As the Easter weekend approaches, it always calls to mind the decades of the 1980s and 1990s for me. Back in those days, it seemed that every Easter, I was packing up and going out of town to play in a hockey tournament.
They were usually in Ontario or in the province of Quebec. I always loved playing in Quebec. Places like Boucherville, Valleyfield, Temiscamingue, Brossard, and Trois Rivieres all spring readily to my memory.
The greatest thing about being a goalie and playing in Quebec was that if you played poorly, the people there would let you know.
Conversely, if you played well, they would also let you know. There’s nothing like getting high fives from total strangers as you walk off the ice.
Also, the one thing that always seemed to be consistent in the cities and towns in which we played was that there seemed to be three main centres of public assemblage in Quebec. L’eglise (the church), l’arena (the arena) et les danseuses nues (I’ll let you google that one).
The predominant religion in Quebec is Catholicism. Throughout history, the Catholic Church has played a prominent role in the lives of les Quebecois. Easter Sunday is the holiest of the Holy Days of Obligation and the church building itself has long been a social centre in every municipality in Quebec for many years.
In Quebec though, the unofficial religion has long been hockey. The sacred garb of this religion, for most of the last century, has been La Sainte Flanelle, the jersey of the Montreal Canadiens. I stress that this has been true for MOST of the last century. There was a period of time from 1979 until 1995 when the Canadiens had to share the spotlight and fan support in their home province. The team that shared the attention with the Habs was the Quebec Nordiques.
Please Note – This article was originally posted at FiredUp Network, a sports website out of Toronto. It is republished on the Sports History Network with permission from FiredUP to provide you with added sports history. Check out FiredUP today.
The Nordiques Arrive
The Nordiques entered the National Hockey League after they and three other teams (the New England or Hartford Whalers, Edmonton Oilers, and Winnipeg Jets) were absorbed into the big league when the World Hockey Association folded. Remember that John Ziegler was the President of the League at this time.
Ziegler had taken over in time for the 1978-79 season. Had Clarence Campbell still been at the helm, who knows how this would have turned out?
The rivalry between the long-established Canadiens and the nascent Nordiques took a little while to simmer though.
To begin with, the Habs and Nordiques were placed in different divisions. The league was set up in an almost random fashion. We are so used to the divisions of the NHL being arranged geographically.
This allows teams to travel less against the teams they play the most. The Nords started out their NHL life in the Adams Division with the Buffalo Sabres, Boston Bruins, Minnesota North Stars, and Toronto Maple Leafs. The Canadiens were in the Norris Division with the Los Angeles Kings, Hartford Whalers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Detroit Red Wings.
The Patrick Division had the Philadelphia Flyers, New York Islanders, the Rangers, the Atlanta Flames, and the Washington Capitals. And the Smythe Division consisted of the Chicago Black Hawks, St. Louis Blues, Vancouver Canucks, Edmonton Oilers, Winnipeg Jets, and Colorado Rockies.
Also, the four WHA teams were treated like expansion teams. They lost almost all of the players that comprised their teams in the final year of the rival league. So they were fundamentally building from scratch from the beginning of their first season in the NHL, 1979-80.
That season, with Jacques Demers as their coach, the Nords went 25-44-11 in their 80 games. The Habs, who had won their fourth consecutive Stanley Cup in the spring of 1979 with Scotty Bowman as their coach, went 47-20-13 in ’79-80. Bernie Geoffrion coached the team for the first 30 games of that season.
Claude Ruel finished the year out. The games between Quebec and Montreal were tame though. Quebec went 1-2-1 in their four games with the defending Cup champs and their overall record wasn’t good enough to land them a playoff spot. Le Bleu, Blanc et Rouge made it to the second round before falling to the upstart Minnesota North Stars in seven games.
The next season, 1980-81, saw the Nordiques make the playoffs with a 30-32-18 record which was good enough for fourth place in the Adams Division. Maurice Filion coached the Nords for their first six games, but Michel “Le Petit Tigre” Bergeron took over for the remainder of the season.
The Canadiens, with Claude Ruel behind the bench, finished atop the Norris Division with a record of 45-22-13. The teams split their four games with each team going 1-1-2.
But there were no real fireworks in those games. Neither team made it out of the first round either. Montreal was swept by the up-and-coming Edmonton Oilers while the Nordiques lost in their best-of-five series to Philadelphia in the maximum five games.
The Battle of Quebec Starts to Simmer
The divisions were realigned a little more geographically (many folks say ‘sensibly’) for the 1981-82 season. Montreal and Quebec were placed together in the Adams Division with the Boston Bruins, Buffalo Sabres, and Hartford Whalers.
Teams in the same divisions, like the Habs and Nords, played each other eight times a year as opposed to seeing one another just four times as in the previous years when they were in different divisions. Of course, this meant that things would heat up for the provincial rivals.
The teams played each other for the first time as divisional foes on November 2, 1981. The Habs had a new coach in Bob Berry. The game at Le Colisee in Quebec got hot in a hurry as Brian Engblom and Dale Hunter dropped the gloves just 52 seconds into the first period. Montreal led the game 4-1 after the first frame.
But four unanswered Nordique goals gave the home team a 5-4 win. Real Cloutier notched the winner just after the ten-minute mark of the third period.
Less than three weeks later, the teams met again, this time at the Forum in Montreal. The game ended in a 1-1 tie, but in this one, Larry Robinson and Hunter got into it and fought just over a minute after the anthem had played. This theme continued throughout the season as the teams met and exchanged goals and punches.
At the end of the year, each team had won three, lost three and there were two games tied. Of course, the playoffs began with the first-place Canadiens (46-17-17) playing the fourth place Nordiques (33-31-16).
The first-round series at that time were best-of-five affairs and this one swung like a pendulum back and forth. Tim Burke, a columnist for the Montreal Gazette, said that the series should have been “a skate away for Nos Glorieux”. He proclaimed the Habs a much better team and figured that they “could boast two superb offensive lines that can match the firepower of the offensive-minded Nordiques.”
Burke added, “Back on the blue line, there is no contest, with Robinson, Langway, Engblom, Picard, and Gingras.”
He also said that if the series got physical, Montreal had Chris Nilan and Langway to take care of business.
The first game was played at the Forum and the favoured Habs took it 5-1. Game 2 went to the visitors as the Nordiques took a tough game with a 3-2 victory.
There were no fights but the game sheet was littered with a lot of roughing penalties. Games 3 and 4 were at the Colisee in Quebec. Dale Hunter scored twice in a 2-1 win in the first matchup.
The Canadiens answered in the next game with a 6-2 blasting. There were numerous fights, especially in the third period as the result was pretty much a foregone conclusion. After four games, the series was tied.
The series-deciding Game 5 stayed true to the form the two teams displayed all season long. The Nordiques scored twice in the first period. The Habs replied with two goals of their own in the third period. Robert Picard tallied the game-tying goal with just more than twelve minutes gone in regulation time. And so, after the teams each went 3-3-2 in the regular season and they had each won twice in this opening-round series, this game would require extra time to decide a winner.
It didn’t take long to resolve itself.
Dale Hunter – the thorn in the Canadiens’ side all season long – scored the game and series-winning goal just 22 seconds into the extra period to allow Quebec to move on and to force Montreal to go home.
The Nordiques then managed to knock the Boston Bruins off in seven games in the second round. It took the eventual Cup champion New York Islanders to quell the surging but tired Nords.
The Isles took their third-round series in a four-game sweep before doing the same thing to the Western Conference winning Vancouver Canucks.
But this 1981-82 season had allowed Quebec to plant their flag in the hockey-obsessed province. And as much as the two teams and the two cities had developed a new animus, the old-guard Canadiens had to realize that the Nordiques were not going to be going away anytime soon. They also had to understand that their golden days were getting further and further away in the rear-view mirror.
That fact was emphasized the following year, 1982-83, when the Canadiens finished 12 points behind the first-place Boston Bruins in the Adams Division and were then swept by the third-place Buffalo Sabres in the first round of the playoffs. The Nordiques finished fourth in the Adams and at least managed to win a game in their first-round series against Boston.
The Heat Gets Turned Up
The Nordiques’ fifth season, the 1983-84 campaign, saw the fortunes of the two Quebec teams turn. The older Montreal Canadiens had always been on the top and the newer, upstart Nordiques were always looking up in the standings at their elder icons. In this season, both teams’ fortunes would change.
There were things that would stay the same. The Nords’ pugnacity that reflected the qualities of their coach – Michel Bergeron – would still remain. But they also had skilled players who could score and carry a game and this would show itself not only in the way the teams would line up in the Adams Division but in the season series between Quebec and Montreal as well.
The Canadiens started the year with Bob Berry as their bench boss. Berry lasted 63 games. The Canadiens replaced him with one of their playing legends, Jacques Lemaire. The teams played twice in the first month of the season.
The Habs won both of them. But the Nordiques took five of the final six meetings between the two clubs. The games were peppered with fights and animosity. In their third matchup of the season, a game in which the Nords doubled the Habs 6-3, Bobby Smith fought Pat Price. Smith fought Michel Goulet in a 9-5 Quebec win.
In their final game of the season, a 5-2 Nordiques’ victory, Mark Hunter of the Canadiens fought Quebec goalie Clint Malarchuk. Oh, and Dale Hunter figured prominently in the season series as well, showing up consistently on both the score sheet and the penalty listings, often in the same games.
The Nords finished third in the Adams in 1983-84, 19 points ahead of the rival Canadiens. Despite their lower placing in the division, Quebec swept their opening-round series with the second-place Buffalo Sabres. Likewise, the Habs won their series in three games against the hated Boston Bruins. Once again, these provincial rivals were facing each other in a do-or-die playoff series.
And what a series it would be. Although, with both teams having to wait almost a week for the series to start after their victories in the first round, it was inevitable that one or both teams might come out flat to start Game 1.
And that was precisely what happened.
For both teams.
GAME 1 – April 12, 1984, Montreal 2, Quebec 4 at Le Colisee
Chris Nilan scored early in this game to give Montreal a quick 1-0 lead. That was answered though by Marian Stastny who tied it up soon afterward. Mark Hunter put the Habs back ahead later in the first period, but Jean-Francois Sauve tied it back up before the end of that frame.
Blake Wesley’s floater beat 23-year-old Steve Penney to put Les Nordiques ahead in the second. Louis Sleigher iced the game with a third-period marker. Quebec outshot the visitors 32-18 in the game and skated out of their rusty funk, outshooting Les Canadiens 13-6 in the final period.
Nilan was not happy after the game. “I thought they were ready to be taken in the first two periods but we didn’t take advantage of it. They didn’t play well and neither did we. I know I wasn’t happy with my performance. I didn’t hit anybody and I wasn’t physical enough and I should have been. I don’t mean running around picking a fight. Just stepping into somebody.”
It wouldn’t take long to see if Nilan would put his words into reality. The teams played again the next night.
GAME 2 – April 13, 1984, Montreal 4, Quebec 1 at Le Colisee
There comes a point in any playoff series when one goaltender or the other imposes himself on the game and the series.
In Game 2, it was Montreal’s, Steve Penney. His teammates still seemed to be fighting the rust of the layoff after their first-round series. That mattered not to Penney. On the same day that Pete Rose garnered his 4000th career base hit (and he did it in an Expos uniform, to boot), Penney made five amazing saves in the opening period to keep his team in the game.
His work proved to pay off when Pierre Mondou scored about halfway through the second period to give the Canadiens a 1-0 lead.
It could have been more too if any of the Montreal shots that had hit the posts had found twine. Anton Stastny scored early in the third for the Nordiques to tie it up. And that should have given his team a lift. But it was the Habs who seemed to get the boost from Stastny’s goal.
In that third, Montreal only had seven shots on Dan Bouchard but three got past him and the visitors got the win and the split in the two games in Quebec City. Mats Naslund, Steve Shutt, and Perry Turnbull were the scorers. After the game, numerous Canadiens were giving credit to their rookie goalie.
“He’s very, very strong up here”, said backup goalie Richard Sevigny while tapping his temple with his finger. “He concentrates on the game he’s playing and doesn’t worry for a minute on what happened the night before or the period before.”
Canadiens’ Managing Director Serge Savard after the game said “we didn’t expect him to play this well when we brought him up from Nova Scotia. We took him because of his temperament.”
Larry Robinson also was talking up his goalie and quickly took one reporter to task when he tried to compare him to another big game Montreal puck stopper from the past. “He’s doing it all but I think it’s unfair to label him another Ken Dryden.
That’s putting pressure on him that he doesn’t need. He’s his own man. Let’s hope he’s not a flash-in-the-pan.”
Chris Nilan offered this assessment.
“Calm. That’s what he is. If the puck goes by him, he doesn’t get upset.” Nilan also gave us a little foreshadowing as to what might come in the series when he and Jimmy Mann were given ten-minute misconducts and game misconducts after the second period.
GAME 3 – April 15, 1984, Quebec 1, Montreal 2 at The Forum
The Canadiens finished the regular season five games under .500, but the team playing in this set of playoff games didn’t seem to care about those numbers. Bobby Smith scored in the first minute of the game on a hard pass from Mats Naslund. Ryan Walter scored the winner on a second-period power play. Guy Lafleur and Larry Robinson garnered the assists.
The Montreal team defense was stellar in this game as they allowed just 17 Quebec shots. Steve Penney stopped 16 of them to notch the victory. But it was Robinson who captured the headlines. His hard second-period hit on Anton Stastny grabbed everyone’s attention and it put Stastny out of the game. Rick Green said “It’s the best hit I’ve seen in a long time.
What it did was make everybody on that team hesitate after that.”
Gazette columnist Red Fisher noted that the Habs’ dressing room was “strangely quiet” after the game. That’s usually a sign that a team knows it has unfinished business to take care of. A look at the game sheet showed that there were seven roughing penalties, four cross-checking infractions, and a couple more for high sticking, elbowing, and slashing.
No fights in this one, but the score and the game were tight. All that other stuff would come later.
GAME 4 – April 16, 1984, Quebec 4, Montreal 3 (OT) at The Forum
It had been evident that the Canadiens had been the better team in this series after the first three games. The Nordiques had been the better team in the regular season but had not shown it in this series except in the third period of Game 1. That all changed in Game 4. At least, after the first intermission of Game 4.
It was the Habs who jumped out to an early lead. Ryan Walter and Guy Carbonneau scored to put Montreal ahead 2-0 in the first period.
But the Nords came out flying in the second, outshot the Canadiens 12-3, and outscored them 2-1 in the period. Wilf Paiement and Andre Savard scored for the visitors. Mario Tremblay scored for Montreal. Quebec’s Randy Moller got the only goal of the third period and the game went to overtime.
Bo Berglund scored the winner for the Nords to tie the series. They asserted themselves at a time when they really needed to, outshooting Montreal 33-20, and headed home for two of three possible games. Things were looking good for the Nordiques and tough for the Habs.
Rick Green was aware of the situation for his team. “All night, it seemed they were coming at us. It wasn’t so much that we weren’t doing the things we did in the last two games.
It’s simply that they played so well.
Give them credit. They knew what they had to do and they did it very well.
We’ve been doing things the hard way all season and I guess we have to do it the hard way again.”
GAME 5 – April 18, 1984, Montreal 4, Quebec 0 at Le Colisee
The Canadiens had scored the first goal in each of their seven playoff games so far in the 1984 playoffs going into Game 5 at Le Colisee in Quebec. That streak continued in this one as well. It took a while but Pierre Mondou gave his team another lead with a backhander off a rebound for a goal on Dan Bouchard approaching the halfway mark of the second period.
Then, in a span of fewer than three minutes in the first half of the third period, Montreal got three goals (Tremblay, Shutt, and Naslund) to put the game away.
But the real story of the game was the play of their goaltender, Steve Penney. He stood tall and kept his team in it until Mondou scored and maintained his focus through to the final horn. Jacques Plante was at the game and he was effusive in his praise for the young netminder. Plante was always a proponent of the mental aspect of goaltending and he was especially aware of that part of Penney’s game when he talked to the Gazette’s Red Fisher afterward.
“It’s very simple. He may not have as much talent as some of the other goaltenders but he knows what’s happening on the ice. Other goaltenders have the talent but they don’t know what’s happening on the ice. It’s great to have a young goaltender with an open mind. I mean, I was looking at my training camp notebook where I had this long list of things Penney wasn’t doing right, stuff he had to correct.
A lot of those things aren’t there anymore. I look at the film and he’s there for the big stops. It’s not a matter of luck, know what I mean?”
Michel Bergeron knew what Plante meant.
He told the Canadian Press after the game, “Every game we keep hoping that Penney will crack, but he hasn’t.”
The Habs now sat in the enviable position of being able to end the series on home ice in Game 6. And they were thrilled at the prospect. Fisher noted “(Steve) Shutt was among a roomful of beaming Canadiens, who now can enter the Wales Conference final with home-ice advantage by handling the Nordiques tomorrow night at the Forum.”
No one knew what kind of night it would be on that Good Friday evening but everyone was all about to find out.
GAME 6 – April 20, 1984, Quebec 3, Montreal 5 at The Forum
Game 6 at the Forum on this Good Friday evening was one of the most anticipated nights since the Habs had last won a Cup in 1979. The previous two years saw Montreal eliminated from the postseason in the first round.
So the fact that the home team had the opportunity to win this game and move on to the third round had fans buzzing. Scalpers were doing pretty brisk business also.
Heading up to game time that night, there were reports of private ticket sellers getting up to $500 for a pair of tickets in the reds. The box office price for those same tickets, if fans could have bought them there, would have been $22.50 each. The Forum would be packed regardless and the fans had a series victory on their minds.
What they would first see was two periods of tough, excellent playoff hockey.
Going into this game, Dan Bouchard had a playoff goals-against average of 2.48. Steve Penney’s average was 1.49. The last goaltender to post a lower GAA through eight playoff games was Jacques Plante.
Peter Stastny opened the scoring for Quebec 5:12 into the first period. Jean-Francois Sauve and Anton Stastny got the helpers on the goal. It was a 5-on-3 power-play marker. Craig Ludwig and Jean Hamel were off for the Habs. That would prove to be the only goal of the first two periods. Montreal outshot the Nordiques 11-8 in the first period and 19-17 through two and Dan Bouchard was tremendous in goal for Quebec over that span.
Things had started getting heated in the second period when Dale Hunter twice had allowed himself to glide into Penney after Penney had made saves and held on to the puck.
The end of the second period was when all civility came to an end. It all started innocently enough. At the horn, Dale Hunter landed on top of Guy Carbonneau to the left of Bouchard and made no attempt to get off him.
After that, quickly and suddenly, everyone got involved, just as they were supposed to be leaving the ice and heading back to their respective dressing rooms. And they got involved very quickly! Nilan went after Randy Moller and pummeled him with, as Red Fisher of the Gazette put it, “a series of punches”. Nilan cut him up pretty badly in the altercation.
The backup goalies, Richard Sevigny and Clint Malarchuk were going at it in one corner. Mario Tremblay grabbed Peter Stastny and punched him numerous times breaking his nose. Players were everywhere. At one point, on the television broadcast, Bob Cole counted fourteen different fights going on at the same time.
The referee, Bruce Hood, and the linesmen John D’Amico and Bob Hodges were completely overmatched. At one point, D’Amico was trying to separate Louis Sleigher and Jean Hamel. Mario Tremblay was trying to help get the two apart when Sleigher reached over the linesman and suckered Hamel, knocking him out.
In their previous game, according to the Nordiques, Hamel had apparently given Sleigher a stick in the stomach.
It took a long while, but the players all finally went to their respective rooms.
Eventually, Hood and the linesmen had to determine who was penalized and how severely. It took some time but Hood figured out that Nilan and Tremblay of the Canadiens and Sleigher and Peter Stastny of Quebec were all to be given game misconducts.
The only problem was that it had taken too long and no one informed any of the players that they were ejected and so as the players came out for the third period, and they discovered who was in and who was out, another brawl started.
Numerous Canadiens players were trying to get at Sleigher and everything deteriorated into bedlam again. At some point, Mike McPhee got a hold of Sleigher and gave him whatever he could. Two brothers, Mark Hunter of the Canadiens and Dale Hunter of the Nordiques were involved with each other. Cole called it “the brawl to end all brawls” on Hockey Night In Canada. It seemed the only players who didn’t get involved in the fights were the goalies who were playing in the game, Penney, and Bouchard.
It ended up taking about forty minutes to get the players off the ice again and all the penalties sorted out. Both teams came out of the melee-depleted. More game misconducts were handed out for the second brawl. Added to the originals were Mark Hunter, Mike McPhee, and Richard Sevigny of the Canadiens, and Wally Weir, Dale Hunter, and Clint Malarchuk from Quebec.
The third period began with the teams playing 3-on-3. Larry Robinson was one of the Canadiens’ players out there and about two minutes in, was the last man back as he tried to make a pass up ice. That was intercepted by Michel Goulet, who had scored 56 goals during the regular season but had yet to score in the postseason.
He potted it behind Penney to make it 2-0 for Quebec.
You would think that this would energize the Nordiques, but it seemed to get the Canadiens going more. About four minutes after the Goulet goal, Steve Shutt, who had been a healthy scratch for the Habs earlier in the playoffs, got one past Bouchard to make it 2-1. Shutt scored again less than three minutes later to tie the game.
Momentum had swung to the Montreal side. Three minutes after Shutt’s tying goal, Rick Green scored to make it 3-2. Gazette columnist Tim Burke wrote the next day that Green had spent so much time on the disabled list in the 1983-84 season that “some people began to wonder if there really was a Rick Green”.
A minute after Green’s goal, John Chabot scored, and less than a minute after that, Carbonneau scored. Montreal had scored five goals in just over eight minutes!
The pendulum had completely swung in the Canadiens favour. Wilf Paiement scored with just over three minutes left for Quebec but, by that point, it was academic. The Habs had won this edition of la Bataille du Quebec.
So many questions came out of this game.
And many of the answers seemed to point to Bruce Hood, the referee. After the brawl at the end of the second period, why didn’t he tell both teams that no one was to go out on to the ice until “I tell you to”. His failing to inform the teams of the game misconducts after that first brawl allowed every player to go out to the ice to start the third, including the ejected players.
The Nordiques players and their coach were perplexed after the game as to why Hood had not told either team which players had been given game misconducts. They charged that the Canadiens had deliberately gone after Peter Stastny, Dale Hunter and Randy Moller in order to get them to fight and to get them ejected.
Malarchuk told a reporter after the game “I told (Richard) Sevigny, ‘Hunter will kill you’. He told me, ‘That’s not the point’. Obviously, he was willing to get the crap kicked out of himself just to get Dale out of the game.”
Michel Bergeron was beside himself after the game when he told the Gazette’s Herb Zurkowsky, “We lost three of our best players in Moller, Peter and Hunter. They have a lot of competitors. They had all of their best players still in the game. I was just waiting for his (Hood’s) call because I saw Sevigny twice jump on Hunter. And now Peter (Stastny) has a broken nose too. Tremblay certainly did his job, didn’t he?”
Serge Savard didn’t disagree with “Le Petit Tigre”. He told Red Fisher “With him (Stastny) out of the game, we were able to open up for the first time in the series. We had an incredible team effort in the third period. I couldn’t single out one man who was better than another but having Stastny out helped us. When you open up against that team, a guy like Stastny usually is putting the puck in the other team’s net.”
After the Debacle
The Canadiens went on to play the New York Islanders in the Prince of Wales Conference finals. Montreal won the first two games of the series which were played at the Forum. But the Islanders won the next four games and advanced to the Stanley Cup finals against Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers. The Oilers won the series and the Cup in five games.
Montreal appeared in the Cup final series in 1986 and won it in five games against the Calgary Flames. The Cup victory made a star out of the Canadiens’ goaltender Patrick Roy. He was the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as the outstanding player in the playoffs. They also won the Cup in the 1992-93 season with Roy winning the Conn Smythe Trophy once again.
The Nordiques made it to the Conference finals the following year but lost to the Philadelphia Flyers. They continued to make the playoffs until the 1986-87 season and then went into a drought. They had to wait until the 1992-93 season to enjoy postseason play again but lost in the first round to the eventual Cup champion Montreal Canadiens.
After the 1994-95 season, the Nordiques moved to Denver, Colorado and became the Avalanche.
Steve Penney was, undoubtedly, one of the shining lights for the Canadiens in this series and in that playoff year. In the 1983-84 postseason, Penney played in 15 games and posted a 9-6 record with a goals against average of 2.21 and a save percentage of .910. Through the rest of his career, he was never able to match his performance in those 1984 playoffs. The following season, he played in 54 games and posted a 26-18-8 record. His GAA was 3.09 and his save percentage was .876.
That was the best regular season save percentage of his career. The 1985-86 season was his last in Montreal. He played parts of the next two seasons in Winnipeg. His time in the NHL was done after that.
Jean Hamel missed the rest of the playoffs because of injuries he suffered as a result of the punch that Louis Sleigher landed to his face in the melee. Reports at the time said he had a broken nose. What wasn’t immediately reported but came out later was that the punch also detached his retina.
Hamel tried playing in the following pre-season but suffered another eye injury that prompted his retirement. He was immediately hired by the Canadiens as an assistant coach for their Sherbrooke AHL affiliate. He later became their head coach and guided them to consecutive first place finishes in the 1988-89 and 1989-90 seasons.
Bruce Hood continued to work as a referee in the 1984 playoffs. He had a tremendous resume having worked Canada Cups, World Championships and many Stanley Cup Finals series. He was instrumental in forming the NHL Officials Association in 1969. He was also the last official to wear the number 1 on his jersey and the last to work in all of the Original Six arenas.
But his decision-making in the 1984 Montreal-Quebec series and another decision to allow a questionable goal in the Campbell Conference Finals that same year led him to retire. There are many who speculate that the NHL asked (or told) Hood to retire.
This 1983-84 playoff series between the Canadiens and Nordiques has long been remembered by those who were alive to see it.
Not for the entertaining hockey and the intense play between the two teams, however. Instead, it`s been remembered for the brawls that took place in the sixth and deciding game of the series. And that’s the saddest thing. But fans who are old enough will never forget the games through those years in one of the most heated rivalries in all of sport.
Author - Howie Mooney
When he lived in Ottawa, Canada, Howie was a fixture in sports media. He covered the CFL’s Ottawa Rough Riders, the NHL’s Ottawa Senators, and the OHL’s Ottawa 67s for local television. He also did color commentary for Ottawa Lynx games. The Lynx were the Triple-A affiliates of the Montreal Expos and Baltimore Orioles.
He also spent time as co-host on the morning show for Ottawa Sports Radio. He was co-author of Third & Long – A Proud History of Football in Ottawa and is currently the co-host of The Sports Lunatics Show, a sports history podcast.
He is also a feature writer for the FiredUp Network, a sports website out of Toronto.
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