For Detroit Red Wings fans, it defined a generation.
For Red Wings players, it turned them into champions.
It was 20 years ago today that the Red Wings and Colorado Avalanche brawled at Joe Louis Arena and Detroit forward Darren McCarty exacted revenge on Colorado’s Claude Lemieux for the facial injuries he caused to Wings forward Kris Draper with a dirty hit from behind into the boards in Game 6 of the Western Conference final, part of a line brawl during the first period of Detroit’s 6-5 overtime win over the Avalanche.
To this day, it remains the seminal moment of McCarty’s NHL career - and don’t forget, he scored the OT winner that night and a couple of months later, produced the Stanley Cup-winning tally with a highlight-reel marker against the Philadelphia Flyers.
“Around here, more people want to talk to me about the fight,” McCarty said. “When people come up to me, they say 'What you did to Lemieux, that was awesome, man. And, oh yeah, nice goal, too.’”
With Draper, the man who was the linchpin to the whole thing, it’s also something that people still frequently bring up in conversation.
“Probably the two biggest conversations I have with Wings fans are the $1 trade (was the Wings paid Winnipeg to acquire him) and then this, obviously, the hit in ’96 and the brawl in ’97,” Draper said. “A lot of people want to talk about that game.
“That thing, you can’t script that any better. I think that was something … when you watch the brawl and you hear the fans, you can hardly hear the announcer, it’s that loud. It just seems like there was roar after roar after roar as the sequence of it just played out.
“You remember even in the dressing room it was like you felt that was something special we just did, and obviously for me it meant a lot, with the way my teammates responded and the way Mac responded. That was something that meant a lot to me and something that I’ll never forget.”
Beyond avenging Draper, March 26, 1997 was also about exorcising demons for the Red Wings. Up until that day, the Avalanche had proven to be Detroit’s kryptonite.
Colorado beat Detroit in the 1996 conference final after the Wings had won an NHL-record 62 games during the regular season, and up until March 26, the Avs were 3-0 against the Wings in 1996-97.
Detroit would go on to eliminate the Avalanche in the 1996-97 Western Conference final en route to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup triumph since 1954-55.
“I think when you look at a lot of teams that go on to win the Stanley Cup, they can pick - it might be a playoff game, it might be a regular season game down the stretch - something they allude to that they believe ‘this is our year’ kind of thing,” Draper said..
“There’s always that special defining moment of great teams. For us, that was a big one. Just with the previous losses we’d had, not being able to beat Colorado through the ’96-97 year. They had a swagger, they had a great team, they had great young players, and we had to beat them, we had to find a way to believe in ourselves that we could beat them, and I think that night, that’s the one thing I’ve always tried to make an impression on - the brawl was obviously something but for us the way we responded and the way we came back in that game and then Mac coming out and scoring the OT winner, that was huge.
“If it was just the brawl and we lost, there still probably would have been a good feeling the way it played out, but back in our minds and back in their minds they would know they still had our number if we didn’t win that hockey game. They would know that going into the conference finals.
“Not only the brawl but coming back from the deficit, I think it was three goals, not only winning it in overtime but Darren McCarty winning it in overtime. I just think when you look at the way that game played itself out, for our team, we couldn’t have scripted that any better, the fight, the game, the comeback and then obviously Mac scoring the goal in overtime. That was for us.
“And then in the locker room … I don’t think the 20,000 fans at that game wanted to leave. There’s no chance there was a single fan that left that game early, with everything that was going on.”
More than a fight, more than revenge, it was the night that galvanized the Wings into a championship team.
Detroit Red Wings Blogger • 
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