Wednesday, February 01, 2006

 

The Scott Stevens Show

The New Jersey Devils will be honouring former captain Scott Stevens in a ceremony in 2 days time.

Love him or hate him, Stevens was one of the best defensive defensemen in NHL history and also one of the very best bodycheckers. If you don't believe me, just ask Eric Lindros, Shane Willis, or Tie Domi. (Although they may not remember those hits...)

I know some consider Stevens to be a dirty player, but I consider him to be the very essence of "borderline". Stevens would do whatever he could that was just within the rules, and he was good at not crossing the line from 'clean' to 'dirty'. When he laid an open-ice hit, he did not stick his elbow out and he did not run players from 30 feet away. (at least not very often, unlike Bryan Marchment and his magical knee of death)

People also tend to forget that Stevens was a hell of an offensive defenseman early in his career with the St. Louis Blues. When the Blues were forced to give Stevens up in the Brendan Shanahan 'tampering' case, the Blues were never really the same until Chris Pronger blossomed.

If you want to relive some of Scott Stevens' best moments, check out this video gallery over at the New Jersey Devils official website.

# posted by Unknown @ 12:22 pm
Comments:
The blindside shot on Ron Francis in the '01 Cup playoffs was one that seems to have been left off the highlight reel. Not saying it was dirty, just "borderline."
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 3:13 pm
 
No, he just led with the shoulder and followed through with the elbow, and hit behind the play.

Don't believe me? Watch the Francis hit.

And then there was 2002, when he kept trying to take runs at Sami Kapanen and got visibly upset because Sami always saw him coming and got out of his way.
# posted by Blogger The Acid Queen : 9:35 pm
 
And while we're at it, we may has well talk about the Shane Willis hit. Stevens led with (and followed through with) the left elbow. He made no attempt to make a play on the puck. His stick was held high above his head. His only attempt was to injure the player. The same can be said of many of his other famous hits.
The Paul Kariya hit also comes to mind as a particularly vicious and completely dirty hit. I don't know what kind of hookers and money he used to pay off the refs for that one to have gone unpenalized.

Call him "borderline" if you want, but the rest of us know that he was an ass.

Indeed he has reached a lot of milestones, but I have little respect for him.

At the very least, the Canes should be able to take a big steaming shit on the Devils parade by winning the game.
# posted by Blogger d-lee : 11:32 pm
 
wow. we still love scott stevens here(and his offensive abilities included the ability to start a transition game that was, at that time, the only way to get a scoring chance down the line)

tough guys play rough, this ain't ice skating, anyone who ever watched pronger knows what dirty is :) but anyone who every watched the chopper, watched CLOSELY knows what really dirty hockey was.

and then you got dale hunter, a bettman beloved player (bettman elected him to the all star game after all), and capital fan favorite who has a list so long that the fact he gave a cheap shot that injured PT after the game winning goal was scored and celebrated barely registers

i never seen ANY defensive d-man who didnt do brutal things in the name of his team (pronger, macinnis, foote, hatcher, hatcher, blake, plager, mangusen, driver, lidstrom, park, bourque, butcher, little dougie crossman, petit, ad infinitum)

stevens was NEVER butcher brutal, he was NEVER hunter brutal, he was NEVER mcsorely brutal, marchment brutal, hell he never even made it to young shannahan brutal AND like jackman on this current blues team, IF he was rough he stood there and didnt turtle like claude lapointe!
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 9:26 am
 
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