sure to hold his corpse upright while he pummelled him.

2:24 - In a great sequence, Clark annihilates Mark Howe and then gets jumped by Rick Tocchet. Hey Rick, you think you can beat Wendel Clark if he doesn't see you coming? Wanna bet? Full fight is here. (And check out Ron Hextall's bizarre stick slamming routine during the fight. When did he become the goalie from Blades of Steel?)

2:36 - Clark takes on the Stars' Mark Tinordi, who I seem to remember him fighting about 300 different times in his career. Clark more than holds his own, even though he practically has to jump to land a punch. Full fight is here.

2:40 - Guitar solo! Apologies in advance for any typos, as I'll be typing the next few lines with my middle and ring fingers folded in.

2:41 - Clark scores an overtime winner on Eddie Belfour, who of course executes the "losing goaltender sprint off the ice" move.

2:48 - Garth Butcher thinks he has Clark lined up during the 1993 playoffs. He's wrong, and no doubt has time to reflect on that fact as he rotates four feet in the air.

2:53 - Another OT winner, this time against Tim Cheveldae of the Wings.

3:00 - Wendel takes out a pair of Rangers on the same shift.

3:05 - Clark drops down to prevent a scoring chance. If any members of the current Leafs team are reading this, this move is called "blocking a shot" and it is in fact a legal hockey play.

3:06 - A patented open ice hit against a miscellaneous Hab. This was from Pat Burns' epic return to Montreal in 1993.

3:07 - Another one-punch TKO, this time on Rudy Poeschek.

3:08 - Note to defencemen: If Wendel Clark wants to go to the net, he's going. Trying to stop him is just going make it worse for everyone involved.

3:10 - Clark kills Bob Brooke, then decides to give him a proper burial beneath the MLG ice. The full fight is here. Fun fact: this fight happened in overtime.

3:15 - Wendel takes on future teammate John Kordic in a classic. This fight featured about 30 punches, including Russ Courtnall's ticket out of Toronto. The full fight is here.

3:19 - Clark takes on Garth Butcher in 1987, the first of two fights they had that night. By the way, Garth Butcher holds the all-time record for largest discrepancy in toughness between first and last name.

3:25 - The Wendel Clark/Kevin Maguire practice fight. I wrote about this one here. Notice how at one point Maguire ends up facing the wrong direction.

3:30 - Clark "fights" Slava Fetisov, in the same way that you might "fight" a mosquito that lands on your arm. I wrote about this one here.

3:43 - Wendel scores another OT winner, this one coming in that crazy comeback win over the Boston Bruins on New Year's eve December 30, 1989. The Leafs had trailed 6-1 but came all the way back, taking a 7-6 decision in overtime in perhaps the greatest Leafs win of the decade.

3:53 - Wendel Clark vs. Bob Probert, chapters I-IV. They had several memorable fights, most of which featured Probert being hit in the head so hard that years later he'd say things like "Yes, I would be interested in doing a figure skating reality show". The best of the series was the third fight, which I wrote about here.

4:08 - Todd Gill hugs Clark, creating a picture whose subtitle is "Two People Who Are Awesome".

4:09 - Somebody holding up a quote from the bible.

4:10 - I'll let Dan describe the final shot: "Clark in his captained, mulletted, post-murder glory." Amen.

And then, much like just about everyone who ever tried to fight Wendel Clark, we fade to black.

(In addition to all the help from Dan, a quick thanks to a pair of great resources: hockeyfights.com, and dropyourgloves.com.)

The Top 10 Toronto Maple Leaf fights of all-time

As you may have noticed, the Maple Leafs have finally entered the Brian Burke era. Sure, he's been around since last November, but only now are we seeing a team that plays the sort of game Burke wants. And as you may have noticed, that means the occasional scrap.

So this seems like as good a time as any to take a look back on some of the great fights in the Leafs history. (As always on DGB, "Leafs history" is defined as "from the time I started watching". So we're talking the mid-80s on.)

Let's start the countdown...

10. Wendel Clark vs. Viacheslav Fetisov

So let me get this straight: this fight is going to feature a cowardly Russian who rarely fights, and Wendel Clark. And also, Clark is angry. Hm. Can't imagine how this one will turn out.

Well, look on the bright side Slava. You did better than Cam Neely.

Years later, historians would credit this fight with ending the cold war.

• Read more about this fight.

9. Darcy Tucker vs. the Ottawa Senators

When it comes to players on the team you cheer for, there are five stages of crazy:

1. Hey, I like this guy, he seems a little crazy.
   
2. Wow, this guy is completely insane, he's awesome.
   
3. You know, this whole "crazy" thing is wearing a little thin.
   
4. I'm tired of this guy, he's dangerous and unhinged and I don't enjoy cheering for him.
   
5. OH MY GOD HE JUST KAMIKAZIED THE OTHER TEAM'S BENCH, I WANT MY DAUGHTER TO MARRY HIM!

Seriously, the 2003 era Darcy Tucker probably should have been medicated.

• Read more about this fight.

8. Wendel Clark vs. Bob Brooke/Wendel Clark vs. David Mackey (tie)

Sorry, it's difficult to choose just one fight for the "Wendel Clark completely killing a Minnesota North Star" category.

Dear god, I miss the Norris division.

• Read more about these fights.

7. Mark Bell vs. the Ottawa Senators after the Alfredsson hit.

Oh wait, sorry, that was meant for my upcoming list of "10 Greatest Purse-Swingings".

Instead, let's go with:

7. Wade Belak vs. Cam Janssen

This fight was the much anticipated payback for Janssen's late hit that injured Tomas Kaberle and caused every Leaf on the ice to become intensely interested in their skates. Or, as we now refer to it, "the least truculent moment of all time".

This was also Belak's last great moment as an NHL heavyweight. He now plays for a team called the Nashville Predators, who I can only assume are in the KHL.

6. John Kordic vs. Basil McRae

By my count, Kordic and McRae fought about 700 times during Kordic's time in Toronto, and just about every one looked exactly like this.

(And yes, the entertainment value of fights like this alone should be enough to convince you that Kordic for Courtnall was a good trade. Don't pretend you didn't know I was bringing that up.)

5. Wendel Clark vs. Bob Probert

I always liked Bob Probert. He had his demons, but he seemed like an honorable guy on the ice. This fight was from the famous night when Probert returned to Canada for the first time after resolving his legal problems.

Thankfully, Probert eventually put an end to his personal cycle of self-destructive behaviour. Oh, he kept doing drugs and drinking for a few more years, but he stopped fighting Wendel.

• Read more about these fight.

4. Sylvain Lefebvre vs Rob Brown

Here's a tip: if you play for a team that wears black and red, and you wear #44, don't try to fight in Toronto. Isn't that right, Mike Peluso, Patrick Eaves, and especially Rob Brown?

Hm, that was a great clip but I can't help but feel like something was missing. Hmmm...

Much better!

3. Tie Domi vs a fat Flyers fan

Here's an actual transcript of what's going through this fan's mind. "Hey, Domi just sprayed water on me, which technically ends my month-long streak of not bathing! I think I'll bang on the glass and try to look tough when I know he can't reach me. Hm, I wonder if this glass can support 300 lbs of cheesesteak and loneliness? No, apparently it can not. Oh god, I'm going to die. Also, I just soiled myself on national television. Go Flyers!"

Side note: Before this happened, if I told you that an NHL player would have a chance to speed bag a loudmouthed fan but it would be ruined at the last second by an over-eager linesman, you would have just assumed it was Kevin Collins, wouldn't you? Yes you would have.

2. Felix Potvin vs. Ron Hextall

You really had to be a Leafs fan in the mid-90s to understand how ridiculous this fight was. Ron Hextall was the scariest goaltender the league had seen since Billy Smith. Felix Potvin was a mild-mannered kid who, as far as we know, never spoke. When Hextall made his mad dash down the ice, every single Leaf fan was convinced that Potvin was about to die.

And then...

By the way, 1:35 might be my favorite Tie Domi moments of all-time.

Side note: If you're a Leafs fan and you want to feel the urge to slam your head through a windshield, watch this version of the same fight as called by the Flyers play-by-play team who are convinced Hextall has won handily even as he's squirting blood all over the first three rows.

And that brings us to the top spot on our list.

1. Tie Domi vs. Chris Neil

This may seem like a surprising choice, but when you factor in the circumstances I think you'll have to agree that it's deserving of ...

Oh, who am I kidding ...

1. Wendel Clark vs. Marty McSorley

Regular readers will know this was coming. I love this fight so much that I've not only written about it in detail, but I've also written about everything that happened right after it.

I don't have much to add, so I'll just say that if I ever have a son I'm going to name him That-Time-Wendel-Clark-Fought-Marty-McSorley Goes Brown.

That wraps up the list. Join me next week, when I'll be presenting a new list: The Top 100 Fights of the Maple Leafs 2009-10 Pre-Season. (Note: this one may be posted late, it will take some time to narrow it down.)

Honorable Mentions

• Tie Domi vs. Magnus Arverdson
  
• Craig Berube vs. Basil McRae
  
• Ken Baumgartner vs. Cam Russell
  
• Darcy Tucker and Cam Janssen's helmet vs. Cam Janssen
  
• Todd Gill vs Joel Otto
  
• Todd Gill vs Robert Dirk
  
• Wendel Clark vs. Mark Tinordi
  
• Craig Berube vs. Gary Roberts
  
• The Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Stu Grimson's dignity
  
• Sean Burke vs. Mark LaForest
  
• Gary Leeman vs. Denis Savard
  
• Luke Schenn vs. Tyler Kennedy
  
• Tie Domi vs. Cam Russell (lifetime achievement award)
  
• Tie Domi vs. Rob Ray (lifetime achievement award)
  
• Leafs vs. Flames
  
• Wendel Clark vs. Kevin Maguire
  
• Ron Wilson vs. Howard Berger