Happy Anniversary!!
Today marks the 10 year anniversary of “The Turtle.” I am compiling comments, quotes, and photos to give you one giant anniversary page of my favorite hockey game ever. Why is it my favorite game that I’ve ever seen? Well, there were 9 fights (and McCarty getting Lemieux wasn’t even considered a ‘fight’ in terms of penalty minutes), 11 goals, and 148 penalty minutes. The game ended with the Wings winning, 6-5, in overtime.
Before I get to the quotes and whatnot, here is my favorite YouTube clip highlighting the game on March 26, 1997.
As all Wings fans know, the game was a long time coming from Colorado Avalanche’s Claude Lemieux’s hit from behind on the Wings’ Kris Draper who fell into the boards. The hit resulted in serious facial injuries (broken nose, jaw, cheekbone, and right eye socket), which caused Draper’s jaw to be wired shut for days and 40 stitches. Dino Ciccarelli later said following the game, “I can’t believe I shook this guy’s frickin’ hand.” Not only did Draper suffer this terrible injury, but his team had just lost in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals in 1996.
Darren McCarty
Mac obviously played a critical role in the March 26, 1997 game. Not only did he pummel Lemieux, but he also scored the game winning goal in overtime and ‘interacted’ with Adam Deadmarsh.
The Vancouver Sun printed a nice article with an interview with McCarty. Here are my favorite quotes from the article:
“First thing,” said Darren McCarty, one of the affair’s major protagonists, “I can’t believe it was 10 years ago.”
“You want to see a great game?” said McCarty, the former Red Wings muscleman who is now with the Flames. “It’s on the NHL Network, the Classic channel or whatever. If it’s on, I’ll watch it. It’s just unbelievable.”
“It had a lot of buildup,” nodded McCarty, “and it exceeded the buildup. If they were taking odds in Vegas, it was probably a million-to-one the game could supersede the hype. But it did. It annihilated the type. It dropped an atomic bomb on it. It just nuked it. You can’t argue that.”
“The icing on the cake,” said McCarty, “what made it so special, is that I scored the overtime goal. That’s what ties everything in all together.”
“I’ll never replace that winning-the-Cup game and scoring that goal, but to take just a game in general, [the March 26, 1997 contest] was the greatest game I’ve ever played in, that I ever saw. Just because it had every ingredient you could ever want. That game had everything.”
Wings head coach Mike Babcock remembers watching that game ten years ago. He enjoyed the competition and emotion that the two teams displayed as well as the great hockey.
“Claude and Darren fighting, and Darren scoring the game-winning goal, that was great,” Babcock said.
“People tend to forget, after all the other stuff that happened, it was a great game, going back and forth, 6-5 in overtime.”
The Goaltenders
The two goaltenders playing that night were Colorado’s Hall of Famer Patrick Roy and Mike Vernon for the Red Wings. The two got into a fight that evening at center ice. It took a few minutes for the two to actually start fighting with one another, but you can see the action in the clip below.
Wings’ goaltender Chris Osgood’s favorite memory is of the goalie fight that night.
“Vernie skating to center — and I thought he’d be exhausted just skating all the way there,” Osgood said. “I remember pictures of Vernie’s head fitting into Roy’s glove. Remember, at that time, there were no rules on equipment, and Vernie’s head fit entirely in Roy’s glove.
“Roy getting cut and saying he’d won the fight. Vernie was so tired. Vernie skated off the ice, and he was exhausted and was hoping they’d kick him out of the game, but they didn’t, and he had to go back there and play. He could barely move.
“And Shanny flying through the air to get after Roy.”
Source: Tom Pidgeon / Associated Press Roy later said, “Detroit won the Stanley Cup that night.”
The Villian
Claude Lemieux may have been the most hated athlete in Detroit for years after he hit Draper from behind. Not only was it bad enough that Lemieux made a dirty play, but he was upset with the referee’s call.
On the ice, Lemieux was assessed a five-minute match penalty by McCreary, which meant his automatic ejection from the game. Believing McCreary’s call to be unfair, Lemieux made a showy, petulant exit, slamming the door built into the boards behind the north-side net in the aging arena.
The crowd at the Joe was only too happy to see McCarty seek revenge especially after his lack of remorse following that game.
Down the hallway, in the jubilant Avalanche dressing room, Lemieux stood in a Western Conference Championship T-shirt, drinking a beer and high-fiving teammates. A first-year beat reporter for the Denver Post — covering my first NHL team ever — I stood in that dressing room and immediately posed a question to Lemieux about Draper.
“Are you sorry about the hit on Draper?” I asked. “Apparently his injuries are pretty bad.”
“Nobody wants to see a player get injured. I didn’t try to hurt him, and I’m sorry he’s hurt,” Lemieux said.
That was as close as Lemieux would get to an apology. There was no asking about the extent of Draper’s injuries. No asking where he might be in the building for a quick visit. When some Detroit reporters pressed Lemieux about the incident, the two-time Stanley Cup champion and son of a blue-collar truck driver from Mont Laurier, Quebec, took a familiar adversarial posture.
“I don’t want to waste my time talking about Detroit,” he said.
” I try to hit everybody as hard as I can, just like everybody tries to hit me as hard as they can. Everything is always vicious about us, and not them.
“At worst, I thought it should have been a two-minute penalty. I think that was going to be his first call, but then (McCreary) saw blood and decided to change his mind.” With that, Lemieux took a long last drink of his beer, crumpled the can, and tossed it in the trash.
That’s the end of it, Lemieux seemed to say with the gesture. No more questions about that. Move on.
Source: Tom Pidgeon / Associated Press
Blogger Reactions
IwoCPO @ Abel to Yzerman:
Yep, it’s been ten years since Igor Larionov–of all people–started the brawl at the Joe. Ten years since Aaron Ward earned his stripes, Brendan Shanahan truly became a Wing and Mike Vernon won his 300th.
The blogger behind On the Forecheck actually had a press pass for that game ten years ago and wrote it for his hockey website of the time, In the Crease. He re-posted what he had written back then for us to read today.
Here, then, is the piece I wrote that night from press row (sitting next to Phil Myre, then a pro scout with Ottawa) - much of it during the action, on a laptop borrowed from work for the night. Some of the writing is pretty hackneyed, but instead of taking further time to edit it, I wanted to let the emotions of the night come through and sent it in for posting right away. I hope you enjoy it…
The Game
Back in December, I wrote a review on the book, Blood Feud
If you aren’t so interested in reading the behind the scenes stuff, but would rather just watch this classic game, the only DVD I know available for purchase is the four disc Detroit Red Wings set entitled a Celebration of Champions
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7 Responses to “Happy Anniversary!!”
Leave a Reply
March 27th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
I’m glad I stumbled onto this page. For years I’ve always thought the media has painted the Colorado- Red Wings feud completely wrong, and this page justifies my arguement. Yes, Lemieux is the villain for the hit from behind. Can’t argue that. But why isn’t McCarty the villain for sucker punching Lemieux? Because he deserved it? That goes against every code of hockey. He didn’t challenge him, he jumped him. Extremely bushleague for a honest player. And to top it off, snivelling little Chris Draper is all smiles patting McCarty on the back. What a coward…..I’m ashamed to admit he’s Canadian. Maltby is even worse. Two snivelling cowards wearing visors that would be considered huge by welding standards, running people with their sticks up around the opponents teeth, and then hiding behind McCarty. Shameful. Lemieux may have played on the edge his whole career, but I guarentee he has more fighting majors than those two Streisands combined. You wrote a book on this? And you got paid for it? Congrats….that’s a great coup. I always laughed at the self imposed title of “Hockeytown”. More like Homertown. This article totally justifies my contempt for the Detroit hockey fan…..pretenders.
March 27th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
James-
Before I get to what you talked about for the majority of your comment, I did not write the book entitled Blood Feud. I merely wrote a review on it and did not receive any money from my review or this post. Adrian Dater, a reporter for a Denver newspaper, wrote the book. Secondly, it’s not Chris Draper, it’s Kris Draper.
I’m not going to argue whether McCarty was the villian or not because you obviously are coming from a Colorado point of view and I’m not going to persuade your point of view.
In my humble opinion, Lemieux is a dirty player and completely deserved what McCarty gave him. And of course Draper is going to be proud of McCarty for getting revenge, Lemieux made Drapes drink/eat out of a straw for 16 days while his jaw was wired shut after that dirty check.
And why would I care that Lemieux has more fighting majors?
Homertown. Then how come whenever the Wings go on road trips, many arenas are full of Wings fans? Every team is a homertown because many fans start cheering for their hometown team. So what’s the big deal?
And how in the world does my post justify me as a pretender (aka Detroit hockey fan in your mind)? I didn’t imagine that this event happened or create any of the quotes or images. I commented exactly on how the incident went down.
While I appreciate you leaving a comment and visiting BTJ, you are pretty much way off base. Most of the quotes I used came from papers other than the Detroit ones so the blockquotes are mainly coming from Denver writers and Canadian reporters. Not much of a hometown bias in those quotes.
If McCarty’s fight went against every code of hockey, why did so many hockey players and coaches enjoy watching that game?
Like I said, thanks for visiting BTJ and giving me a good laugh today.
March 28th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
great post and clips Christy!
Those were two great teams and the premier rivalry in the league for many years.
As for James’ comments - well Maltby is a definite superpest and Draper carries his stick a little too high for my liking but Claude Lemieux was the original coward - the guy would run and hide at the first sign of trouble - celebrating him as an “honest player” when his play made Maltby look like a choirboy - come on! Knowing Lemieux he was likely challenged a dozen times by Mccarty that game and turned tail each time. Have to pay the piper at some point.
March 29th, 2007 at 3:12 am
Dearest James Rae,
I am a pretender Red Wings fan from Detroit and would like to respond to your cowarly comments made in your earlier response. You ashame me as a advid hockey fan for your ignorant remarks made about the Colorado-Detroit rivalry. You obviously are not a true hockey fan if you belive that Mccarty sucker punched Lemieux. When someone as evil and coward-like as Lemieux is checks an innocent player from behind causing permanent damage to his face and cheeks he should recieve the reprecussions as he did from Mccarty. You as “Streisand” as you seem to be should NOT talk so stupid. If you were to come to DETROIT and make the idiotic comments you have already made we would treat you like the “Turtle” you already seem to be!!!
Go WINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
March 29th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Lemieux skated away every time he was challenged by someone his own size. The only times he ever mixed it up is when he had someone smaller than him up against the boards. For the record, McCarty did jump in on that fight, but even the video shows him skating around in front of Lemieux before he threw the punch. I agree with Pat. That was the only way they were going to get the coward into a brawl and anyone who has ever watched the game knows Lemieux’s cowardly nature. How many of his Av teammates came to his rescure when he turtled? One, the goalie. Although Roy was great in net with his supersized pads, he is just as big an A-hole as Lemieux ever was. That alone ought to tell you something.
March 31st, 2007 at 3:26 pm
[…] Christy from Behind the Jersey reminds us that March 26 was the 10-year anniversary of what was perhaps the greatest hockey game ever played. The Red Wings defeated the Colorado Avalanche 6-5 in overtime after nine fights and 148 penalty minutes. […]
November 19th, 2008 at 1:39 am
Wedge56:
You forgot to mention how Roy beats his wife. Tough guy.