Toughest NHL Enforcer
hammer1
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Donald Brashear
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Derek Boogaard
Dave Schultz.
Mcsorley or Probert
I miss understood the question , enforcer meaning can barely skate? I'll take probert and mcsorely off the list and add Dave semenko
John Ferguson.
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/former-nhl-enforcer-donald-brashear-is-working-at-a-tim-hortons-in-quebec
Bob Probert and Tie Domi.
Steve
Yup.
Maybe not THE toughest, but Darian Hatcher was plenty tough, and Jeremy Roenick can tell you all about it.
For context, the hit was retaliation for a hit by Roenick of Mike Modano in their previous game.
Hatcher was a great fighter Roenick was a creampuff
Loved to have seen Semenko and Brasher go.
Eh, tough enforcers don't enforce through leaping elbows into guy's faces. They square up and handle their business. Hatcher was a willing fighter but was definitely not top-tier in that regard.
No, but he was next tier; he'd square up and fight all the time. But breaking Roenick's jaw earned Hatcher a perpetual seat in the Dallas Stars pantheon and in the hearts of every Stars fan. And nobody took a cheap shot at Modano the way Roenick had ever again.
Maybe not, but players who aren't sniveling cowards don't hit smaller forwards who never fight from behind without warning, as Roenick did. He deserved the broken jaw, and to be remembered for it.
I'm not saying this is the answer, but these guys were tough.
https://youtu.be/MKuX5KQLhI0
@dallasactuary ...you think your teaching Roenick a lesson he didn't already know?? I don't see any chunky tears coming out of his eyes...He knew it was coming b4 it even came... He scored over 50 goals twice in a season~ more than 500 goals for his career and never hid behind an enforcer....
Maybe, but that doesn't mean someone didn't need to do it. It's possible that Roenick already realized what gutless scum he was and was going to change his ways, but the lesson Hatcher taught that day was for everyone in the league, not just Roenick. And by all indications, Professor Hatcher's lesson was received.
Domi always reminded me of my favorite bruin , Stan Jonathan
Again, Derek Boogaard.
"smaller forward"?
Mike Modano - 6'3", 212
Jeremy Roenick - 6'1, 205
I was a big North Stars and Modano fan and actually liked Roenick for a while.
Roenick had some skill but was a punk.
Modano had more skill and had a lot of class. One of the best skaters shooters and playmakers I have ever seen.
Oh, for sure. Modano was great, Roenick (is) was a jerk.
Ulf sammuelson
Shocking the Red Wings symbol doesn't like Roenick...... I didn't love him either but that's a guy to have on YOUR team.
Would love for him to have played for Detroit (and he nearly did - he declined to sign and went to Philly instead - good call, JR. Take the same money to play for a team going nowhere instead of the team where half the roster was a HOFer). That said, he was a jerk. I'm hardly alone in that opinion.
I don't instantly hate guys for the sweater they're wearing. Joe Sakic played for the Avalanche but I loved the guy, for example.
uh Roenick and Hatcher's history began long before that when the slobbering glacier, Derian Hatcher, clocked Roenick with a knee on knee hit leading to surgery and essentially sapped Roenick's speed/agility when Roenick was still in Chicago. Hatcher was 6'5, 245. Roenick 6'0, 195 at his peak. Having to resort to either of those types of hits with that sort of size discrepancy is weak by any hockey standard. Modano is '6'3. Shouldn't need someone else to fight his battles.
"Hatcher was a great fighter Roenick was a creampuff"
yeah a lot of 6'0 195 lb dudes who racked up 200+ hits per year and fought every goon in the 90's was soft. Probert, Kocur, McCarty, Domi, McSorley, Tucker etc. Fought them all. Didn't win many of them, but it didn't stop him. Roenick and Cheli were the same guy. Always fought up and rarely embarrassed themselves. Even though they had Grimson and Manson and Dirk Graham around. Didn't need the goons around to fight their battles.
And to answer the question....ask any hockey player in the 90's about Probert and Kocur and many of them will tell you, Probert would beat you up, but Kocur would hurt you. Probert's thing was dragging out fights and letting guys tire themselves out. Kocur's thing was punching you in the face as hard and often as possible.
I'll just leave this here
I like your posts, you are one of the very few here who understands hockey.
I did not know about the knee on knee hit you are referring to, there's no excuse for that kind of hit EVER, by anyone on anyone.
Roenick was a very very good and very tough player but also a dirty cheap shot POS. I would take Modano over him every time.
Modano was tall, but he was not very "big" and certainly not a "tough guy". Best skater of the 1990's. However as much as I liked him, he was a bit of a "cream puff".
Getting back to the topic, yes Probert was hands down the toughest "enforcer" who could actually play hockey as well.
Modano was a terrific skater but wasn't in the same league as Fedorov, Bure, and Mogilny. Or Paul Coffey, for that matter.
Maybe not for pure speed, but he was as good a skater as those guys, imo.
Coffey was a different kind of skater than those 3, or Phil Housley for that matter. I'll take Housley over Coffey of d-men from that era. Coffey was a straight line skater. He used the most narrow blade that was probably ever produced. Thus whenever he tried to bounce out of that line he usually ended up losing an edge or getting stood up by a Chelios-grade can-opener since it was obvious which line he was going to move in.
yeah dirty cheap shot POS is a bit of a reach. He played with a reckless edge at times when things got chippy, but I mean it was the Norris Division in the 90's. No shortage of goons and rats. Detroit and St Louis used to roll a line and a half to two full lines of human garbage every night in those days. And we're talking about the coked up Probert era. That would get old after a while. You kind of had to have some kind of edge to survive as a smaller guy in that division.
But he wasn't Ciccarelli or Claude Lemieux or Bertuzzi or Domi or Darcy Tucker or Kasparaitis or some of the supreme pieces of crap like Ulf Samuelsson or Matt Cooke or some Ken Linseman type. Hell as skill players go, he wasn't anywhere near as dirty as Gordie "Mr Elbows" Howe or Mark "Mr Elbows" Messier or Chris "Mr Elbows" Pronger, or Dale "Canadian Meatball Human Compost Pile" Hunter.
Another thing to keep in mind, unless you've played, or you're a season ticker holder, or you're old enough to have seen a crap-ton of games live, you may not know how much stick-work actually goes on off camera, behind the play, in scrums etc...especially in those days. I'm not saying that hit on Modano wasn't bad, but you also probably don't know what went on in that game that brought them to that point. Modano may have clocked him with the stick. I mean a slash to the right place is worse than a punch to the face and there are a ton of guys who got away with that type of stuff over the years...and guys you would never think of. Everyone knows Crosby's ability to spear dudes in the junk, but others for example, Henrik Zetterberg and Mikael "the Slasher" Samuelsson from fairly recent vintage are two of the worst I've seen at it in person. But they were probably both coached to do it since they both came from the Mike "I coach interference and everyone thinks I'm a genius because I learned to exploit the referees' unwillingness to call it from Scotty Bowman" Babcock.
I played hockey (poorly) and have loved it since 1967 when the North Stars arrived in Minnesota.
For the most part, I would agree with everything you said, because I can tell you are a "hockey guy" and make very good points.
Did Modano use his stick on guys? I am sure he did, but I am sure most of it was simply to survive. He was a string bean and got hit and grabbed every second he was on the ice. You mention Ciccarelli, who literally got the crap pounded out of him every second HE was on the ice, Dino did fight back a lot (with his stick) and was a nasty little $hit.
I was at the final North Stars game in Minnesota against the hated Black Hawks and told my buddy, who was attending his first NHL game, to watch for two players that night; Modano and Roenick, they were the best players on each team.
I don't think either guy finished the game, but Jeremy was at his worst. I was ashamed to have recommended him.
The MOST ashamed I have ever been was when the Wild picked up Matt Cooke and he intentionally injured McKinnen(?) in the playoffs. After that hit he should have been kicked out of the league immediately and forever. Don't get me started on Samuelson, another POS who tried to injure guys.
A slash is a nasty thing and can break bones, but when I see guys try to end other players careers, that makes me sick.
I can't remember who did it (I'll bet you will know) but I saw a video years ago where a player intentionally blew up Orr's knee on a "knee to knee" hit. To this day, even thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach.
On a last comment, I also observed Pierre Marc Bouchard being cheap shotted and concussed out of his career. Wonderful little skater and playmaker.
I don't mind a fight one in a while and a good solid body check is a thing of beauty, but I like to see some guys who can actually skate pass and shoot without them being "gooned" on by some pathetic cement head.
that's a whole other discussion. I mean if you think about it, and too many people involved in the game over the age of 50 clearly have not, or never did (especially up north), the whole hockey culture when it comes to body checking is blatantly stupid. For a century it's been A) keep your head up
don't watch/admire your pass. And aside from maybe the last 4 years it's been perfectly acceptable to drill a guy in the head with a forearm (see Scott Stevens), elbow (see ol' Gord, Messier or Pronger), shoulder etc because he was looking down. So some guy's quality of life is diminished because he looked down to find a piece of rubber on ice. That's about as moronic of any sensibility that there has ever been devised in major organized team sports. And that's where the culture of this other stuff comes from. OMG HIS HEAD IS DOWN!...A CLEAR AFFRONT TO MY SENSIBILITY!...HURRY, PUT YOUR ELBOW THROUGH HIS SKULL, GORD! (I continue to assume every male in Canada over the age of 50 is named Gord). And when you scrape that poor schlub off of the ice, Gord will come over and pat the recently decapitated on the back and wish him well when he's lifted onto the stretcher. 95+ years of that stupidity.
So the sensibility in hockey is that an intentional knee on knee hit is basically the worst thing you can do. It's worse than swinging a stick at someone and it's worse than an elbow to the head because chances are you can come back from a hit to the head. At least for a while...until some dope with an 8th grade education like Tom Wilson clocks you again which at that point you're done, or at least you won't be cleared by doctors. Then his 25 game suspension gets cut down to 15 because reasons no one can explain. It's dumb. It's all dumb.
Some questionable stuff happens on the ice when big goofs are moving 20-30 mph, but it took 95 years and a class action lawsuit to get the intentional garbage half-way cut out of the game (after 30+ years of King Dope Don Cherry profiting off of brain trauma of course). And even these 18 year old kids still think looking down is an affront to their sensibility because a bunch of morons up north with the aforementioned 8th grade educations are still allowed to teach kids stuff they learned in the 70's. Two clinically insane morons with serious anger management issues like Dale Hunter and Patrick Roy are teaching children. And parents are willfully sending their children to live in the basements of strangers to be taught life lessons from stool samples like those two. Think about that. That's still a thing that happens in 2019.
I've always believed that there is something kind of psychologically disorienting about playing hockey because you're basically locked into a playing surface without an "out of bounds" type area. Like there's a feeling of being kind of trapped unless you're near the benches. Guys have weapons. Guys have razor blades tied to their feet which could end your life (at least if you're playing at a level without a full cage). So between that, and the stupidity of the culture when it comes to body checking and the head down stuff, and that's not even counting things like the exploitative Canadian Junior system that allows 15-17 year old children to fight which is the mind-melting-ly dumbest thing that has ever been allowed in major team sports. It's all part of the circle of dumb. And the thought that so many people profit off it makes it really hard to love the sport sometimes.
Dave Shultz
Ted Lindsay
Stu Grimson
cent cent
I seen a recent post somewhere of recent players where they measured top points getter along with top penalty minutes, a unique that I can not put my mouse on at the this minute...........
blunt?
I'm not who it says i am......uhhhhhhh
DUDEEEEEEEE!