JR Ewing

This is Sprague Cleghorn. He was a magnificent puck rushing defenseman. His violent and psychopathic on-ice tendencies are legendary, especially after he was traded from Ottawa to Montreal. He made it his life's goal to make their lives a misery. He broke his leg prior to the 1918 season, and ended up being arrested after assaulting his wife with his crutches. In 1923, he went after the Sens' Lionel Hitchman and bashed his face so badly that he nearly incited a riot. For that one, Cleghorn was fined $200... By his own team. The next year he followed that up by going after Hitchman again, butt-ending him in the eye, and later took out Buck Boucher's knees. One time he beat the hell out of Newsy LaLonde (a tough guy himself) so badly, and continued to pummel LaLonde after he was out cold and lying on the ice, almost causing another riot. His career was dotted by cross-checks to the head and face, spearings, kneeings, butt-ends, running opponent's faces into the boards, as well as administering some of the worst beatings in the league, which is saying something for hockey in the 1920s. Along the way, Cleghorn may have even purposely cut Boucher's face with his skates. Oh. And: JR

Yeah, it was a regular Taylor Hall love in. If he played in a major Eastern market, and not the NHL's version of Siberia, there'd be WAY more noise and news about him. JR

@brelic I'm sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that you were slamming him for lack of offense. Just that, maybe, the scale of the job he was asked to do wasn't fully seen by enough people. This kid has come exactly as advertised. From Hockey Prospectus' scouting report in his draft year: I'm a fan. I would have loved for the Oilers to grab him, but with them having the #1 overall that year, they had to go for the concensus #1. JR

I see Couterier's salary as having to do more with the fact that the Flyers don't have much cap room left to sign him and they have the leverage. I almost feel bad for him, actually. He (at a young age) gets slammed with the toughest zone starts of any Flyer, the toughest Quality of Competition, and STILL is a possession positive player... And then folks say that he doesn't bring enough offensively to warrant much of a raise. Ouch. He's been given an extremely tough job to do, has excelled at it, and due to the above, isn't getting much of a reward. JR

Yeah, a youtube clip of that one was posted before. I don't really like cheapshots, but if anybody ever had it coming, it was him. JR

Well.. You know... "Almost". lol JR

a] That's what she said. b] Yeah, I'm definitely a Taylor Hall fan. Wonderful young player, and as you said he leaves it all on the ice. JR

Dirty goalie? Almost can't blame Hextall for the Chelios one: he just naturally brought that out in people. A whole family of NHLers around him, he was the dirtiest, though Dennis had his moments (he was a pretty tough guy, actually). Grandpa Bryan Sr. was not dirty at all. S'ok... Ron made up for it. JR

@ Haha... Yeah: those are all guys who really had their dirty moments. Sean Avery... He's the Eddie Stanky of the NHL. A clearly intelligent guy, but not liked because he was a straight jackass. In 1950, Stanky was playing third for the Giants, when he came up with the same idea that Sean Avery later did: just as the pitch was about to be thrown, he started jumping up and down and waving his arms in an attempt to distract the batter. The umpires told him to cut that crap out, and after a week of him doing it, the league finally officially made a rule prohibiting it. Or, there was 1945, where he came up with an idea to score from third on pretty much any fly ball. Before the ball was caught, he positioned himself several feet behind third base and started running so that he perfectly timed tagging up and was already in a dead sprint. There was no rule against, as far as Stanky figured it, so he was going to do it. The next thing you knew, a bunch of guys across the league were doing the same thing, so Major League Baseball closed that loophole after the season ended. JR

That seems like a fair enough grouping to me. I definitely won't be surprised if the Ducks take a step back from where they were last year. They were a possession negative team with a high shooting percentage and save percentage... AKA a lot of puck luck, and that tends to regress heavily to the mean. I'm guessing that a market correction is coming. JR

Oh, Fuhr was a splendid athlete, and one of the flashiest goalies of all time. It doesn't make you great, but it sure as hell was fun to watch. My favorites were when he'd take a routine stop, but dramatically flash the leather, throw his leg out, and fall in a heap. He'd do that with even the softest muffin from the blueline, and make it look like an Al MacInnis blast. JR

@ruxpin Samuelsson is a pretty good name to come up with, I think. Made a career out of low hits, and there's probably lots of Bruins fans who still loathe for the Neely hit. In those days it was probably a toss-up as to who was hated more: Samuelsson or Bryan Marchment. Tie Domi didn't like him: JR

So, who are some of the dirtiest players that come to mind? It can be a player from right now or he could be old as dirt and buried under 6 feet it. It doesn't matter. I'll start with: Joe Hall A pretty good offensive defenseman, but remembered a lot more for his on-ice antics. Well, maybe for dying from the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1919 (Stanley Cup was cancelled that year). Anyway. In one game, after getting his face rearranged by Frank Patrick, Hall promptly turned around and beat the crap out of referee Rod Kennedy. Got into a stick swinging incident with Ken Randall that carved up each of them so badly, the police were called and both were arrested and charged, though the charges were later dropped. Hall didn’t pick his spots, constantly feuding with the tough players like Newsy Lalonde and Sprague Cleghorn. Hall was undoubtedly helped by the fact that he almost constantly was paired with equally (if not more) terrifying players. Over the years Hall’s teammates included guys like Bert Corbeau, and the incomparably scary Harry Mummery (to get an idea, picture Georges Laraque with Tiger Williams’ temperament in a league where the average player was 160 pounds). Just try to imagine that kind of stuff happening in today's game. JR

Ah yeah, the old "he slept with a teammate's wife" scandal. That's only about the oldest, most used, and most mis-used bit of nonsense. I'm not directing that at you, rick, but you don't know how many times I've read this with all of sorts of different players and teams. Over and over again. JR

Here's rooting for the good guys. JR

Not only that, but RFK didn't line match. Not one little bit. Nor did he make an efort to get Schultz away from tough zone starts. Essentially, he was thrown to the wolves. So, I'd be interested to see how he does uner Eakins, who is very details oriented and mindful matchups, from everything I've read and heard. JR

If I'm Craig MacTavish, I'm not willing to bet the farm on Schultz turning into one of the top couple of offensive defensemen in the game right now. He showed very well last year, but there were definitely issues which probably keep him from being a true top pairing guy, imo. Belov: I'd give him training camp, and if it's clear he can handle NHL players, at least give him minutes. If not, he can back and forth as needed, since he's on an ELC. JR

I don't have the link handy Charlio, but I saw a quote from his agent the other day, and he made no bones of the fact that Grabovski isn't wanting to go back to Russia. JR

How much money was he going to sign for? The Flyers own his rights and don't want to trade him (nor would I) and he knows there isn't really cap space left. JR

I think you're absolutely spot-on, but I just have never been able to settle on what to do with him; where to put him. In best-on-best tournaments, he carried an astonishing standard of play. No doubt of that at all. The problem is pretty much the same as attempting to rank ***** Leaguers in with Major Leaguers. What's Josh Gibson's place in baseball history? I have no doubt he's one of the best hitters ever. He's probably the best right handed power hitter ever, and probably the best catcher ever. But how do I know for sure where to rank him in comparison to Berra, Bench, Campanella and Cochrane? How do we rank Buck Leonard against Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx? How do we rank Satchel Paige against Walter Johnson? You get the idea. And here's the thing: I agree 100% with you. I bet he's one of the top 5 goaltenders in the history of the game; he may even be the best ever. He was named to the 1st All-Star team in the Soviet League every year from 1971 to 1984. He was MVP 5 times. Different league, of course, but it doesn't seem to me like it really should carry less weight than a pre-expansion NHL player who was also in a small league drawing from a pool of one country. But I just don't know where to place him in comparison the NHL players, so he always ends up in his own category with me, for the guys lost to global politics and other assorted bits of BS. JR

@ Yes, the league tracks GWG: http://www.nhl.com/ice/playerstats.htm?fetchKey=20132ALLSASALL&sort=gameWinningGoals&viewName=summary JR

Nice stuff. I remember Dan Petry well: threw a lot of innings for a pretty good Tigers team. They broke my heart in 1987. It's pretty cool that you ended up getting to watch Jeff with him. JR

For me, summer 2006 thru the end of this year has been tougher; watching years of big game hunting and shunting of NHL players without thought of bringing in replacements has been worse. Watching Steve Tambellini ineloquently and hapharazardly bumble his way around and mismanage nearly every step was worse. Worse than Steve Smith's own-goal. Worse than watching the Rangers and Kings pick the Oilers bones. Exactly. There were some good (not great) players back there who could definitely play a good defensive game; Huddy and Lowe in particular. JR

Kurri: you're very correct, and I feel silly for not mentioning him. heh JR

@jammer2 Absolutely; those things are all true. JR