20 years later: Red Wings vs. Avalanche fight night is still the best
It has been called “Bloody Wednesday,” “The Brawl at Hockeytown” and “Fight Night at the Joe.”
And if one were to borrow a movie title to describe what happened on the banks of the Detroit River that spring evening, “There Will Be Blood” would be apropos.
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the game played on March 26, 1997, between the defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado Avalanche and the Red Wings — a game fittingly played at a hockey arena named after a boxing champion.
Clever titles aside, the night also became one of the most thrilling and significant games in Detroit hockey history, propelling the Wings toward their first Stanley Cup championship in 42 years and fueling one of sports’ greatest and fiercest rivalries. Over a seven-year period in 1996-2002, the teams had their names etched onto the Stanley Cup five times.
In front of a sold-out crowd of 19,983 at Joe Louis Arena, the game featured 11 goals, 10 fights, 39 penalties, 148 penalty minutes and an overtime goal by the man who earlier that evening delivered the revenge beating to one of the NHL’s most despised players.
Stuart Shulman, 46, of Ann Arbor fondly recalls walking out of the Joe with his father after the epic battle.
“I told him, ‘That was the most ridiculous and amazing game I have ever seen and probably will ever see,’ ” said Shulman, a season-ticket holder since 1982. “If you say ‘March 26, 1997’ to any die-hard Wings fan, they know what you are referring to. Name one other regular-season game that so many fans remember.”
March 26, 1997: All 9 fights between the Avalanche and Red Wings
Setting the stage
After posting the best record in the NHL in the 1995-96 season, with a record 62 victories, Scotty Bowman’s Wings appeared destined to return to the Cup finals to avenge their embarrassing sweep at the hands of the New Jersey Devils and Conn Smythe winner Claude Lemieux the previous spring. This was supposed to be the year the Wings finally won the Cup.
But it wasn’t to be.
In the first two rounds of the playoffs, the Wings surprisingly struggled against inferior teams. It took six games to defeat the sub-.500 Winnipeg Jets, then a dramatic double-overtime goal by Steve Yzerman in Game 7 to eliminate the St. Louis Blues, 1-0.
The Wings crawled into the Western Conference finals to play a team they never had faced in the playoffs: the multitalented Avalanche, led by Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg, Patrick Roy and Lemieux, Detroit’s ’95 finals nemesis who was acquired at the start of the season.
After the Wings lost the first two games at Joe Louis Arena, the altercations ignited in the first period of Game 3, which was won by the Wings. Detroit’s Slava Kozlov slammed Adam Foote’s face into the glass. Foote required 20 stitches to his forehead. Later in the game, Lemieux sucker-punched Kozlov in the face. Lemieux was suspended for Game 4.
After splitting Games 4 and 5, the Wings returned to Colorado for Game 6, down, 3-2. And although the Avalanche eliminated Detroit with a 4-1 victory, the main thing hockey fans remember was what happened at 14:07 of the first period — and the consequences that would follow.
During the end of a line shift, Kris Draper was skating backward in front of the Wings’ bench after clearing the puck up the boards. Lemieux raced toward Draper and hit him from behind. Draper went hard into the dasher board, facefirst.
Darren McCarty, a fan favorite in Detroit who was on the “Grind Line” that included Draper and Kirk Maltby, noticed.
“I was sitting on the bench, and it happened right in front of me,” McCarty said in a recent interview with the Free Press. “I saw Lemieux coming at Kris, and it was like seeing a car crash in slow motion. I could literally hear the bones break in Drapes’ face. It was difficult for us to process. Lemieux was an agitator and a cheap-shot guy. But he was one of the best playoff performers ever.” (Lemieux is ninth all-time in playoff goals and fourth in playoff game-winning goals.)
Draper suffered a broken jaw, broken nose, broken cheekbone and concussion. He would have his mouth wired shut for several weeks. A week after he left the hospital, the team doctor gave McCarty pliers to carry in case Draper choked on his food.
“When I saw Kris in the hospital that night,” McCarty said, “I told him I would take care of Lemieux. I just didn’t know when. But as my uncle once told me, sometimes the anticipation of death is worse than death itself.”
After Game 6, Lemieux had told the Denver Post: “Nobody wants to see a player get injured. I didn’t try to hurt him, and I’m sorry he’s hurt.” In a 2010 Canadian television interview with McCarty and Lemieux on the Sports Network’s “Off the Record” — the first time the combatants had met off the ice — Lemieux discussed the Draper hit.
“With all due respect to Kris Draper, if I was going to go after somebody, it would be Steve Yzerman or Sergei Fedorov,” Lemieux said. “Those were the guys who were hurting us offensively.”
Lemieux was suspended for the first two games of the Stanley Cup finals and received a $1,000 fine. Draper spent the summer recovering.
Many hockey fans and pundits — not just Detroiters — thought Lemieux should have apologized to Draper, or at least shown more remorse. When neither happened, Lemieux became public enemy No. 1 in Hockeytown.
From his home in California, Lemieux reflected on the Draper incident in a recent phone interview. “A lot of things go through your head quickly in a playoff game like that one,” he said. “He had just cleared the puck, and I just decided to finish the hit. What happened to Kris was unfortunate. It was a poor decision based upon the situation. Soon after that, it was the beginning of turning away (from checks). But in the old days, we didn’t do that.”
For the second consecutive season, Lemieux lifted the Cup instead of the Wings.
“I thought about an apology, but I decided it wouldn’t have made a difference because people have probably said, ‘He’s not sincere,’ ” Lemieux said. “Earlier in my career, Gord Kluzak of the Bruins broke bones in my face, and I was pretty upset. But I didn’t believe he intended to injure me. I didn’t expect an apology, and I didn’t get one.”
According to former Red Wing and 16-year NHL veteran Bryan (Bugsy) Watson, one of the game’s toughest and most effective agitators, apologies were not part of hockey when he played in the Original Six era and through the ’70s.
“It was kind of an unwritten rule that if you hit someone and they happened to get hurt, apologies were not given nor expected,” said Watson, the all-time leader in penalty minutes when he retired in 1979.
Darren McCarty and Claude Lemieux meet with smiles, not punches
Revenge at the Joe
Observers knew Lemieux would pay the following season.
“I always planned on doing it in front of our fans at home,” McCarty said.
But as it turned out, the day would not arrive until the teams’ final meeting of the regular season.
The Wings had lost the first three regular-season matchups with Colorado, and many wondered whether Detroit ever would surpass the Avalanche. Because of injuries, Lemieux missed the first two meetings between the teams, but he did suit up against the Wings on March 16 at McNichols Arena in Denver.
“Kris and I had a bump in that game, and I asked him if he wanted to settle it then,” Lemieux said, “but nothing happened.
“I thought that just maybe people had moved on. But when we came to Detroit for the March 26 game, the NHL security had a guard outside of my hotel room. Before the game, the league suggested we wear helmets during the warm-up, because they were afraid of stuff being thrown at us. I was more worried about being hit with a beer bottle than I was about what was going to happen on the ice.”
McCarty made sure something was going to happen on the ice. “Claude was going to get gonged one way or the other,” he said.
Stuart Shulman said he never will forget walking to his seat in lower bowl in Section 111 that night.
“It felt like it was a playoff game, and the energy in the building was amazing,” said Shulman, who has kept his ticket stub. “Literally, 19,000 people felt like they were playing every shift, and we were all just waiting for something to blow up.”
Within the first 10 minutes, four fighting majors were called. Colorado took a 1-0 lead thanks to Valeri Kamensky, who would score a hat trick that night.
At the 18:22 mark, things escalated when Colorado’s Forsberg slammed Igor Larionov backward into the boards. Larionov, never known to fight, grabbed Forsberg around the neck and wrestled him to the ice.
“I simply had enough. You can only take so much,” Larionov said in a recent interview.
As Forsberg and Larionov wrestled each other without throwing punches, McCarty started looking for Lemieux. Knowing that, Foote grabbed McCarty.
“(Brendan Shanahan) knew that I wanted Lemieux,” McCarty said, “so he chopped at Foote, which sent me loose.”
Lemieux stood alone, watching Larionov and Forsberg. “When I saw that, I thought, ‘Uh-oh, this is not good,’ ” Lemieux said. “I probably should have had my gloves off. I didn’t want one of those crazy brawls. I just wanted the game to be over with.”
McCarty skated toward the distracted Lemieux and landed a right-gloved haymaker to Lemieux’s right temple. Lemieux fell hard on his back. He then rolled to his left, on his knees, as McCarty pounded him with lefts. Lemieux started to get up while throwing off his left glove, but it was too late. McCarty threw a vicious left to his face, and Lemieux collapsed into a head-ducked turtle position. He was in that position for all of 4 seconds before McCarty grabbed him and dragged him 10 feet. McCarty dumped him against the boards at the Detroit bench, in front of Draper. Then McCarty kneed him viciously in the head.
“It brought everything full circle,” McCarty said. “It was, ‘Hey, Drapes, do you want to take a look?’ ”
After the game, Draper gushed: “Mac is such a team guy, and he wanted to stick up for me. I consider us best friends, and I was happy he did what he did for me.”
The McCarty-Lemieux confrontation technically was not a fight, in the sense that Lemieux never was able to throw one punch. It was an all-out beating. “Claude’s lucky he never got up, because it would have been a lot worse,” McCarty said.
Bleeding and dazed, Lemieux went to the dressing room to get stitched up. To the surprise of most people, McCarty received only a double roughing penalty and stayed in the game.
“When he sucker-punched me, I was hurt. I didn’t turtle,” Lemieux said in the 2010 Canadian television interview. “I never held a grudge against Darren, because he stood up for his teammate. That’s what you should do in hockey.”
Lemieux still has a battle scar.
“When I have a haircut, I’ve been asked, ‘Where did you get that bump?’ ” Lemieux said. “Well, it’s from when Darren kneed me.”
The other spectacle during the brawl occurred after Shanahan leaped though the air and pancaked Roy just as he was trying to aid Lemieux. Seconds later, and to the delight of the screaming fans, Roy and Red Wings goalie Mike Vernon went toe-to-toe at center ice before Vernon fell on top of the bleeding Avs goalie.
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The photo of Lemieux “turtling” — and the implication that he was cowardly — has followed him since that night.
“Darren hit me extremely hard on the temple, and the next thing I know, I’m down and getting hammered,” Lemieux said. “It happened so fast, like in a street fight. Everyone knows, when you get dinged like that, you don’t know what’s happening, you’re dizzy. In a fight situation, you know when you’ve got the upper hand and when you’re getting your (expletive) kicked. I knew it was not going to be my day. I was not a coward. I wanted a rematch.”
The following season, when the teams played for the first time in Detroit, Lemieux asked to start the game and positioned himself with McCarty for the opening face-off.
“My roommate, Jeff Hodges, was our tough guy, and he said he wanted McCarty,” Lemieux said. “But I said, ‘No, that’s my job, just make sure you handle the next guy coming in.’ I said, ‘I want one shot in the opening face-off.’ ”
In his 2013 autobiography, “My Last Fight: The True Story of a Hockey Rock Star,” McCarthy wrote: “He earned my respect that day by coming out and lining up right across from me. I called him every (expletive) name in the book, trying to goad him into another brawl, but there was no reaction. (Steve Yzerman) won the draw, and the next thing I know, Lemieux blasted me right in the nose.”
“I’m not going to have a bodyguard,” Lemieux said after that game on Nov. 11, 1997. “I can take care of myself.”
Lemieux, indeed, stood up to McCarty, even after McCarty reached over with his left hand to pry off Lemieux’s helmet and protective shield. They exchanged air punches until McCarty switched to his right, landed two jabs, then connected with a haymaker of a left hook. Lemieux, though, never stopped swinging and landed his share of punches. When McCarty wrestled Lemieux to the ice, there arose the loudest cheer at the Joe since June, when the Wings had won the Cup.
“I respect him for doing that as a hockey player,” McCarty said at the time. “But I still have no respect for him as a human being. He still hasn’t apologized to Draper for what he did.”
Lemieux had proved his courage, but public enemy No. 1 also left town with a big bump under his right eye.
“It wasn’t about winning the fight,” Lemieux said recently. “I had to make the statement that I can stand up for myself.”
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The OT winner
Although McCarty finally had avenged Lemiuex’s vicious hit, the Wings trailed Colorado, 5-3, at the beginning of the third period on March 26, 1997. Again, the Wings looked as if they’d never beat the Avalanche. Then Martin Lapointe and Shanahan scored 36 seconds apart to tie it.
McCarty again nearly blew the roof off Joe Louis Arena. He gave the Wings a 6-5 victory with a goal just 39 seconds into overtime, completing arguably the greatest regular-season game in team history.
“That’s one to remember,” McCarty said at the time. “We stuck together in all aspects of our game. That’s old-time hockey. That’s fun stuff.”
Afterward, Avalanche coaches and players were incensed. Coach Marc Crawford even elbowed Wings defenseman Aaron Ward and tried to barge into the officials’ dressing room. “That team has no heart,” Avs alternate captain Mike Keane said. “Detroit had the opportunity to do that in our building, but they didn’t. … Everyone is gutless on that team, and I’d love to see them in the playoffs.”
Longtime Red Wings television analyst Mickey Redmond put the game in perspective for a team that had gone through two years of playoff disappointment.
“Up until that night, the team was a bit like being out in the ocean without a compass,” Redmond said. “That game bonded the team, gave them confidence and brought a closeness that nothing else could have done. It jump-started the Wings right to the Stanley Cup parade and helped propel one of the greatest rivalries in sports for several years.”
After the Wings won the Western Conference finals over the Avalanche in six games, they swept the Philadelphia Flyers to win their first Stanley Cup in 42 years.
In a recent article for the Player’s Tribune, Draper echoed Redmond’s observation on the importance of the famous game played at Joe Louis Arena on March 26, 1997: “The brawl was one thing. But us winning that night changed everything. It gave us the belief that we could beat them in the playoffs. We knew we’d see them again in the Western Conference finals. We just knew. When they dropped the puck in that series, the tone had already been set. The vibe was different. As soon as Lemieux turtled at the Joe, everything changed.”
Rocky Mountain rivalry
The Wings and the Avs met six times in the playoffs over a 12-season span. The winners of each round:
1995-96: Western finals
Avs win, 4-2
Aftermath: Colorado wins Stanley Cup.
1996-97: Western finals
Wings win, 4-2
Aftermath: Detroit wins Stanley Cup.
1998-99: Western semifinals
Avs win, 4-2
Aftermath: Colorado lost to Dallas in conf. finals.
1999-00: Western semifinals
Avs win, 4-1
Aftermath: Colorado lost to Dallas in conf. finals.
2001-02: Western finals
Wings win, 4-3
Aftermath: Detroit wins Stanley Cup.
2007-08: Western semifinals
Wings win, 4-0
Aftermath: Detroit wins Stanley Cup.