My Top 10 Dougie Moments

Back in November, when the Leafs honored Wendel Clark by raising his #17 to the rafters, I spent the entire month huddled in a remote cabin typing non-stop. The end result was the Top 17 Wendel Moments list, which is currently being bound into a 32-volume series that will be sold door-to-door. I may have gone a little overboard.

With Doug Gilmour getting his turn in the spotlight tonight, I haven't done a similar tribute to my second favorite Leaf of all-time. I did toy with the idea of doing a Top 93 Dougie Moments list, but then I did the math and realized I would have had to have started in October. Also, my wife threatened to leave me.

But I just can't let the moment pass without putting something together. So while this list isn't meant to be definitive, here's my own personal Doug Gilmour top 10.

#10 - Don't fear the Reaper

This was one of Gilmour's first games as a Leaf. Late in the game, Bryan Marchment got a little too snippy with Wendel Clark, leading to Steve Smith's face exploding and, eventually, Stu Grimson going insane.

Watch at 4:00, as Gilmour executes an open field tackle, followed by what appears to be a german suplex.

Side note: I think this is the fourth time in less than a year that I've used this clip in a post. I may have a problem.

#9 - The Cow Legs

You know, I'm sure this seemed like a good idea at the time.

#8 - The Interview

Dougie always was great with the media.

#7 - The Elbow

Late in game one of the 1993 conference finals, Gilmour cut across the blue line and found himself on the receiving end of a Marty McSorley elbow. The hit dropped Gilmour to the ice for several moments, although luckily he wasn't seriously hurt on the play.

Why is this a Doug Gilmour highlight? Well, it's not, but it is an excuse to show this:

Good times.

#6 - The Head Butt

I'm a little hazy on the exact details, but at some point after their playoff run-in Gilmour crossed paths with McSorley again. They went nose-to-nose (OK, nose-to-chest), McSorley said something, and Gilmour head-butted him.

Now, it is technically true that there is an obscure and rarely enforced NHL rule against head-butting somebody in the face. But I defend Gilmour here, since a.) McSorley clearly deserved it, and b.) he was probably momentarily thrown off my the fact that half of McSorley's face was still missing, thanks to Wendel Clark.

I'm pretty sure Gilmour also head-butted Enrico Ciccone at one point. That one's a little harder top justify, but I think Dougie was just mad at him for using an obviously fake name stolen from a bad mafia movie.

#5 - For Your Consideration

Gilmour's 1992-93 season was the best any Leaf has had, ever, end of story. It resulted in Gilmour getting strong consideration for the MVP award (he ended up finishing second).

That lead to the Leafs producing this video that was sent to Hart voters, a perfect storm of highlights, a ridiculous interview, and 90s techno music.

#4 - His Hair in "The Passion Returns" Video

The problem with agreeing to appear in a video like this is that sometimes, you'll look back in hindsight and realize your hair was ridiculous and embarrassing and everyone will laugh at you for it. But enough about Damien Cox. Gilmour's hair was pretty bad too.

Skip ahead to 6:40. Dear lord.

Seriously, this video lead to about a thousand identical "Dougie Scissorhands" jokes in the first week after it was released.

And since we're analyzing hair, how is it that Wendel has a full head of hair in this video even though he was going bald during the playoff run. Did they film this in the pre-season just in case?

#3 - The Six Assist Game

Doug Gilmour has 95 assists during the 92-03 season, a fact I know without having to look it up even though I don't know when my parents' birthdays are. A half dozen of those came in one game against the Stars, tying a Leaf record.

Highlights from the game start at 1:40 of this clip:

#2 - Game Seven

The Game Seven upset over the Red Wings has become known as the Borschevsky game, and rightfully so. But the game was also one of Gilmour's finest moments as a Leaf.

Most fans remember Gilmour setting up the OT winner, but some have forgotten his clutch goal to tie the game in the final minutes. Gilmour took Wendel Clark's centering pass (thankfully stealing it off the stick of Bob Rouse) and buried it to send the game to overtime.

Side note: That tying goal was scored at 17:17, which I'm pretty sure can be taken as further confirmation that the hockey gods are Wendel fans.

#1 - The Goal

Only 48 hours after the Red Wings upset, the Leafs faced the Blues in game one of their second round series. The Leafs came out flying, and were clearly the better team. But they ran into a brick wall named Curtis Joseph, who turned in one of the all-time great games in playoff history.

While the Leafs peppered Joseph with shots (and also kicked him in the head once, probably accidentally), they couldn't beat him. With the game well into a second overtime and Joseph closing in on 60 saves, it looked like the Leafs would need some sort of divine intervention.

No problem.

Factoring in the situation and degree of difficulty, Gilmour's goal was the greatest I've ever seen. I can't find the CBC clip, but Bob Cole's call is a classic: "Solo job... and he's won it!" followed by Harry Neale's "The best player... wins the best game... in the best way".

Congratulations, Killer. It was a short run, but it was a great one. Enjoy your night.

Live-blogging Leafs vs. Avs

I will be live-blogging tonight's Leafs/Avs game over at thescore.com. Feel free to drop by whenever the PPP game thread freezes, and find out how many Raycroft saves and/or shots of tequila it will take before I snap and get myself fired.

TheScore.com live blog - Avs vs. Leafs

(Fair warning: if the game is dull, I plan to randomly start liveblogging games from the Leafs 1993 playoff run instead.)

Has fighting really been dropping since the 90s? The numbers.

In my last post, I made reference to my assumption that while fighting may have increased this season, it's still down significantly from 15 years ago. I linked to some data from hockeyfights.com that went back as far 2001, then said this:

While I can't find any stats on fighting frequency in 1993, I feel pretty safe in saying it was significantly higher than even this season's numbers. If anyone can point to the numbers and they prove me wrong, I'll be glad to eat some crow.

An anonymous commenter, who I'm just going to go ahead and assume is Howard Berger, called me on it:

It isn't good enough for me for you to basically suggest, "I think I'm right, but if you prove me wrong, by all means. Until then, this argument stands." It's the kind of technique you'd call Damien on and it undermines your argument, in my opinion.

After permanently IP-banning him, I got to thinking about his comment. I decided to dig a little deeper and ended up finding what I think are some reasonable ballpark numbers going back to 1991.

So, once again courtesy hockeyfights.com, here are some estimates. I took their yearly fight log for each season, and counted the number of fights listed. I call this an estimate, since I'm not sure how complete their records are (although my guess is they're pretty complete) and there may be some altercations included where both guys didn't get majors. Still, when it comes to fight data online hockeyfights.com is pretty much the undisputed champ, so I feel pretty good about these numbers.

(Update: the owner of hockeyfights.com confirmed that they're "very confident" that the data is complete, with the exception of the occasional tweak.)

Here's what the numbers show. All are for regular season only.

1990-91 - 772 fights
1991-92 - 792 fights
1992-93 - 642 fights
1993-94 - 835 fights
1994-95 - 506 fights (short-season due to lockout)
1995-96 - 785 fights
1996-97 - 907 fights
1997-98 - 838 fights
1998-99 - 660 fights
1999-00 - 573 fights
2000-01 - 684 fights
2001-02 - 803 fights
2002-03 - 668 fights
2003-04 - 789 fights
2004-05 - No season
2005-06 - 466 fights
2006-07 - 497 fights
2007-08 - 664 fights
2008-09 - 784 fights (projected)

In graph form (minus the lockout years):


So was my assumption about fighting dropping over the past 15+ years correct? Mostly, with a few caveats.

There's clearly been a downward trend since the early 90s. The drop doesn't actually seem to start in earnest until the late 90s, which is later than I had assumed. There's a big drop in 1998, a climb back up, and then fighting falls off a cliff after the lockout.

I made the point that even if fighting reaches its projected level for this season (which is unlikely since fighting usually declines late in the season), it would still fall far below the levels seen in the 90s. That turns out to be true, although perhaps not as significantly as I would have expected.

Beyond that, my reference to 1993 actually turned out to be wrong, at least as far as the 1992-93 season goes. That year saw fewer fights than even last season, which seems surprising. It was also an out lier, far below the average of other years in the early 90s.

Why? What happened in 1992-93? Answer: The instigator rule. The rule came into effect that year, and initially caused a significant reduction in fighting. Those who were fans back then will remember how haphazardly the rule was applied in that first season, with referees trying to call it on virtually every fight. Sometimes it seemed that if your gloves hit the ice a fraction of a second early, you got an extra two.

The rule helped keep fighting low that season, but the effect was temporary. After some tweaks to the rule and how it was called, fighting went back to previous levels.

One additional point to consider: While this list includes total fights league-wide, the NHL has been adding teams since the early 90s. There were only 21 teams in 1999-91, compared to 30 now. More teams means more games, so all else being equal we'd expect the numbers to be trending upwards.

So for example, this year's projected 784 fights would be an average of 0.64 fights per game. That would actually equal the 0.64 average of 1992-93 (when there were 24 teams, and the league played 84 games), and would be far below the per-game averages in other years from the early 90s despite the grand total being comparable.

The verdict: My general claim of fighting levels dropping over the past two decades was right. My specific claim about 1993 turns out to be wrong (it's even, but not higher) because I had the misfortune of picking a year that turned out to be an aberration due to the instigator.

I suppose that means that I do have to eat a little bit of crow. But I think the overall point stands. Fighting has been trending downwards for a long time, and the numbers back it up.

Why I'm not ashamed to like fighting

I tried. I really did.

I tried to stay out of the recent fighting debate, which predictably re-ignited after the Don Sanderson tragedy and seems to have its second wind after Friday's scary Garrett Klotz injury.

I think most of the back-and-forth over fighting is disingenuous, an example of media (and some bloggers) jumping on a controversial subject just to get some attention. And I've also come to learn that people generally visit this blog for OCD-level nostalgia and Kyle Wellwood fat jokes, not serious hockey talk. Which is fine.

But I have a problem. My side of the argument doesn't seem to be represented in the debate.

So here's my stance on fighting:

1. I find it entertaining.
   
2. I think the reduction in fighting during the Bettman era has contributed to a less interesting product.
   
3. I'm not ashamed of #1 and 2.
   

Apparently I'm not supposed to say that. No, if I want to support fighting, I'm supposed to frame the argument as a safety issue (players must police themselves, they need an outlet, there must be accountability for cheap shots, etc).

Well, all of that may be true, or it may not. I don't play in the NHL, so I don't think I'm really qualified to say.

But I am a fan of the NHL, and I think that fans should be able to talk about what they do or don't find entertaining about a sport. And I thought the NHL was a lot more fun to watch when there was more fighting.

Is it insensitive to talk about entertainment value when we're dealing with the possibility of players being injured or even killed? Probably. But the NHL is an entertainment product. The league will grow or fade based on whether people think its product is more or less entertaining than any of the many alternatives.

Any discussion of a major rules change that ignore the impact on the entertainment value of the games is a meaningless exercise. It's fine as a philosophical argument, but not a real world one.

And before the anti-fighting folks feign their well-rehearsed outrage that we're even talking about entertainment, let's not forget that it used to be them who were banging that drum. Remember when the NHL just had to reduce fighting to help grow the game in the US, especially in non-traditional markets? Now that that strategy has been shown to be a failure, we're supposed to pretend that it was never about ratings in the first place.

Well frankly, I'm getting a little tired of hearing reporters who haven't bought a ticket in 20 years dismiss the feelings of fans. I'm getting a little tired of the holier-than-thou lectures -- all delivered over endless highlight reels of fights, of course. Got to grab those viewers, after all.

I think Don Sanderson's death was a tragedy, but I don't think it changes anything about the fighting debate. We always knew that a player could die in a fight. We also knew that it was extraordinarily unlikely. Both are still true.

But apparently only those who want fighting banned get to mourn Sanderson. Here's how one blogger put the argument: "People who defend fighting in hockey need to stop acting like they think every incident is a huge tragedy. If you really thought that, you'd ban it."

Bull. I can mourn Sanderson and I can cringe when a player gets hurt, and I can still believe that fighting has a place in the game. Hockey is a dangerous sport. Players take risks every time they take a hit, block a shot, or go into a corner. We've seen some horrible injuries over the years thanks to headshots, slapshots and stray skate blades. Accepting that a high-speed contact sport will carry a certain level of risk doesn't make me a caveman.

Look, I like fighting and want it to stay in the NHL, but I can also recognize that there are good arguments against it. I find it painful to have to listen to a guy like Mike Milbury talk about fighting's opponents as pansies and granola-crunchers.

Maybe the players are just too big and strong these days. Maybe our better understanding of concussions should change the discussion. Maybe something needs to be done about meaningless fights that don't seem to have any point beyond padding PIM totals.

Personally, I think the NHL should enforce better rules about helmets and chin straps. I think that a rule against slewfoot take-downs during fights sounds like a good idea.

I think there are lots of folks who want to see the NHL go even further who have their hearts in the right place. I just don't agree.

And I'd appreciate a little respect from the other side. It should be possible to like fighting -- not just support it or tolerate it, but actually like it -- without being dismissed as a knuckle-dragging thug.

Or at least it should. So save your lectures, media stars. I'm a fan. My voice counts too.

How to fix All-Star Weekend

Let's face it, all-star weekend sucks.

The young stars game is a joke. The actual all-star game is a complete writeoff, since nobody plays defence, the "one player per team" rule dilutes the roster, and anyone with so much as a hangnail decides not to play.

The skills competition is probably the highlight of the weekend, but that's not saying much. While the NHL has tried to spice up the events over the years, there's still an element of "been there, done that" to the whole proceedings. Does anybody really want to see another puck relay?

The NHL needs to get creative. So in the spirit of innovation, here are a few suggestions for new events the league could add to better capture the current flavor of the game.

Who are you and
why are you yelling at me?

Mainstream Media Fake Outrage-a-thon - Media superstars such as Pierre McGuire, Nick Kypreos and Mike Milbury will be given a controversial subject to discuss and will earn points by screaming well-rehearsed sound bites at each other while a producer shouts into their earpiece to be more animated. Topics will include fighting, the CBA, head shots, fighting, goalie equipment and also fighting. As in the real world, the media members will only be told which side of the debate they're on shortly before they go on air.

Where's Dany? - After Dany Heatley is hypnotized into believing he's playing in an important playoff game, all 20,000 fans will be given binoculars and forensics kits to see if they can find any evidence of him being in the arena.

American Anthem Endurance Contest - Wannabe singers and American Idol rejects from around the United States will compete to see who can take the most time to sing the pre-game national anthem, completely sapping any energy from the players and crowd. Last singer standing wins. Fans are encouraged to participate by throwing coins and shoes.

Credibility-Destroying Fan Ballot Box Stuffing Contest - Oops, they did that one already.

Let's just save time and
leave the red light on

Vesa Toskala Accuracy Shooting - From the slot, NHL snipers try their best to take shots that actually make contact with Toskala's glove or blocker.

Revenue Share Scramble - Representatives from southern US markets have sixty seconds to crawl around on their hands and knees and grab for any loose change that falls out of the pockets of the Leafs, Habs and Rangers. Special bonus: During this event, Gary Bettman will stand in the background and proclaim that the game's economics are just great.

Neglected Toddler - During the downtime in between events, Sean Avery wanders around the ice begging someone, anyone, to pay attention to him.

Goal Judge Skills Competition - Video replay goal judges from around the league compete to see who can up with the most unique and creative way to screw the Buffalo Sabres.

"How Much Was It Worth?" - At the conclusion of the All-Star game, one lucky fan gets to spin the Gary Bettman Wheel of Randomness to determine how many points the game was actually worth.

Delay of Blame - A puck is flipped up into the stands from the defensive zone, and six players per side compete to see who can be the first to point, wave their arms and otherwise browbeat the referee who actually did know that rule already, thanks.

Looking to go five-hole

Sissy Fight! - Skill players compete in a series of events to see which player fights most like a girl. Events include the Alexander Semin Slap Party, the Mikhail Grabovski Linesman Tickle, and of course the Sidney Crosby Package Punch

Icing Murder - Players compete to inflict the most damage to a helpless defenceman on an otherwise meaningless icing play. Bonus points will be awared for broken bones, career-ending injuries, or fatalities. (Note: In order to make this event competitive, members of the Montreal Canadiens will not be allowed to compete.)

And finally...

The NHL Superstar Decision-Making Sprint - NHL stars such as Mats Sundin, Scott Niedermayer, Joe Sakic and Brendan Shanahan are given a list of basic decision-making tasks to complete. Events will include ordering a sandwich at a deli, accepting or declining a new Facebook friend, and choosing their next Netflix rental. (Note: This event is expected to conclude some time in early 2010.)