Royal Oak — There was a time when Claude Lemieux was widely considered the most-hated man in hockey, and whenever he visited Detroit in the mid-1990s, somehow, the hostility felt even worse.
There were death threats and police escorts to and from Joe Louis Arena; the Colorado Avalanche wouldn’t even give him a hotel roommate when the team came to Detroit; and the league even recommended they wear their helmets during warmups.
Turns out, time — and, oh, Detroit’s four Stanley Cup championships — really does heal everything.
When Lemieux took the stage at Fifth Avenue on Saturday night, joining Red Wings great Darren McCarty for a watch party on the 25th anniversary of the legendary “Fight Night at The Joe,” a crowd of hundreds of Red Wings fans didn’t boo him. They actually cheered him.
“We played the game hard,” Lemieux said. “Things happen.
“I just knew it was not good, and the rest is history.”
Said McCarty: “There’s good penalties and bad penalties — that was a good penalty.”
Lemieux, 56, and McCarty, 49, have turned that epic night 25 years ago — there were 10 fights in the game, including a clash of goalies, but none of the battles were more memorable than McCarty’s pounding of an unsuspecting of Lemieux, who was left bloodied and, as we learned Saturday, almost certainly concussed — into a modestly profitable enterprise.
Lemieux spent all weekend in Metro Detroit as the two did a joint interview in downtown Detroit on Friday and were set for a joint autograph session in Livonia on Sunday.
The highlight of their joint appearances, though, was the Saturday night watch party at Fifth Avenue, where the duo provided commentary — part insightful, part hilarious — during the game, and participated in a question-and-answer session with fans after the playing of the old PASS broadcast.
The roots of the animosity between Lemieux and the Red Wings actually began in the 1995 Stanley Cup playoffs, when he was with the New Jersey Devils, who swept the Red Wings in the finals. The bad blood carried over to the next year, when during Game 6 of the Western Conference finals, Lemieux checked Detroit’s Kris Draper from behind, sending Draper to the hospital. Draper’s jaw was wired shut, and Detroit’s season was over; Colorado celebrating that night at McNichols Sports Arena.
“A lot of hockey fans were quite upset,” Lemieux said. “It happened. If I could’ve taken it back, I would’ve taken it back as soon as it happened. But it’s a fast game.”
Red Wings coach Scotty Bowman was among those disgusted, and, more than anything, that hurt Lemieux, who had long considered Bowman a hero. They both were Quebec natives. Lemieux met Bowman as a kid, and considered it one of the most impactful moments of his life.
The Red Wings and Avalanche actually met three times in the 1996-97 season without incident, including 10 days before “Fight Night”; Lemieux missed two of those games with injury.
Then came March 26, 1997, the last meeting between the rivals during the regular season — but almost certainly, a preview of another Western Conference playoff series.
The Red Wings, who hadn’t won a Stanley Cup since 1955 and couldn’t seem to ever beat the Avalanche (0-3 to that point that season; “They had our number,” McCarty said this week), were out to make a huge statement before a huge home crowd of 19,983 — though, if you believe everyone who today swears they were in the building that night, it’d have been more like 199,983.
“Wow,” said McCarty, wearing a Red Wings-red blazer, “you could feel it in the rink.”
More: Fight night in Detroit: How Wings-Avalanche brawl at the Joe echoes 25 years later
Watching the game back, Lemieux said he didn’t like what he was seeing. He was skating tentatively, avoiding traffic. He always played the game in traffic, his aggressiveness his best trait — and a trait he knew he needed to sustain such a long hockey career, his goal since he was a kid and watched his dad work seven days a week as a truck driver. He didn’t want to be a truck driver.
That said, he also didn’t like being known as hockey’s most hated and dirtiest player — frankly, he’d have preferred to be as popular as superstar Mario Lemieux, no relation — but “you get used to it.”
That night at the Joe, however, he wasn’t himself. Maybe it was because before the game, he had thoughts of getting shot. Seriously. “It crossed my mind,” he said.
The fighting started quickly. First, it was Brent Severyn-Jamie Pushor. Then Rene Corbet-Kirk Maltby. Then Peter Forsberg-Igor Larionov. It was at that point, late in the first quarter, when McCarty saw his chance. As Katy Perry’s “Firework” played downstairs at Fifth Avenue, the fireworks began at the upstairs watch party.
“I know he’s on the ice,” said McCarty, long with Draper, a member of the famous “Grind Line”. “I’m not the first guy or the last guy to want to take his head off.
“I knew that was it (my chance). I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that was it.”
With that, McCarty got loose from Colorado’s Adam Foote and decked Lemieux, who dropped to the ice. McCarty kept swinging, as Lemieux covered his head.
The term that’s been used throughout the years is Lemieux “turtled.” He doesn’t care for that term. He said he just realized quickly that the fight was lost, and he did what he could to minimize the damage.
“Anybody that’s been in a fight,” said Lemieux, “you get in that position, you’re done.
“I just wasn’t ready for what was coming, and it came hard.
“You hang on tight and you take your beating.”
Said McCarty: “We were bad. We knew we were bad.”
Lemieux: “It got pretty bad, of course.”
As McCarty was pounding Lemieux, Colorado goalie Patrick Roy tried to stop it, but was met by Detroit’s Brendan Shanahan, who delivered a clothesline right out of the WWF. Shanahan and Foote then got into it, before Detroit goalie Mike Vernon went to try to help Shanahan. That’s when Roy and Vernon mixed it up, that rare goalie fight that Lemieux still considers the best of the game.
The refs got together for a lengthy discussion before issuing several penalties, including a four-minute roughing minor for McCarty (but no ejection; that would later prove huge). Lemieux imagined the refs’ conversation in deciding not to eject McCarty: “I want to get out of this alive, too.”
There was no penalty for Lemieux, who was taken back to the visiting locker room, where he was stitched up and begging to go back on the ice. He recalls a trainer telling him his night was over.
As the watch party shifted to the second period, Lemieux saw himself on the ice and was actually confused.
“What game is this? I came back?” Lemieux said, to laughter from the crowd at Fifth Avenue.
“That’s how concussed you were,” McCarty said.
“I did not think I finished that game,” Lemieux said.
Lemieux never lost consciousness, he said, and still has some memories from the immediate aftermath of McCarty’s blows, including a ticked-off teammate joining him in the locker room. Lemieux thinks it might have been Foote who stormed in and said, “We’re going to fight till we die,” to which Lemieux said, laughing (Saturday, 25 years later, anyway), “That’s not a good idea.”
Amid all the fighting — the game featured 39 penalties and 148 penalty minutes — the Avalanche took a 5-3 lead early in the third period. And if the Avalanche had gone on to win the game, then what would be the point, McCarty thought.
“Now,” McCarty said, of the third period, “it’s about winning the game.”
Martin Lapointe score at the 8:27 mark of the third period to make it 5-4, and just 36 seconds later, Shanahan scored to tie it. Then, in overtime, McCarty — who would’ve already been ejected in today’s game — scored the winner, just 39 seconds in.
“We knew, the whole league knew how good you guys were,” Lemieux said of that Red Wings team. “They gave a big statement. They addressed everything they needed to address in that game, then won the game.
“It gave them momentum.”
Said McCarty: “We got that monkey, sort off, off our back.”
Three weeks later, the Stanley Cup playoffs began, and, no surprise, the Red Wings and Avalanche met again in the Western Conference finals. This time, it was Detroit that would win in six games, before it went on to sweep the Philadelphia Flyers to celebrate the end of their 42-year Stanley Cup drought. The Red Wings would go on to win the next year, too, and two more times in the 2000s.
Lemieux would return to the Devils, winning another Stanley Cup — he has four, and so does McCarty — before moving on to the Phoenix Coyotes, at which point the heated rivalry with the Red Wings pretty much subsided. Phoenix was no real threat to Detroit, and Detroit fans finally had that long-elusive championship.
(Of note, Lemieux says he never took the rivalry personally, and when he was off the ice, it was over — except for that time when he stepped foot on the Red Wings bus, knowing the tough guys sat in the back.)
After his playing days, Lemieux would return to Detroit, coaching his son in a junior hockey tournament. That memory really sticks out, almost as much, or perhaps even more, than “Fight Night”.
“I never had one bad incident coming back to Detroit,” Lemieux said.
“The fans were great, and always very respectful.”
And, on Saturday night, the fans were very appreciative for his time and his candor — and, oh, one more thing. In “retirement,” Lemieux now is a player agent, and represents Red Wings rising star Moritz Seider.
“He’ll help us win the next Stanley Cup,” McCarty said.
Now, who could’ve seen that coming?
tpaul@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @tonypaul1984