Some things in the article surprise me, like about 90 % of the people in Canada afterwards supporting the players. There also seemed to be resentment going on towards two Canadian players (Pierre Turgeon and goalie Jimmy Waite) who chose not to participate in the fight. One of the Canadian players, Everett Sanipass, even called Turgeon a "dog".
1. Do you remember the event? (I do, in Europe it was even on the news broadcasts where sports seldom get any attention.)
2. Do you think it was right to disqualify both teams? (I do.)
3. Do you think the players leaving their bench to join the fights did the right thing? (I'm not sure.)
4. Did Turgeon and Waite do the right thing? (I do.)
5. Do you have any memories of resentment (from you or anyone) afterwards towards Turgeon and Waite? (I didn't.)
By the way, some well known players on the teams. Fedorov, Mogilny, Konstantinov, Malakhov, Zelepukin, Shanahan, Turgeon, Fleury, Mike Keane, Steve Chiasson, Glen Wesley, Luke Richardson et al.
I think it is completely and utterly ridiculous that anyone in 2012 would hold not fighting against Pierre Turgeon in regards to his legacy, potential HOF induction, and overall standing as a player.
Some things in the article surprise me, like about 90 % of the people in Canada afterwards supporting the players. There also seemed to be resentment going on towards two Canadian players (Pierre Turgeon and goalie Jimmy Waite) who chose not to participate in the fight. One of the Canadian players, Everett Sanipass, even called Turgeon a "dog".
Keep in mind that such bench-clearing brawls were not uncommon in Canadian junior hockey at the time (as emphasized in Joyce's book), so I'm not surprised that around 90% of people supported the players, especially since it was thought that the fight was started by the Soviets anyway.
The disqualification of both teams from the entire tournament was a joke, considering that it only hurt Canada. The Canadians still had a chance at gold or silver depending on the outcome of the game, the Russians had a disappointing showing in the tournament and were already eliminated from medal contention.
There was no precedent for that decision. In fact, two years earlier at the World Hockey Championships there was a bench clearing brawl between the U.S. and the Soviets http://news.google.com/newspapers?, and they weren't disqualified from the tournament for it.
I think it is completely and utterly ridiculous that anyone in 2012 would hold not fighting against Pierre Turgeon in regards to his legacy, potential HOF induction, and overall standing as a player.
well, according to his teammates' statements in gare joyce's book, turgeon staying on the bench spoke to his willingness to be a good teammate.
it was a bench clearing brawl. if a couple of guys stay out of the action, then there is a mismatch. the historical fact is that patrick roy's younger brother stephane had to fight two soviet players. one of them ended up holding him down and the other kicked him in the head with his skate. he could have died. teammates tried to come to his rescue, but got there too late because they were tangled up with the guys they were fighting.
it's one thing to be a pacifist and a conscientious objector, but at a certain point, isn't it more important to be in there, even as just a peace-keeper, when there is a real element of danger?
a comparison: in the famous indiana/detroit melee of 2005, guys that knew better did some crazy things. indiana captain and all-star jermaine o'neal, for example, punched a fan in the face. o'neal is 6'11; if that punch had hit that normal sized fan full-on, the guy probably could have died. o'neal knew it was a bad idea, that he could have been sued for millions, maybe even be tried for murder. but there were crazy detroit fans going at pacers players. these are detroit fans, some of the craziest fans in north america; one maniac threw a chair into a crowd of people and who knows if one guy managed to smuggle in a knife? someone had stabbed and nearly killed celtics star paul pierce at a nightclub not long before that, so it's not like that's outside the realm of possibility.
the guy o'neal hit was going right at ron artest, who was already tangling with four or five detroit fans. these guys are giant pro athletes, but they are not jackie chan and life is not an action movie. nobody can simultaneously beat up a crowd of people. so o'neal in the heat of the action does what he needs to do, he prevents that fan, who was one of the guys who started the melee and it turned out had a history of picking fights with NBA players so he could later sue them, from attacking and potentially injuring or killing his teammate. because that's what a teammate does. that pacers team had lost in the conference finals to the pistons the year before, and believe me they were a title team. o'neal willingly gave up a title as his team's best player and leader at the absolute peak of his career that night, and he also gave up millions of dollars in salary, fines, and endorsements, and i bet if you asked him he'd say he would do it again.
another comparison: in the same melee, detroit's rasheed wallace runs into the stands to break up fights. he restrains people from both sides, separates players from fans. he didn't want any part of the brawl, but he did what he felt he needed to do. he could have gotten suspended, he could have gotten sued, he could have gotten seriously hurt. but he felt a responsibility to do it.
that's what turgeon didn't do. and that speaks to character. there was one guy on the bench: pierre turgeon. even one of the other guys who didn't fight (steve nemeth) at least went into the action to try to try to break it up and separate guys in mismatches.
the brawl starts because mike keane, one of the toughest pound-for-pound fighters i've ever seen in hockey, is fighting valeri zelepukin, who has a separated shoulder and can only use one arm to protect himself. evgeni davydov jumps off the bench to help him, and the canadians, not knowing zelepukin can't defend himself properly, take that as an act of aggression and itself a mismatch, and the benches clear. yes, things get out of control very quickly, but it came out of the spirit of protecting teammates on both sides. (note that our stereotypes of european players being cowards is dispelled here; if you remember davydov from his NHL career with the jets, this is a very skinny and undersized guy, and as unphysical as any player you've ever seen, and he dives head first into friggin' mike keane to protect zelepukin.) that's why everyone hates pierre turgeon.
the best quote from the book: an unnamed former habs superstar and turgeon teammate (i am guessing this is patrick roy) says: "you'll never win when your captain has balls the size of snow peas."
Last edited by vadim sharifijanov: 03-04-2012 at 10:54 AM.
I don't know if you need to hold it against Turgeon for the rest of his career, but he did the wrong thing by staying on the bench. This isn't about gooning it up, it's fighting to protect your teammates. You can't stay on the sidelines while your teammate is getting beaten up by two guys.
i'll also that there is a lot more than not fighting in czechoslovakia when he was 17 that's keeping pierre turgeon out of the HHOF. adam oates isn't in the hall, c'mon.
"Some have accused Pierre Turgeon and Steve Nemeth of being cowards because they didn't step up and fight with the rest of us, and I can see where that level of frustration comes from, but you know what? Some people just aren't made that way. They're really not. Turge was one of the most skilled guys who ever played in the NHL. He wasn't your typical in-your-face brash guy. He was just a nice guy who played hockey. Everything happened so fast. We were in the brawl, and the next thing you know we're on the bus going 'What the **** happened?'"
If Fleury has gotten over Turgeon staying on the bench, maybe everyone else should. I certainly think Turgeon should've joined the fight, but I'm not going to judge someone's career on an error in judgment they made when they were seventeen.
i personally don't judge pierre turgeon's career on that incident, which i didn't even know about until after he retired (being six when it happened). not that i was a fan of him anyway.
but it certainly seems like his teammates, coaches, GMs, and opponents always had it in the back of their minds when dealing with him. players develop a reputation, whether as whiners, cowards, me-first guys, daddy's boys, divers, chokers, etc. and it takes a lot to shed that reputation once you get it. i think that probably plagued turgeon's career every step of the way.
cautionary tale to cody hodgson re: developing a bad reputation, by the way. i wonder what guys like pominville, miller, and regehr are thinking given everything that's being aired in the press right now. look at phil kessel (somewhat similar situation to hodgson); it took leading the league in points before he got any respect from his peers; he wasn't last pick in last year's all-star draft because he was the worst player, it was because no one respected him. and back to turgeon, hard to be the captain and leader of twenty other professional hockey players when a lot of them don't totally respect you.
i can just imagine patrick roy in that dressing room rolling his eyes every time turgeon said, "come on boys, let's play like men out there," and roy thinking to himself, "yeah, if you were a man on the ice, my little brother might have played more than six games in the NHL."
i can just imagine patrick roy in that dressing room rolling his eyes every time turgeon said, "come on boys, let's play like men out there," and roy thinking to himself, "yeah, if you were a man on the ice, my little brother might have played more than six games in the NHL."
So it was at least partly Turgeon's fault that Stephane Roy didn't get to play more games in the NHL? (By the way, wikipedia and hockeyreference says 12 games.)
How many games would he likely have played if not for Turgeon staying at the bench?
It's interesting to take part of how Canadians/North Americans view the incident. Some seem to actually hold a grudge towards Turgeon even today.
If not the other players had left the bench to join the fight, Canada would have gotten a medal. If they had kept more cool, they might have gained a powerplay, which would have added to their chances of getting the gold medal.
Maybe hockey should be played without referees, so that the players could settle things themselves?
Maybe the coaches should have started fighting too?
With some advance planning, or looking back in/with hindsight, maybe Canada should have had a boxer/wrestler on their team instead of Turgeon?
(Obviously, I'm not a fan of fighting in hockey.)
So it was at least partly Turgeon's fault that Stephane Roy didn't get to play more games in the NHL? (By the way, wikipedia and hockeyreference says 12 games.)
How many games would he likely have played if not for Turgeon staying at the bench?
It's interesting to take part of how Canadians/North Americans view the incident. Some seem to actually hold a grudge towards Turgeon even today.
If not the other players had left the bench to join the fight, Canada would have gotten a medal. If they had kept more cool, they might have gained a powerplay, which would have added to their chances of getting the gold medal.
Maybe hockey should be played without referees, so that the players could settle things themselves?
Maybe the coaches should have started fighting too?
With some advance planning, or looking back in/with hindsight, maybe Canada should have had a boxer/wrestler on their team instead of Turgeon?
(Obviously, I'm not a fan of fighting in hockey.)
i'm not saying stephane roy would have made it as a regular NHLer if turgeon had fought. but being that he was a third round pick, taken immediately between two very good players who had long careers (steve chiasson and bill ranford), and in the same round as two other guys that played 700+ games (nelson emerson and jeff finley), i do think it's easy for a biased observer like stephane roy's older brother to say, "gee, well he was ranked alongside legit NHLers as a junior, his brother is an NHL hall of famer so he has the genes, then he suffered a major head injury after being kicked directly in the forehead with a skate while being restrained by another player. maybe he could have been a contender..."
i'm not a big fighting guy either. and, like i said, i'm trying to describe and explain the general perception of turgeon than my own feelings or judgments on him. i am, however, a fan of guys who will go through the wall for their teammates. whether that's a guy like richard matvichuk who will block any shot with any part of his body, or someone like mike keane who will fight guys half a foot taller than him and 50 pounds heavier to stick up for or protect a teammate. turgeon didn't do these things, and like theo fleury says, he wasn't wired that way. doesn't make him a bad person, but it may have had an effect on the teams that he was the leader of. i certainly do think turgeon's reputation, as well as his general softness and mild-mannered demeanor, made a difference with his teammates his entire career.
another basketball analogy: bill simmons had theorized something called "ewing theory," where sometimes a team's best player goes down or is traded for lesser players and the team does better without him than it ever did with him. the key example is patrick ewing going down in the '99 playoffs and the knicks making a crazy run to the NBA finals as an 8th seed. there are many reasons that teams succeed when their star goes down; sometimes it frees other guys to step up, sometimes a team's entire game plan goes to setting up one guy when a more team-oriented game might be more successful (especially in basketball), and sometimes it's just a shift in the culture and personality of the team. i don't want to start world war 3 here, but i felt that way about the 2002 maple leafs.
after turgeon goes down after dale hunter cheap shots him in '93, the scrappy islanders led by two hardworking, chippy undersized guys in stumpy thomas and ray ferraro defeat what was in my mind the greatest and deepest of pittsburgh's early 90s teams. they should have been swept. that was the year the pens were in first place all year, with jagr emerging as a legit frontline star, murphy's best year, mario perhaps as good as he ever was, tocchet's career year, kevin stevens in his devastating prime, francis getting back to 100 point form, mullen and mceachern providing excellent tertiary scoring, and they get upset by a team of nobodys that didn't even have a legitimate NHL starting goalie. turgeon comes back in the montreal series and the cinderella run is over. it's not as simple as to say that team was better without turgeon than with him, but we saw a different islanders team in the pittsburgh series. they were fearless and they played hard for each other. and they gave the penguins fits.
It's interesting to take part of how Canadians/North Americans view the incident. Some seem to actually hold a grudge towards Turgeon even today.
If not the other players had left the bench to join the fight, Canada would have gotten a medal. If they had kept more cool, they might have gained a powerplay, which would have added to their chances of getting the gold medal.
Maybe hockey should be played without referees, so that the players could settle things themselves?
Maybe the coaches should have started fighting too?
With some advance planning, or looking back in/with hindsight, maybe Canada should have had a boxer/wrestler on their team instead of Turgeon?
(Obviously, I'm not a fan of fighting in hockey.)
You expect players to stay on the bench, when the Soviets had left theirs?
And as for playing without officials, that's basically the way it was. Ronning was totally out of his depth, and the game got way way out of hand. After the game was stopped, Rene Fasel stormed into the officials dressing room and ranted and raved at Ronning, who never officiated an international game again.
You expect players to stay on the bench, when the Soviets had left theirs?
Wasn't it just one of the Russians having left the bench, to help a teammate with a separated shoulder? And then suddenly the rest of the players followed?
It's interesting to take part of how Canadians/North Americans view the incident. Some seem to actually hold a grudge towards Turgeon even today.
If not the other players had left the bench to join the fight, Canada would have gotten a medal. If they had kept more cool, they might have gained a powerplay, which would have added to their chances of getting the gold medal.
Maybe hockey should be played without referees, so that the players could settle things themselves?
Maybe the coaches should have started fighting too?
With some advance planning, or looking back in/with hindsight, maybe Canada should have had a boxer/wrestler on their team instead of Turgeon?
(Obviously, I'm not a fan of fighting in hockey.)
I'm no fan of bench-clearing brawls or most hockey fights. And this situation never should have been allowed to happen.
But once the benches started to clear and the referee fled the ice, civilization left the ice with the officials. The players couldn't count on the forces of law and order to save them. They had to be the law and order for themselves and for their teammates, because the only thing they could count on was each other.
Almost all the players on both teams instinctively understood this and took responsibility for their teammates. Turgeon either failed to understand this or lacked the courage to act on it.
Turgeon was young and he probably didn't deserve to have this mistake hang over his whole career. But let's not pretend he did the right thing or he was some kind of hero. At best he was weak, at worst he cared about saving his own skin more than his teammates. He can be forgiven but his actions cannot be excused.
The idea that a gold medal should be a consideration in such a situation is, IMO, misguided. (I believe this was Steve Nemeth's motivation for not fighting, and I can understand it but I think he was wrong.) I simply cannot comprehend the idea that a power play should be a consideration in such a situation. Stephane Roy's face was being kicked in by two opposing players!
Suggesting that a boxer or wrestler should have been on the roster, even in jest, misses the point. The brawl was a situation where every player on the team, no matter his size or fighting skills, had an obligation to fight for his teammates. Just as the ordinary citizen of a country may have no special training or interest in fighting, but still has an obligation to fight for his country when it is under attack.
The idea that a gold medal should be a consideration in such a situation is, IMO, misguided. (I believe this was Steve Nemeth's motivation for not fighting, and I can understand it but I think he was wrong.) I simply cannot comprehend the idea that a power play should be a consideration in such a situation. Stephane Roy's face was being kicked in by two opposing players!
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But Roy would'nt have been kicked if Canada stayed on the bench. From all unbiased reports the Soviets didn't unilaterally empty their bench. Benches emptied in reaction to eachother stemming from Davydov's actions.
Things would not have escalated, a penalty goes to Davydov and Canada increases chances for gold if they stay on the bench.
But Roy would'nt have been kicked if Canada stayed on the bench. From all unbiased reports the Soviets didn't unilaterally empty their bench. Benches emptied in reaction to eachother stemming from Davydov's actions.
Things would not have escalated, a penalty goes to Davydov and Canada increases chances for gold if they stay on the bench.
I'm not sure what the exact order was, and I'm not looking to blame either team. It's better if nobody leaves the bench and everybody just plays hockey, but obviously things went wrong very quickly at some point, players started pouring onto the ice from both benches, and nobody was able to stop it. At that point all you can do is make sure you aren't outnumbered.
davydov wasn't far out on the ice at all before everyone else made him company, so i think if the canadians kept cool there for few seconds perhaps the three refs would have been given the chance to break up the 2 on 1 situation, but that's easy to say now, sometimes things happen in the heat of the moment
and why did zelepukin play in a meaningless game with a separated shoulder? sounds strange
I think Pierre Turgeon did the wrong thing. Should he have it held against him 25 years later now that he's 42? No. But everything from the "Tin man" nickname to never even being considered to play for Canada in the Olympics/World Cup snowballed because of that incident.
For example, a lot of people pick on Gretzky for being a wimp and never fighting. I can say one thing that I believe would have happened. Gretzky wouldn't have jumped off that bench guns a blazing, but he would have done the exact same thing he did in every other brawl he was involved in. He'd have found the other guy on the team who wasn't doing a whole lot. Gretzky would at least be present on the ice and holding another player so there wouldn't be a mismatch. There were a LOT of players fighting on the ice, but it isn't as if there weren't a few who were just holding each other. Gretzky would fit in there and no one would accuse him of not standing up for his mates.
Why Turgeon did it I don't know. Fear? Political protest? Laziness? It was one of them we know that for sure. And I don't believe a hockey rink is the place to practice any of those acts.
I don't know how bad it hurt him though in the short term. He was still picked #1 overall for that draft, ahead of Shanahan. So it didn't really bother the Sabres all that much - I guess. But there is a reason that people respect Fleury and many don't respect Turgeon.
davydov wasn't far out on the ice at all before everyone else made him company, so i think if the canadians kept cool there for few seconds perhaps the three refs would have been given the chance to break up the 2 on 1 situation, but that's easy to say now, sometimes things happen in the heat of the moment
and why did zelepukin play in a meaningless game with a separated shoulder? sounds strange
Zelepukin played the whole tournament with a separated shoulder. (according to his coach).
According to the interview in the book with the coach, Vasillev, he yelled at his players out on the ice to help Zelepukin, but Davydov thought it was an order for somebody to jump over the boards and help. Davydov, however, said he was directly ordered to hop on the ice by Vasillev.
Last edited by nutbar: 03-06-2012 at 11:21 PM.
Reason: added info
He was on the ice trying to break up fights. What's wrong with that?
I guess I'll defer to his teammates on that one. I believe at least some of them thought Nemeth had let them down by not taking an opponent, and they are the ones he was responsible to.
1. Do you remember the event? (I do, in Europe it was even on the news broadcasts where sports seldom get any attention.)
2. Do you think it was right to disqualify both teams? (I do.)
3. Do you think the players leaving their bench to join the fights did the right thing? (I'm not sure.)
4. Did Turgeon and Waite do the right thing? (I do.)
5. Do you have any memories of resentment (from you or anyone) afterwards towards Turgeon and Waite? (I didn't.)
1. Yes, like it was yesterday
2. Both of the teams should have had been declared losers in that game, but kept the points accrued to that point.
3. The Russians jumped first. What are you supposed to do, let 20 Russians gang up on 6 Canadians? They did what they had to do, no matter the consequences.
4. No. They weren't good teammates in that particular situation. All they had to do was go out there and grab a Russian non-combatant and huggy bear for a few minutes if they didn't want to fight. Guy Lafleur was an NHL pacifist, but anytime the Habs were involved in a bench clearer against the likes of the Bruins or Flyers, he was out there. He didn't fight, but he was do the right thing and be out there with his teammates, not sitting on the bench watching.
5. Well, I never really liked Turgeon, but it has more to do with him as a player rather than that one incident. Thought he was soft his whole career, and this one incident is just an additional piece of evidence in his dis-favour. Never cared about Waite and to be honest, until you mentioned it, I didn't even recall that he was one of the guys who didn't jump onto the ice.
Last edited by Psycho Papa Joe: 03-07-2012 at 08:28 AM.
