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 improbable, relentless, and breathtakingly violent winner-take-all battle, Avs enforcer Claude Lemieux nonetheless likes to level out the large bump on his cranium left by Darren McCarty’s knee. An analogous 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 at the present time, the scars inflicted by the 2 rivals function a sort of highway 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 grew to become one of many rivalry’s iconic figures, says. “It was the hatred and the stakes that made this entire factor so lovely.”
Undoubtedly, throughout that wonderful 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 perfect – and worst – in one another in ways in which solely the Crimson Sox, Yankees, Celtics, and Lakers had ever finished 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 assumed.
I despise Ohio State, however nobody on their crew has ever tried to homicide one among my teammates.”
The sport on March 26, 1997, inside Detroit’s previous Joe Louis Area, has change into identified in hockey lore as Struggle Night time on the Joe, was the epicenter of the rivalry. The high-stakes revenge recreation had been simmering for practically a yr, fueled by bus brawls, sucker punches, horrific accidents, heartbreaking losses, bomb-sniffing canines, 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.
Notably in as we speak’s recreation, 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 observe simply on account of how violent of a hockey second this actually was!
