From Eric Francis - 2012
http://slam.canoe.com/Slam/Hockey/NH.../19429051.html
"Of all the stories rehashed at Flames Central last night by Al MacInnis’ friends and admirers, the attempted beheading of Mike Liut was most prominent.
But while hundreds gathered over beers on the eve of MacInnis’ inaugural induction to the ‘Forever a Flame’ enshrinement, the man who bore the brunt of that epic blast was getting just as much enjoyment re-telling it from a Windsor arena.
“My version is much funnier anyway,” chuckled former Blues netminder Liut, who vividly remembers the night in St. Louis the legend of MacInnis’ slapshot grew.
“Back then, nobody pre-scouted, and when the Flames lineup was posted, nobody in our room knew who this MacInnis kid was. We turned the puck over in the neutral zone, and MacInnis takes this shot from just outside the blueline — I’m thinking can of corn. No problem.
“But the puck explodes off his stick like a fastball … It’s going to go about two feet over the net, but suddenly, I’m trying to get out of the way — I lean to my right, and the puck gets caught in under the wire of my mask and essentially its rising into my mask.
“He shot it from 65 feet away, and it hits me in the wire before I can move eight inches. It goes straight down into the ice and spins into the net.
“The joke was that nobody knew this guy — that’s the first thing somebody should have told me. It’s not like he developed this shot overnight. The guys told me I should have stood there like a man and taken it in the face.”
If so, Liut might not have lived to tell — and laugh about it."
