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Remember 1993? You know the year where Montreal had so much luck with all those historic overtime wins, and they won their 24th Stanley Cup? |
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Well my personal favorite game in the whole playoffs was Game 2 of the Stanley Cup finals- Montreal vs. Los Angeles. There was one success story- DesJardins was the only player to successfully master a hat-trick in the playoffs as a defensemen. He was the only one in Montreal to score that game. |
But what really struck me was the call that Jacques Demers obstructed in the dying seconds of the game. Demers asked the referee to check if the curve McSorley's stick was legal or not. "I remember thinking, 'oh no, not now'," recounted McSorley as event unfolded. The curve was indeed illegal, and on the ensuing power play, Montreal had developed the strategy to take out Patrick Roy and make it a 6-4 2 man-advatage powerplay. Montreal scored to send the game into over time, where they would win. The call turned the series in Montreal's favour, and signalled the beginning of bad times for the Kings franchise. Even one more thought; McSorley scored the only goal in Game 5. Demers was A HAB God for Montreal and it brought back the Stanley Cup for Montreal. Have you ever seen this Super Fan! He was just celebrating every game at the Forum! Click here for the Montreal Web-site! |
  
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In Edmonton he was Wayne Gretzky's bodyguard and when Gretzky went to Los Angeles, he asked specifically that McSorley be included in the deal. After Gretzky moved on, McSorley became a sort of hit-man for hire. Along the way he did pick up a few hockey skills, but aside from the physical aspects of the game, his only other claim to fame was for being caught with an illegal stick that eventually turned the tide in the 1993 Stanley Cup finals, and not in Los Angeles favor.
With a track record like that, it's hard to stomach McSorley's "I can't believe I did that" defense.
In 92-93 McSorley set the Kings record for penalty minutes, with a staggering 399.
McSorley also was suspended two games for spearing Scott Mellanby. The list of victims is long: Martin Gelinas, Darren Banks, Doug Evans and Mike Bullard ... all on the short end of assorted McSorley hits and slashes. Even in the minor leagues, McSorley was not without incident. He once got 10 games for deliberate attempt to injure. That was in 1986-87.
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On Feb. 21, Marty McSorley of the NHL's Boston Bruins hit Vancouver's Donald Brashear in the side of the head with his stick. In the closing seconds of the game, McSorley came up behind Brashear, swung and hit him with a two-handed slash to the right temple, leaving Brashear unconscious and twitching on the ice. McSorley was suspended for the rest of the season, the harshest penalty ever for on-ice violence. In addition, he was charged with assault by authorities in British Columbia. Some would argue the punishment handed down by the league was sufficient. But this incident was pretty extreme. McSorley's attack was brutal. Some of the players said they had never seen anything like it. McSorley said, "I'm still in shock at what I did." |
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McSorley and Brashear fought two minutes into the game and Brashear got the best of McSorley. So McSorley tried to goad Brashear into fighting again, but was unsuccessful. That makes the attack seem almost premeditated. After the game, Cannucks General Manager Brian Burke, at one time the NHL's chief disciplinarian, said, "Leave this stuff on the ice; leave it to the National Hockey League." Hockey is a violent sport and hitting is part of the game. McSorley is one of the leagues "thugs," an enforcer whose job is to fight for the more skilled players on his team. |
If fighting was banned from hockey this incident never would have happened. Brashear and McSorley had fought earlier in the game and, under the rules of most other pro sports, would have been tossed. If the NHL didn't have a brute force over pure skill approach, McSorley wouldn't even be in the game. If it didn't have 28 teams, soon to be 30, he also would be gone. He got into the game via expansion. He stayed longer than he should have for the very same reason.
So this ends the mystery. Imagine, just imagine, if it was Wayne Gretzky that would've handed the illegal stick to Jacques Demers at the end of the series!
Just one more thing; Don Cherry says that Marty McSorley is a "good guy" to hockey. Well, considering that Don was an ex-Boston Bruins coach and that Marty was involved with the stick incident as a Boston player, and the fact that Boston has a history of playing rough, I'll consider this all just a coincedence.
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