JR Ewing

I'm pretty sure that Ference won't be top pairing. My guess, based on today's roster: Smid / Petry Ference / J Schultz After that, it's the logjam at 5/6. Ference probably only gets top pairing minutes if Smid is hurt. I once saw Ladislav Smid break his own nose running himself, completely unassisted, into the glass, so anything is possible. JR

Sounds like a blast. JR

Knees were knocking under the table, I bet. lol Green knows what it's like to get your head knocked in by Ferguson, that's for sure. Awesome that he didn't offer excuses. A guy could ask Eric Nesterenko what it was like, too; took a terrible drubbing from Ferguson back in the day. JR

@J0e Th0rnton Haha... Yeah, I've seen that one, and it still makes me laugh. Is that the same guy who sprayed pictures of women on the wall and then backstabbed opposing players who stopped to check them out? JR

I agree with everything you wrote other than "weak season". They piled all of the heaviest mail bags on him, and he still delivered. But absoutely, I also don't know why he signed an extension now, either. It's one thing to sign one when you're Taylor Hall or Jeff Skinner, and you're getting mad money, but that's not the case here. JR

Yeah, it was more violent than now, but less violent than hockey in the 1910s... And 20s... Hell, the 30s, too. lol To us, the Maki/Green incident is shocking. It used to be fairly commonplace at one time, unbelievable enough. It's part of the reason that I'm always a little amused when folks talk about how players don't have the respect for each other that they used to. When was this magical time when hockey players didn't do unspeakable things to each other. One thing, though: the violence of the collisions in body checks today is almost catastrophic. They are skating so fast and are so big, and are absolutely creaming each other now. JR

Great player and, quite frankly, belongs on this list, too. JR

Yup, the famous Green/Maki stick swinging duel. Green was probably the most hated player in the NHL at the time. JR

Cleghorn really could become unhitched out there. He was the personification of mayhem. In 1923, he had to be sneaked into the Aberdeen Pavillion in Ottawa because the fans wanted to tear him apar physically. What did he do? Got into the building, skated out to centre, and thumbed his nose at the crowd. lol What's easy to lose sight of was that he was a truly great player, aside from all of the violence (remembering that it was also an extremely violent era of hockey; worse than anything ANY of us have seen). He had Norris quality seasons in 1913, 1915, 1917, 1920 and 1925. He was the bridge to Eddie Shore, the other classic combination of brilliance and brutality on defense. Even wrapped up his career on the same team, if you can imagine them on the same blueline. JR

Thanks for reading. The game has a history which is simply amazing, and is really ignored compared a sport like baseball. Think of it. Almost nobody, even people who love hockey and hockey history, know who Sprague Cleghorn and Bad Joe Hall were. Yet, right at the same time, 18-year old Babe Ruth won his first World Series over in Boston, and sports fan know plenty about that era of baseball. JR

Really? That seems strange. The Oilers still don't have that elusive top defenseman unless Justin Schultz makes a step, but that would a big step. Huge step; and one that you simply don't bet on. Looks like you see the Canucks taking a bit of a tumble, eh? JR

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