ONE OF HOCKEY’S GREATEST RIVALRIES left a mark on the Detroit Crimson Wings and the Colorado Avalanche.
Twenty-seven years after the Wings and Avs battled for NHL supremacy in a incredible, relentless, and breathtakingly violent winner-take-all battle, Avs enforcer Claude Lemieux nonetheless likes to level out the huge bump on his cranium left by Darren McCarty’s knee. An identical relic may be discovered on Adam Foote’s brow, one other on Patrick Roy’s proper forehead, and even a slight indentation on Kris Draper’s cheek.
To today, the scars inflicted by the 2 rivals function a sort of street map to the epic interval between 1996 and 2002, which resulted in three Stanley Cups for the Wings and two for the Avalanche. “It was simply pure old-school, deep-seated hatred between two groups and two cities,” McCarty, the mercurial ahead who turned one of many rivalry’s iconic figures, says. “It was the hatred and the stakes that made this entire factor so stunning.”
Undoubtedly, throughout that superb seven-season run, the Wings and Avs met 4 instances a yr in the course of the common season and 5 instances extra in the course of the post-season, bringing out the most effective – and worst – in one another in ways in which solely the Crimson Sox, Yankees, Celtics, and Lakers had ever executed earlier than.
“I’m a College of Michigan fan, and somebody requested me, Who do you hate extra, Ohio State or the Colorado Avalanche?” ex-Crimson Wings coach John Wharton says.
“You’re not severe, proper? I believed.
I despise Ohio State, however nobody on their crew has ever tried to homicide one in all my teammates.”
The sport on March 26, 1997, inside Detroit’s previous Joe Louis Area, has turn into recognized in hockey lore as Struggle Night time on the Joe, was the epicenter of the rivalry. The high-stakes revenge sport had been simmering for practically a yr, fueled by bus brawls, sucker punches, horrific accidents, heartbreaking losses, bomb-sniffing canine, and nonstop psychological warfare between the 2 fan bases. When the puck dropped, the dimensions of the violence and chaos — 18 preventing majors, 148 whole penalty minutes, the ice soaked in blood, a few of it from the goaltenders — was in contrast to something the NHL had ever seen, earlier than or since.
Significantly in in the present day’s sport, the place important adjustments have made the NHL safer, extra entertaining, and, at instances, unrecognizable to the Detroit and Colorado gamers behind the legendary Struggle Night time on the Joe.
See for your self within the youtube video above that you should confirm-in to look at simply as a consequence of how violent of a hockey second this really was!