Hi, and welcome to The Big 10, where we look at and dissect all things hockey, and do it all in neat little 10 piece packages. Like Chicken McNuggets. Anyway, today we'll be featuring some of the weirder occurences to take place in and around the rink. And as always, your comments and suggestions are more than welcome.
10 - The NHL Celebrity Challenge
Presented by Microsoft Windows XP, the NHL All-Star Celebrity Challenge was held in Los Angeles at the Staples Center on Wednesday, January 30, 2002. A truly riveting event, two teams of celebrities as well as ex-NHL players squared off to raise money for Hockey's All-Star Kids and Children's Hospital Los Angeles. The teams were coached by TV and movie producers Jerry Bruckheimer and David E. Kelley. Only in places like this can you see gritty former players like Dino Ciccarelli and Barry Melrose share ice with Alan Thicke and Alex Trebek. They held a draft for this debacle, and sadly, Donnie Wahlberg went unpicked. Check the rosters out on Wikipedia.
9 - The Richard Riot
On March 13th, 1955, Montreal Canadien legend Maurice Richard got in a fight. He always got in fights. This fight, with Boston Bruin Hal Laycoe, was a little different in that while the linesmen were trying to hold Richard back, one of them pinned his arms and Laycoe threw a haymaker into his face. When Richard got free, he punched the linesman twice and knocked him unconscious.
League commisioner Clarence Campbell suspended Richard for the rest of the regular season and playoffs, sending Habs fans into a tizzy. Then, the guy shows up at the next Montreal home game. The fans threw rotten food and debris at Campbell in his seat. A tear gas bomb was shot off in the Montreal Forum, the arena was evacuated. fans poured into the street and began to loot and riot all around the venue. 12 cops and 25 civilians were hurt.
The biggest kick in the teeth to Montreal? The forfeited win gave the Red Wings enough points to finish first overall. They went on to beat the Habs in the cup final, in seven games.
8 - Clint Malarchuk Gets Cut
March 22nd, 1989 - Clint malarchuk is the starting goaltender for the Buffalo Sabres. There is a scrum in front of the net. As the players fall to the ice, one of them accidentally catches Malarchuk in the throat with his skate blade. the blade severs the interior cartoid artery, better known as the juggular vein.
He thought he was going to die. He had an equipment manager call his mother, then asked for a priest. However, the team trainer, a former Vietnam medic, was hearing none of it. He reached into Malarchuk's neck and held both ends of the severed vein until it was sutured by doctors.
Some people would probably never play again. in one of the ultimate signs of toughness, Malarchuk was back at practice four days after the incident, and started against the Quebec Nordiques one wekk after the incident.
7 - Who Shut Off the Lights?
January 8th, 2010. The Devils and Lightning are in the second period of a 3-0 game in favor of Tampa Bay. Then it got a little dark.
Pitch black, maybe a better example.
In an extremely rare occurence, the NHL suspended the game and made the teams finish it two days later, from the point it was stopped. The final score was Tampa Bay 4, New Jersey 2.
6 - Game Four
On May 27th, 1988 the Edmonton Oilers and Boston Bruins took to the ice for game four of the Stanley Cup finals. The Oilers were up 3-0, and favored to win it all that night.
It was not to be.
When the players took to the ice, fog began to form on the rink. This was not a rare thing back in the 80's, when it was 80 degrees outside and you're trying to maintain a 32 degree patch of ice.
After various stoppages to clear fog, the Boston Garden went dark at 16:37 of second period due to a power failure. The game was cancelled and restarted two nights later, with Edmonton winning 6-3.
5 - Parking Lot wars
I'll leave it to the expert. This is an article from the LA Times, September 27th 1991.
Ice in Desert? It's No Mirage
Hockey: Kings, Rangers play in Caesars Palace parking lot tonight.
September 27, 1991|STEVE SPRINGER, TIMES STAFF WRITERLAS VEGAS —
Most hotels here are known for their rooms, their restaurants, their casinos or their shows.
Caesars Palace has become famous for its parking lot. It put 24,000 people into its back lot to watch Muhammad Ali lose to Larry Holmes in Ali's last big fight. It put a huge crowd in its front driveway to watch Evel Knievel lose to Caesars' fountains in a daredevil motorcycle jump. It put 45,000 people in seats to watch auto racing.
Lawrence of Arabia didn't have this many desert spectaculars.
Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns have fought some of their greatest battles here. Caesars has staged tennis, gymnastics, weightlifting and bodybuilding events.
What's left? About three years ago, Rich Rose, president of Caesars World Sports, and several of his colleagues came up with the idea of outdoor ice hockey.
In the parking lot? In the desert? In the heat?
Insane?
Tonight, we will all find out when the Kings face off against the New York Rangers in an exhibition game to be held on a portable rink in Caesars' parking lot.
"When I went to them with the idea," Rose said of his superiors, "the only thing they said was, 'Can it be done?' Around here, they don't say, 'No.' They say, 'Yes, find a way to make it happen.' "
Having already staged ice skating at Caesars in the late spring of 1988 in 108-degree heat, Rose felt confident that his scheme was feasible.
"I went to the NHL," he said, "and once they got over the shock and asked me if I really wanted to do this, they gave their approval."
Next, Rose contacted the Kings' owner, Bruce McNall, who knows all about impossible dreams. Bringing Wayne Gretzky to Los Angeles once seemed as unlikely as bringing outdoor hockey to Las Vegas in September.
McNall gave Rose his blessing, and Caesars undertook a search for a miracle worker who could bring ice to the desert.
It turned out to be Bob May of Ice Systems of America, a New York- and Denver-based company. May has a bit of experience in such matters. He first constructed an outdoor rink for the Syracuse Warriors hockey club in War Memorial Stadium in 1951. A veteran of 14 seasons as a minor league player, May, 58, has installed 151 permanent rinks and 14 of the temporary variety.
But never anything quite like this.
"This was a big challenge," he said Thursday, a smile on his face as he watched the finishing touches being applied to the rink and the surrounding 13,000 seats, which are priced from $20 to $75.
4 and 3 - Flyers/Sabres Cup Finals, game 3
Gotta be a strange day when TWO of the craziest things happen in the same night.
First, the game was played in a heavy fog due to the heat outside. As if that wasn't bad enough, Sabres center Jim Lorenz noticed a bat flying through the fog. A real, honest to god bat. So he swatted at it and killed it. No one knew how to handle it from there, so Flyers winger Rick MacLeish actually scooped it up with his stick and threw it away. The Sabres considered the whole deal bad mojo, because the Flyers wound up winning anyway.
2 - Tom Martin traded for bus
Here's another one where i'll let the real press handle it.
Tom "Bussey" Martin recalls strange tradeFriday, 10.31.2008 / 11:00 PM / Off the Wall By Evan Weiner - NHL.com Correspondent
Tom Martin was one of those players who seemed to bounce between the National Hockey League and the American Hockey League on an annual basis throughout the 1980s. He was good enough to be in the NHL but his career stats were pretty much non-descript. He played in 92 games for Winnipeg, Minnesota and Hartford between 1984 and 1990, scored 12 goals and assisted on 11 others. Martin was also a tough guy who rang up 249 penalty minutes in his NHL days, but many others could make that claim as well. But Martin holds one distinction that no one in the NHL, and maybe the entire sports world, could claim about his playing days.
Martin, who was a fourth-round draft pick by the Winnipeg Jets in 1982, was traded for a bus -- a used bus. That puts Martin in the same category as one-time major-league pitcher Keith Comstock, who was traded for a box of used baseballs as a minor-leaguer, independent league baseball player John Odom, who in May 2008 was traded by the Calgary Vipers of the Golden Baseball League to the Laredo Broncos of the United League for 10 bats, and Fred Roberts, who was traded by the NBA's Utah Jazz to Boston in 1986 in exchange for two preseason games in which Boston would play Utah.
On January 19, 1983, the Western Hockey League's Seattle Breakers dealt Martin to Victoria for a used bus and future considerations. Martin never played for the Breakers and decided to give the University of Denver a try instead. The left wing had played for the Kelowna Buckaroos of the British Columbia Junior Hockey League in 1980-81 and 1981-82 and ended up on the Breakers' reserve list. Martin decided he wanted to play hockey and get a college education at the same time so it was unlikely he would ever perform for Seattle. Breakers management was looking for a deal to get something of value for an asset it would never use.
OFF THE WALL
Muckler got his start with the EHL's Ducks
Evan Weiner - NHL.com Correspondent
Long before the Ducks nested in Anaheim, John Muckler played for the L.I. variety.
READ MORE ›
Scouting for talent... and a nice restaurant
Brett Hull: Great American goal-getter
Gilbert recalls touring Canada for preseason
COMPLETE OFF THE WALL ARCHIVE ›Seattle was also looking for a team bus, and Victoria had an extra one. The Cougars management bought the vehicle after the WHL's Spokane Flyers suspended operations after 26 games in the 1981-82 season, but the Cougars could not use the bus that was sitting in Spokane because team management did not want to pay the taxes and duties to register the vehicle in Canada.
Each side got something they needed for unusable parts. Martin, a Victoria native, would play in Victoria in 1983-84, and Seattle got new wheels. Seattle needed the bus after its bus blew its engine on a trip to Kelowna.
"I was at the library that night, it was in the middle of the week and the season was going pretty good there in Denver," Martin said. "But I wanted to go back and play junior the next year. The team that had my rights, Seattle, they could not offer me any education. So I asked to be traded.
"You know Kevin (Dineen) was there, he was with me, we didn't think that much of it at first," Martin said. "You know, I went to bed that night but the next morning, the phone started going crazy and it ended up being a bigger thing than I thought and I got a lot of media at the time, phone calls from all the papers around the county and a few TV things. It was a pretty funny thing, I guess."
Martin, with his tongue firmly implanted in his cheek, took some exception to the characterization that he was traded for a "used" bus. But the bus did have some mileage on it.
"Well, it was used, but it was a fairly recently used. It was a fairly new bus," said Martin.
"I know it had bunks on it and it was definitely a team oriented bus. In the Western Hockey League they travel a lot and they need a good bus. Maybe it had better wheels than I did."
Martin left the University of Denver and played for the Victoria Cougars in 1983-84, but never laid eyes on the bus even though Victoria did play Seattle that season. Martin really wanted to eyeball the vehicle, but there was a problem. Seattle didn't have the bus when the Breakers played the Cougars in Victoria.
"I never saw the bus," said Martin. "I saw a picture of it. I got a picture sent to me once, they painted it all up and put Seattle Breakers on the side. Hopefully, it was a real nice bus. I didn't even see the bus that year because they (the Breakers) lost it. They had a kid from Europe on their team and he didn't have a visa and they tried to cross the border and they ended up confiscating the bus for six months that season."
Martin turned pro with the American Hockey League's Sherbrooke Jets at the end of the 1983-84 season and started his pro career thinking he left his tale of being traded for a bus behind. But he found out, quickly, that everyone knew the story. Martin picked up a nickname that stayed with him throughout his professional hockey career.
Bussey.
"I guess that's my handle," Martin said with a laugh. "That sticks with me with every team I go to and I everywhere I've been, I have been Bussey."
Martin ended his career with the AHL's New Haven Nighthawks in 1991. Martin is the only player in Western Hockey League history ever to be traded for a bus and that overshadows his accomplishments as a player, which included being named a first team AHL All-Star in 1988.
1 - Old Time Hockey
Seeing is believing...
10 - The NHL Celebrity Challenge
Presented by Microsoft Windows XP, the NHL All-Star Celebrity Challenge was held in Los Angeles at the Staples Center on Wednesday, January 30, 2002. A truly riveting event, two teams of celebrities as well as ex-NHL players squared off to raise money for Hockey's All-Star Kids and Children's Hospital Los Angeles. The teams were coached by TV and movie producers Jerry Bruckheimer and David E. Kelley. Only in places like this can you see gritty former players like Dino Ciccarelli and Barry Melrose share ice with Alan Thicke and Alex Trebek. They held a draft for this debacle, and sadly, Donnie Wahlberg went unpicked. Check the rosters out on Wikipedia.
9 - The Richard Riot
On March 13th, 1955, Montreal Canadien legend Maurice Richard got in a fight. He always got in fights. This fight, with Boston Bruin Hal Laycoe, was a little different in that while the linesmen were trying to hold Richard back, one of them pinned his arms and Laycoe threw a haymaker into his face. When Richard got free, he punched the linesman twice and knocked him unconscious.
League commisioner Clarence Campbell suspended Richard for the rest of the regular season and playoffs, sending Habs fans into a tizzy. Then, the guy shows up at the next Montreal home game. The fans threw rotten food and debris at Campbell in his seat. A tear gas bomb was shot off in the Montreal Forum, the arena was evacuated. fans poured into the street and began to loot and riot all around the venue. 12 cops and 25 civilians were hurt.
The biggest kick in the teeth to Montreal? The forfeited win gave the Red Wings enough points to finish first overall. They went on to beat the Habs in the cup final, in seven games.
8 - Clint Malarchuk Gets Cut
March 22nd, 1989 - Clint malarchuk is the starting goaltender for the Buffalo Sabres. There is a scrum in front of the net. As the players fall to the ice, one of them accidentally catches Malarchuk in the throat with his skate blade. the blade severs the interior cartoid artery, better known as the juggular vein.
He thought he was going to die. He had an equipment manager call his mother, then asked for a priest. However, the team trainer, a former Vietnam medic, was hearing none of it. He reached into Malarchuk's neck and held both ends of the severed vein until it was sutured by doctors.
Some people would probably never play again. in one of the ultimate signs of toughness, Malarchuk was back at practice four days after the incident, and started against the Quebec Nordiques one wekk after the incident.
7 - Who Shut Off the Lights?
January 8th, 2010. The Devils and Lightning are in the second period of a 3-0 game in favor of Tampa Bay. Then it got a little dark.
Pitch black, maybe a better example.
In an extremely rare occurence, the NHL suspended the game and made the teams finish it two days later, from the point it was stopped. The final score was Tampa Bay 4, New Jersey 2.
6 - Game Four
On May 27th, 1988 the Edmonton Oilers and Boston Bruins took to the ice for game four of the Stanley Cup finals. The Oilers were up 3-0, and favored to win it all that night.
It was not to be.
When the players took to the ice, fog began to form on the rink. This was not a rare thing back in the 80's, when it was 80 degrees outside and you're trying to maintain a 32 degree patch of ice.
After various stoppages to clear fog, the Boston Garden went dark at 16:37 of second period due to a power failure. The game was cancelled and restarted two nights later, with Edmonton winning 6-3.
5 - Parking Lot wars
I'll leave it to the expert. This is an article from the LA Times, September 27th 1991.
Ice in Desert? It's No Mirage
Hockey: Kings, Rangers play in Caesars Palace parking lot tonight.
September 27, 1991|STEVE SPRINGER, TIMES STAFF WRITERLAS VEGAS —
Most hotels here are known for their rooms, their restaurants, their casinos or their shows.
Caesars Palace has become famous for its parking lot. It put 24,000 people into its back lot to watch Muhammad Ali lose to Larry Holmes in Ali's last big fight. It put a huge crowd in its front driveway to watch Evel Knievel lose to Caesars' fountains in a daredevil motorcycle jump. It put 45,000 people in seats to watch auto racing.
Lawrence of Arabia didn't have this many desert spectaculars.
Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns have fought some of their greatest battles here. Caesars has staged tennis, gymnastics, weightlifting and bodybuilding events.
What's left? About three years ago, Rich Rose, president of Caesars World Sports, and several of his colleagues came up with the idea of outdoor ice hockey.
In the parking lot? In the desert? In the heat?
Insane?
Tonight, we will all find out when the Kings face off against the New York Rangers in an exhibition game to be held on a portable rink in Caesars' parking lot.
"When I went to them with the idea," Rose said of his superiors, "the only thing they said was, 'Can it be done?' Around here, they don't say, 'No.' They say, 'Yes, find a way to make it happen.' "
Having already staged ice skating at Caesars in the late spring of 1988 in 108-degree heat, Rose felt confident that his scheme was feasible.
"I went to the NHL," he said, "and once they got over the shock and asked me if I really wanted to do this, they gave their approval."
Next, Rose contacted the Kings' owner, Bruce McNall, who knows all about impossible dreams. Bringing Wayne Gretzky to Los Angeles once seemed as unlikely as bringing outdoor hockey to Las Vegas in September.
McNall gave Rose his blessing, and Caesars undertook a search for a miracle worker who could bring ice to the desert.
It turned out to be Bob May of Ice Systems of America, a New York- and Denver-based company. May has a bit of experience in such matters. He first constructed an outdoor rink for the Syracuse Warriors hockey club in War Memorial Stadium in 1951. A veteran of 14 seasons as a minor league player, May, 58, has installed 151 permanent rinks and 14 of the temporary variety.
But never anything quite like this.
"This was a big challenge," he said Thursday, a smile on his face as he watched the finishing touches being applied to the rink and the surrounding 13,000 seats, which are priced from $20 to $75.
4 and 3 - Flyers/Sabres Cup Finals, game 3
Gotta be a strange day when TWO of the craziest things happen in the same night.
First, the game was played in a heavy fog due to the heat outside. As if that wasn't bad enough, Sabres center Jim Lorenz noticed a bat flying through the fog. A real, honest to god bat. So he swatted at it and killed it. No one knew how to handle it from there, so Flyers winger Rick MacLeish actually scooped it up with his stick and threw it away. The Sabres considered the whole deal bad mojo, because the Flyers wound up winning anyway.
2 - Tom Martin traded for bus
Here's another one where i'll let the real press handle it.
Tom "Bussey" Martin recalls strange tradeFriday, 10.31.2008 / 11:00 PM / Off the Wall By Evan Weiner - NHL.com Correspondent
Tom Martin was one of those players who seemed to bounce between the National Hockey League and the American Hockey League on an annual basis throughout the 1980s. He was good enough to be in the NHL but his career stats were pretty much non-descript. He played in 92 games for Winnipeg, Minnesota and Hartford between 1984 and 1990, scored 12 goals and assisted on 11 others. Martin was also a tough guy who rang up 249 penalty minutes in his NHL days, but many others could make that claim as well. But Martin holds one distinction that no one in the NHL, and maybe the entire sports world, could claim about his playing days.
Martin, who was a fourth-round draft pick by the Winnipeg Jets in 1982, was traded for a bus -- a used bus. That puts Martin in the same category as one-time major-league pitcher Keith Comstock, who was traded for a box of used baseballs as a minor-leaguer, independent league baseball player John Odom, who in May 2008 was traded by the Calgary Vipers of the Golden Baseball League to the Laredo Broncos of the United League for 10 bats, and Fred Roberts, who was traded by the NBA's Utah Jazz to Boston in 1986 in exchange for two preseason games in which Boston would play Utah.
On January 19, 1983, the Western Hockey League's Seattle Breakers dealt Martin to Victoria for a used bus and future considerations. Martin never played for the Breakers and decided to give the University of Denver a try instead. The left wing had played for the Kelowna Buckaroos of the British Columbia Junior Hockey League in 1980-81 and 1981-82 and ended up on the Breakers' reserve list. Martin decided he wanted to play hockey and get a college education at the same time so it was unlikely he would ever perform for Seattle. Breakers management was looking for a deal to get something of value for an asset it would never use.
OFF THE WALL
Muckler got his start with the EHL's Ducks
Evan Weiner - NHL.com Correspondent
Long before the Ducks nested in Anaheim, John Muckler played for the L.I. variety.
READ MORE ›
Scouting for talent... and a nice restaurant
Brett Hull: Great American goal-getter
Gilbert recalls touring Canada for preseason
COMPLETE OFF THE WALL ARCHIVE ›Seattle was also looking for a team bus, and Victoria had an extra one. The Cougars management bought the vehicle after the WHL's Spokane Flyers suspended operations after 26 games in the 1981-82 season, but the Cougars could not use the bus that was sitting in Spokane because team management did not want to pay the taxes and duties to register the vehicle in Canada.
Each side got something they needed for unusable parts. Martin, a Victoria native, would play in Victoria in 1983-84, and Seattle got new wheels. Seattle needed the bus after its bus blew its engine on a trip to Kelowna.
"I was at the library that night, it was in the middle of the week and the season was going pretty good there in Denver," Martin said. "But I wanted to go back and play junior the next year. The team that had my rights, Seattle, they could not offer me any education. So I asked to be traded.
"You know Kevin (Dineen) was there, he was with me, we didn't think that much of it at first," Martin said. "You know, I went to bed that night but the next morning, the phone started going crazy and it ended up being a bigger thing than I thought and I got a lot of media at the time, phone calls from all the papers around the county and a few TV things. It was a pretty funny thing, I guess."
Martin, with his tongue firmly implanted in his cheek, took some exception to the characterization that he was traded for a "used" bus. But the bus did have some mileage on it.
"Well, it was used, but it was a fairly recently used. It was a fairly new bus," said Martin.
"I know it had bunks on it and it was definitely a team oriented bus. In the Western Hockey League they travel a lot and they need a good bus. Maybe it had better wheels than I did."
Martin left the University of Denver and played for the Victoria Cougars in 1983-84, but never laid eyes on the bus even though Victoria did play Seattle that season. Martin really wanted to eyeball the vehicle, but there was a problem. Seattle didn't have the bus when the Breakers played the Cougars in Victoria.
"I never saw the bus," said Martin. "I saw a picture of it. I got a picture sent to me once, they painted it all up and put Seattle Breakers on the side. Hopefully, it was a real nice bus. I didn't even see the bus that year because they (the Breakers) lost it. They had a kid from Europe on their team and he didn't have a visa and they tried to cross the border and they ended up confiscating the bus for six months that season."
Martin turned pro with the American Hockey League's Sherbrooke Jets at the end of the 1983-84 season and started his pro career thinking he left his tale of being traded for a bus behind. But he found out, quickly, that everyone knew the story. Martin picked up a nickname that stayed with him throughout his professional hockey career.
Bussey.
"I guess that's my handle," Martin said with a laugh. "That sticks with me with every team I go to and I everywhere I've been, I have been Bussey."
Martin ended his career with the AHL's New Haven Nighthawks in 1991. Martin is the only player in Western Hockey League history ever to be traded for a bus and that overshadows his accomplishments as a player, which included being named a first team AHL All-Star in 1988.
1 - Old Time Hockey
Seeing is believing...
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