Sopel's comments:
“He kicked me, he choked me, he grabbed the back of my jersey and pulled me back. He attacked guys personally.
“He came up one year after the season. He’s like, ‘Sopes, you need to work hard, you need to gain 15-20 pounds.’ So I left there, went home, hit the diet, hit the weights, put on 20 pounds of muscle.
“I came back here and he’s yelling at the bench, ‘What are you ######ing Hercules now? Are you turning green? Are you the Hulk? Just screaming at me. He suspended me for I think it was six weeks. He wouldn’t let me play. Only in practice, he bag skated me and I have to step on a scale every single day to see what my weight loss was before he’d let me play…
“For whatever reason, he kept putting me out there. I probably played close to 500 games of my career for him, so as much as I hated him, for whatever reason, there was something he liked about me.”
Avery's comments:
“He kicked me after a too-many-men-on-the-ice call I took,” Avery said of Crawford. “He didn’t have me serve it, we got scored on, and he let me have it.”
The game was played on Dec. 23, 2006 between the Kings and Predators. Los Angeles was handed the penalty in the second period and Nashville scored a goal on the power play as part of their 7-0 win. After the goal, Avery said he was accosted by Crawford at the end of the bench.
“You know how I stand at the end of the bench? He came down and gave me an a*s kick that left a mark,” he said.
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