Doing a little weekend catchup here. Hard to believe we're almost at the end of the regular season! Easily my thread of the year. This has been so much fun digging through the details that BobbieLouie has shared with us. A few thoughts from the Devils and Kings matchups:
1. Man, Hunter and Maley were chucking 'em in that video. Maley was a sneaky good heavyweight throughout his career. Never put up huge PIM numbers, but always could go toe-to-toe with the big boys. I know we picked up Jim Korn a year later for the stretch run, but would have been interesting to see what have happened if we grabbed Maley instead. Curious if there was anything there, or am I just making up a rumor? In fact, why am I thinking that we actually picked up Korn on waivers--I'll double check that.
2. On the note of Maley and Korn. Those late 80s and early 90s seasons were so much fun for fight fans. Teams were stacked back then. Just look at NJ's lineup: Maley, Korn, Daneyko, Rooney, Cirella, Perry Anderson (Another underrated tough guy. Then you look at the Kings lineup: Marty, Jay Miller, Baumer--three legit heavyweights. Sign o the times for sure. I'm not big on fighting anymore, but I always love watching clips from 88 to 96(ish), as I consider that to be the golden era of fighting.
2.5. That Kings/Flames boxscore is fantastic. I miss huge boxscores like that so much. It used to be such a treat, as a kid, opening the Sports Section in the morning (Hartford Courant for me) and comb through the boxscores. The Courant had a good boxscore template (like the one from the Kings and Devils game). I've seen a few here that are tough to read--I think they are the ones from the Boston Globe (with all the extra scoring details). I also used to hate the ones that didn't tell you the specific penalties. Instead of '(Fighting)' it would just say '(Major)'; or instead of '(Tripping)' it would just say '(Minor)'. The Hockey News was guilty of this throughout most of the 80s. I remember for the 89-90 season, they switched to the more detailed oriented boxscores. Also, LOL, the idea of a Double Game Misconduct (on top of a Misconduct) is so dumb if you think about it. It's almost like Marty wanted to add to his PIMs.
3. I've noticed Gary Roberts filling in at Center the past few games. Did that happen a lot early in his career? I have zero memory of him playing anything but LW.
4. Roger Johansson. Again, didn't realize there was so much around him at the end of the '89 season. Too bad we never really got much out of him
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