[Dion]

The famous WHA brawl between the Cowboys and the Nordiques

And, perhaps, no incident lives on as much as the bench-clearing brawl between the Cowboys and Quebec Nordiques in the second round of the 1976 playoffs.

Obviously, the ignition for the fisticuffs is a debate. Depending on which side of the affair you were on, Cowboys winger Rick Jodzio either crosschecked Nordiques star Marc Tardif or gave him a clean hit with horrible results.

“Rick got nailed with a bad situation,” recalled Butch Deadmarsh, the forward who was part of the Cowboys both seasons they called the Stampede Corral home. “Rick wasn’t a goon. He was a good skater and his job was to shadow Tardif, check him at every chance and hit him into the boards.”

To Deadmarsh, Jodzio came onto the ice for a line change and had to race to the far corner to get close to Tardif, thus the reason the hit happened at full speed

“Tardif had his head down when the puck came to him and Rick nailed him. He actually hit his head on the glass, and that’s why he was unconscious,” Deadmarsh said of the incident. “Tardif was a god in Quebec. They had (Curt) Brackenbury and some other tough guys on their team, too. And it was the old days, so both benches cleared.”

The brawl — which Cowboys goalie Smokey McLeod said was the “only time I was ever scared for my life” — resulted in Jodzio pleading guilty on criminal charges of assault and Calgary coach Joe Crozier being suspended.

Player memories of skiing and broken ankles.....

Being so close to the mountains, Ford recalls, meant an opportunity to go skiing, even though that was a no-no in their contracts.

“We used to see how fast we could get to the ski slopes after practising in the morning. One player said he did it in 50 minutes,” Ford said.

“I wasn’t going to go with him to see if that was true.

“Another time, a player hurt his ankle skiing and we knew if he was caught, his contract would be voided. So, he was on the ice early for practice next morning — somehow he got his foot in his skate — and before Joe was on the ice, he was in the corner lying down.

“We told Joe that he crashed into the boards. Sure enough, when they took an x-ray of his ankle, it was broken.”

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/10/13...ntial-wha-club