8/3/2023 0 Comments Nhl 94 rewind fighting![]() Did somebody phone the cops on this kid?’ The cop comes on the ice, steps into the slot, reaches out and grabs the kid by the scruff of his sweater and drags him off the ice.” At that moment, a gate opens and an RCMP officer walks onto the ice. He starts skating back for the visitors’ bench. Then somebody from the bench beeps at him again. As mad as he is, he cannot fight off the three men. “He flings the linesmen off his arms like they’re nothing and starts going into Rosetown’s bench.” The officials pull Boogaard back onto the rink. Then someone on the Rosetown bench says something to him. The linesmen grab him and try to escort him to the penalty box but there’s a fighter inside of him who wants to come out. “All hell,” as Ripplinger remembers, “is about to break loose.” Boogaard loses it. Boogaard starts throwing players around like bags of garbage. In the final minutes of the third period, a player from the Rosetown Junior B squad slashes Melfort’s goalie. On the ice is Derek Boogaard, a Melfort kid with gangly arms and little skill who, Ripplinger later recalls, looks like an awkward gorilla on skates. Todd Ripplinger, head scout with the Regina Pats, is one of a handful of Western Hockey League scouts sitting among parents in a community arena, watching two teams of 15-year-olds. A mild but windy winter’s night in Melfort, a farming town 175 km northeast of Saskatoon. ![]() And in exactly 155 days, his brothers will find him in his bed and won’t be able to wake him up. Over the next five months he’ll struggle with post-concussion syndrome, depression, and a growing addiction to painkillers. He bows his head as he enters the darkness alone. The crowd cheers as a ref helps him to his skates and points him to the dark tunnel behind the Rangers’ bench. He is a lonely man with hockey’s loneliest job. His shoulder is mangled and his brain is badly concussed. He is hurt, worse than he has ever been hurt before. A cold winter’s night in Ottawa and Boogaard, age 28, has just fought his last fight and played his last game. The Boogeyman has fallen hard and fast, but Derek Boogaard’s fall is not yet complete. They fall together, with the combined weight of 503 lb., driving the Boogeyman’s shoulder and then his head into the ice. This fight is pretty much over, but it doesn’t end until Carkner kicks his skates out from under him and flips him to the ice. He staggers toward the boards, dazed, as he takes one, two, three, four straight lefts to the chin. His nose breaks as it has so many times before. Matt Carkner of the Ottawa Senators throws his gloves in the air and lunges for the Boogeyman’s sweater, latches on with his left hand and drives his clenched right fist into the Boogeyman’s face. But right now he’s being pushed around by an older, smaller man. At six-foot-seven and 265 lb., he is the most intimidating player since Bob Probert. He is Derek ‘The Boogeyman’ Boogaard, the heavyweight champion of the NHL, a bare-knuckle brawler who once shattered an opponent’s face with a single right hand. This is what he does and how he plays the game. He drops his gloves and raises his fists in an NHL game for the 61st time. This story was originally published in 2011.
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