Brutal Moments in Hockey History

[TheDevilMadeMe]

Dale Hunter taking out Pierre Turgeon in the 1993 playoffs ranks near the top for me, mostly because unlike most dirty hits, it happened after the play, when Turgeon was defenseless and celebrating a goal. Sickening.

And the fact that Hunter still shows no remorse makes it even worse.

 

[Hawkey Town 18]

Still can't believe Roenick got right up from this one...

 

[Blade Runner]

 

[Canadiens1958]

Other Incidents

Lou Fontinato / Vic Hadfield collision in 1963 resulting in a career ending broken net for Fontinato,

Bill Masterton.

Zeidel / Shack stick swinging incident.

 

[jkrx]

fixed it for you

 

[Fish on The Sand]

Trent Mcleary being hit in the throat during the 1999-2000 season.

just came hear to post it.

 

[Hammer2Time]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA8cdtpV0vM&feature=related

im a little surprised it took this long for this to be mentioned......

 

[Fredrik_71]

Tie Domi on Ulf Samuelsson is a whopper.



/Cheers

 

[vippe]

Clarke wouldnt be allowed to play hockey today after the stunts he pulled off... I'm glad hockey is going the way it is. Helluva player but also helluva psycho.


Remember a swedish player being cut to the throat in the early 90s. He died from it and it made neckprotectors mandatory among hockeyplayers in Sweden.

 

[Mantha Poodoo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA8cdtpV0vM&feature=related

im a little surprised it took this long for this to be mentioned......

From the first paragraph in the OP:

Let's avoid bringing up the incident that thread referenced due to the flame wars it inevitably starts, and instead have a historical discussion on brutality in the NHL.

That might be why.

It's not that that particular incident doesn't belong in this thread, but rather, that it's discussed every handful of weeks on HF and inevitably turns into a flame war. It'd be a shame for a thread with lesser discussed and lesser seen incidents to be closed because some people inevitably dragged that discussion here. I've already seen several incidents of which I wasn't aware due to posts in this thread. Thanks for contributing, regardless.

 

[MS]

Richard riots/Richard's ref assault.

Don McSween almost getting his hand chopped off.

Pete Peeters lightbulb incident.

Bobby Orr being screwed over by Eagleson.

... you can interpret 'brutal' 100 different ways.

 

[Clown Baby*]

Steve Downie's skate clipping referee Pat Dapuzzo's face, after a hipcheck by Fedor Tyutin.

After 24 years, my career as an NHL linesman was over in an instant. The damage to my face was worse than just my nose being severed.

There were 10 fractures in my face. My right cheekbone was shattered. Between the accident and all the surgeries I've had, I lost all of my teeth. I lost my sense of smell. I developed sleep apnea. I dealt with terrible earaches caused by bone fragments in my right ear.

I still suffer from post-concussion syndrome. There were times in the first year after the accident when I couldn't get out of bed for weeks.

I have almost no sense of taste. My wife Lisa would make me my favorite -- her thin crust pizza. So I could taste it better, I kept sprinkling cracked pepper on it. I still couldn't taste a thing, so I'd put on more and more with each bite. By the time I was done, I pretty much went through the whole bottle. Worse, I was sweating like I'd just run a marathon. My wife and I decided I shouldn't do that again.

I couldn't work. I loved my job as an NHL linesman so much, and now it was gone. And never mind that -- there wasn't any job I could do. Whenever my heart rate would rise a little, the headaches would be debilitating. I couldn't even work out.

I was depressed. I couldn't function like anything close to a normal adult of 50 years of age. We have three boys, great kids now in seventh, eighth and ninth grades. They would ask me, "Dad, what's wrong? Why can't you come out with us?" Not being able to do anything, not being able to explain to your kids what you're feeling, is probably the toughest time I had to go through.

Our house is in Rutherford, New Jersey. It's very close to the hotel where the NHL officials stay when they're in town to work Devils games. This is how bad it got: my buddies would try to contact me before coming to New Jersey. I wouldn't pick up the phone, wouldn't return their messages. A lot of them, when they arrived in Jersey, actually came to my house and banged on the door. I wouldn't answer.

This is a fact: all this happened to me because I wasn't wearing a face shield.

link

Also...

"...From behind, Picard poleaxed and brutalized LaForge, who then lay face down, unconscious in an ever-widening pool of his own blood, while Picard and the rest of the Blues took on the entire Flyers' roster, and quite successfully."

 

[Malefic74]

Two incidents spring to mind for me:

1) The bench clearing brawl from the World Junior Hockey Championship between Canada and Russia. The refs in the infinite wisdom leave the ice, and they turn the lights off in the arena. The fighting continued anyway and apparently there were several stick swinging incidents.

2) The Mike Milbury Shoe Incident. It has a certain comedic appeal to it I'll admit, but you never want to see players climbing into the stands to fight the fans (even if they are Rangers fans).

 

[Blades of Glory]

Now that you bring it up again, I really cannot think how anyone could want the lights turned off during the middle of a brawl. Talk about creating extra havoc. Now you have angry people swinging blindly at each other.

 

[vikash1987]

I remember that well. Interestingly, that came during a period where one team had more bad luck then I can ever remember. Not only did the Habs of the time suffer a higher than normal number of regular injuries (they suffered something like 400+ man games lost 3 or 4 years in a row), they had a few very serious injuries. McCleary with the the shot to the throat, Brian Savage nearly having his neck broken in a game vs. the Kings, Koivu being diagnosed with life threatening cancer (as well, he nearly losing an eye in the 06 playoffs) and Donald Audette having his wrist cut by a skate blade, just missing his major arteries.

I remember all of these incidents happening in such a short span for the Canadiens. The Audette injury at MSG was particularly frightening, as I recall.

Brutal moments in history and nobody mentioned Espen Knutsen yet?
I mean he killed a fan... (innocently I know, but still..somebody died..)

I wouldn't put this in the same category. It was a heartbreaking tragedy away from the ice surface, for which neither Knutsen nor any other player on that shift deserved blame. (Depicting Knutsen on the cover of SI was really classless, IMO.)

 

[begbeee]

I wouldn't put this in the same category. It was a heartbreaking tragedy away from the ice surface, for which neither Knutsen nor any other player on that shift deserved blame. (Depicting Knutsen on the cover of SI was really classless, IMO.)

I don´t blame Knutsen, but you know.. Was it brutal? Yes. Was it a moment in hockey history? Yes. It fits into terms of topic.

 

[SealsFan]

I gotta say the more I read and see the type of player Bobby Clarke was the less I like the guy. I have always thought of him as an arrogant, naive and cocky person just from hearing him speak as GM of the Flyers.

His stick swinging incidents however, are just icing on the cake for me. Very low rent, quite cheap.

I'll give you another Bobby Clarke incident, of which no video exists. But I vividly recall the press photos of the player on his knees, bloodied, before being carted off the ice.

Rookie Barry Cummins of the Seals had the misfortune of hitting a kneeling Clarke in the face with his stick in front of the Flyers bench, probably unintentional, but Clarke went down and the next thing Cummins saw was the Broad Street Bullies coming off the bench en masse and beating him until he was hamburger. Cummins NHL career didn't last very long after that and two years later he was out of hockey.


EDIT: holy smokes, just went searching on the net and found the press clippings of the incident! Just as I remember it:
http://www.************.com/hockeyf...cummins-bobby-clarke-high-stick-incident.html

 

[Eisen]

Clarke was biggest badass and I really dont know how Canadiens can be proud about him. His attack on Pospisil and broken ankle of Kharlamov were act of psychopatic man.
I really dont know how it is in connection with sportmanship.

AND he never finshished the **** he started. He was a great player, and I don't mind abrasive players, Kasparaitis is my favourite player. But what Clarke pulled of is just not worthy of a player. Sure, heplayed to win, but some dignity wold be nice.

 

[begbeee]

Now that you bring it up again, I really cannot think how anyone could want the lights turned off during the middle of a brawl. Talk about creating extra havoc. Now you have angry people swinging blindly at each other.

Hey, genius! What would you do? Three old fatty refs, with few fatty guys from coaching staff VS 40 angry well trained young boys.

 

[zeus3007*]

I'm going to take a lot of flak for this the Niedermayer incident is blown out of proportion. I'm not making an excuse for Domi for hitting him even if it was during an intense series, but what the video doesn't show you is Niedermayer getting out of the stretcher a couple minutes later and talking on his cellphone. Big change from what looked like a career ending injury eh?

You sure are. Does it matter if Niedermayer got up a few minutes later? Heck no, Domi tried to injure him badly, and that's what mattered, and that is what makes it a sore spot on the sport.

 

[justsomeguy]

Thanks for remembering the Howe incident! Boy it runs in the family. I mean, Gordie was almost killed in game 1 of the 1950 SCSF after being hit head first into the boards by Ted Kennedy!

Kennedy never touched him. All he did was stop short when Howe had him lined up. As a result Howe went into the boards. Jack Adams may have claimed it was intentional but his credibility is more than a little suspect.

 

[Ogopogo*]

Matt Cooke - too many to name
Sean Avery - too many to name
Darcy Tucker - too many to name
Todd Bertuzzi - attempted murder of Steve Moore
Dave Brown - attempted decapitation of Tomas Sandstrom
Dale Hunter - attempted murder of Pierre Turgeon
Steve Downie - several but most notably his idiotic display in junior against Akim Aliu
Gary Suter - dirty hit from behind on Gretzky
Tie Domi - attmpted murder of Scott Neidermayer

There are many more but those are the ones that come to mind immediately

 

[reckoning]

Attempted murder? Really?

 

[jkrx]

Matt Cooke - too many to name
Sean Avery - too many to name
Darcy Tucker - too many to name
Todd Bertuzzi - attempted murder of Steve Moore
Dave Brown - attempted decapitation of Tomas Sandstrom
Dale Hunter - attempted murder of Pierre Turgeon
Steve Downie - several but most notably his idiotic display in junior against Akim Aliu
Gary Suter - dirty hit from behind on Gretzky
Tie Domi - attmpted murder of Scott Neidermayer

There are many more but those are the ones that come to mind immediately

Sean Avery? Which are his brutal attacks? Same goes for Matt Cooke and Darcy Tucker. Theyve done some dirty stuff I agree and are ******** as players but they are nowhere near as brutal as for example Howe could be if you pissed him off. Basically the only incidents I agree on your list are Brown, Hunter and Suter (and maybe Downie).

 

[Tad Mikowsky]

I don´t blame Knutsen, but you know.. Was it brutal? Yes. Was it a moment in hockey history? Yes. It fits into terms of topic.

Brutal Defined:
1.
savage; cruel; inhuman: a brutal attack on the village.
2.
crude; coarse: brutal language.
3.
harsh; ferocious: brutal criticism; brutal weather.
4.
taxing, demanding, or exhausting: They're having a brutal time making ends meet.
5.
irrational; unreasoning.
6.
of or pertaining to lower animals.

Brutal =/= tragic.