Sometimes hockey isn’t all about skating and scoring. Sometimes it looks like … a controversy/confrontation blog. :)
I recall seeing this particular incident live during my first year in graduate school.
This was nothing new for the Rangers and Bruins, as you’ll see here:
Every Islanders fan has wanted to do this with Mike Milbury:
And then there’s Billy Smith against the Oilers in 1983. Watch how Wayne Gretzky goes down …
… and Billy can go down, too …
Smith would have the last laugh that year.
I remember when the would bus Flyers fans down to the Cap Center during the days of Langway, Carpenter, Gartner when the Caps where challenging the Islanders for domination but coming up short. As usual the Caps were beating the Flyers and a Caps fan said something like “we are doing to you what we do to you in football” to a Flyers fan (this being the Joe Gibbs era in Redskins football). The Flyers fan showing his brotherly love busted the Caps fan over the head with a smuggled in glass beer bottle causing much blood, a near riot and a short delay in the game. There is no team the Caps like to beat more than the Flyers.
So much to say here and so little time. (1) Who’s the traitor wearing 77 who got stoned by Cheesie? (Yeah, I know. Harry told him he had to leave town); (2) It’s Rangers fans – why on earth would anyone be upset about what happened there? (And look at them running from Peter (aka “Mary”) McNab); (3) It looked to me as though Big Bird (who had a significant height/reach advantage on Milbury) was wearing a Habs sweater – not the Isles’; (4) Smitty knew how to defend his turf, but taking down Gretzky wasn’t exactly a big accomplishment if you could avoid his posse.
When it came to clobbering Milbury, we’re all Canadiens.
Careful – he lives in my neighborhood…
Big Bird established his credentials against guys like Dave Schultz. To think that Milbury actually would start something with him brings a big grin to this Canadiens fan. And all Milbury could ever do anyway was talk about how much he disliked Guy Lafleur.
True, but part of the time he had a bit of a cohort with Lapointe and Savard. Neither one was Robinson but neither one was afraid of a confrontation, either. By the way, I was at a game in the Forum when no. 10 actually got booed. Reminds me of a comment by Ken Dryden to the effect of “everybody wants to know what you’ve done this period”..
Boy, I loved to watch the Isles and Oilers play back then. Enough Hall of Famers to fill a banquet table.
Hey, are you going to put up the Sabers Fog/Bat game?
Thank you so much for this injection of Canadian culture into my day. I am no fan of fighting in the NHL (though rarely do I look away either), but I have come to despise the predictable, pre-fab set-piece bouts that punctuate games today. At least the good old days featured some real anger and spontaneity, if those count as cultural assets.
As for the Islanders, I much prefer videos that pre-date the spring of 1975. For a Penguins fan, those were the best old days for the Islanders.
No fan of the “third man in” rule, eh. Of course, those days are probably gone forever, especially with the Boogard/Rypien/Belak/Probert developments and the sport’s rapidly growing concussion concerns.