The Craziest Moments In Detroit Sports History

“Hockey players have long memories…”

One of the oddest elements of hockey is the fight. In a society which is becoming more aware of the violence in itself and a sports world which is growing increasingly concerned with its image and stipulations on player safety, the hockey fight sticks out as a primordial holdover of a time when brawling was seen as a feature of masculinity and fisticuffs considered a proper way to settle a dispute.

Adult men who have no dispute with each other besides that of wearing two different sweaters suddenly begin swinging at each other because they do not approve of the way their opponents play a game which involves skating around and hitting a piece of plastic with a stick.

Perhaps this archaic spectacle was never so demonstrably exposed as it was on March 26, 1997, when the Colorado Avalanche faced the Detroit Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena.

Colorado winger Claude Lemieux drew some scorn the previous season when the teams had met in the 1996 Western Conference Finals. Lemieux had checked Red Wings center Kris Draper into the wall game six, shattering Draper’s jaw as the Avalanche won the series on their way to their victory in the Stanley Cup Finals.

After all was said and done, Lemieux ended up bloodied in the Colorado locker room, blood was splattered all over the ice and boards and eight different players were assessed fighting majors in the first period

In 1997, the teams met several times although Lemieux did not play until their fourth regular-season meeting on March 26, when tensions boiled over in several different altercations.

After a couple of fights broke out in the game’s opening minutes, the first of which between Colorado’s Brent Severyn and Detroit’s Jamie Pushor, Detroit’s Igor Larionov and Colorado’s Peter Forsberg began sparring late in the first period.

Detroit’s Darren McCarty saw his opportunity and attacked Lemieux, who tried to cover his face while McCarty punched him.

While the officials tried to pry McCarty off of Lemieux, Avalanche goalie Patrick Roy came out to join the fracas and was hit by a flying Brendan Shanahan of Detroit. Colorado’s Adam Foote then went at it with Shanahan while the two goalies, Roy and Detroit’s Mike Vernon, began swinging at each other as the crowd at the Joe cheered the combatants on.

After all was said and done, Lemieux ended up bloodied in the Colorado locker room, blood was splattered all over the ice and boards and eight different players were assessed fighting majors in the first period after Colorado’s Adam Deadmarsh and Detroit’s Vladimir Konstantinov decided to go at it as well. McCarty actually was not assessed a fighting major for his attack on Lemieux, but rather a double roughing minor. Draper himself missed the entire fracas, sitting on the bench at the time.

The two teams were not finished after the first period. 18 total fighting majors would be assessed in the first two periods, including more penalties for Foote, Shanahan, Deadmarsh, McCarty and Severyn, although the brawl did not re-escalate to the point it had in the first period and the teams managed to get through the rest of the game without a fight after the second period.

The result of the game itself was almost an afterthought. The teams were tied at four after the second and tied at five after three periods until McCarty scored the winner in overtime to give the Red Wings a 6-5 victory, despite a hat-trick from Colorado’s Valeri Kamensky.

After the game, McCarty defended his actions. “Guys just got paired off. I guess it was just God’s will I got paired off with Lemieux,” he said. “Forsberg started the whole thing. But that’s the way hockey is. Sometimes things like that happen when you’re 7 years old and you have to wait until you’re 10 to get back at the guy. Some guys are still getting even for things that happened when they were kids. You just wait for your chances. It was intense.”

Vernon said afterward, “this is a game that brought the Red Wings together. Whether it was the first-period fighting or the overtime goal, a game like this only helps give you confidence to go into the playoffs. When you go to the playoffs, everybody has to be ready to do the job and stay together. Tonight showed the guys were willing to pay the price.” The game was Vernon’s 300th career win as a goalie.

No players were suspended or fined after the game.

In May, the two teams met again in the Western Conference Finals. Fighting broke out in the Red Wings’ 6-0 win the game four as Colorado coach Marc Crawford shouted at Detroit coach Scotty Bowman. Detroit would go on to win the series 4-2 and sweep the Philadelphia Flyers in the Stanley Cup Finals.