Scorchstack Issue #35: It’s a very rare non-bald Robyn Regehr
The most image heavy version of the ScorchStack to date. Good news for the image stans, bad news for the textheads.
“Mine has a ton of images too. That's all that's left for this season. Reading is right out. We're like a magazine, and that's what magazines are.” - Floob, Creative Visionary of the Scorchstack.
What’s inside?
The Flames are missing Sam Bennett, but only in this one particular way.
Local Woman Finds One Weird Trick To Never Lose A Hockey Game Again- Coaches HATE Her
20 years ago, the Flames got into a big fight. For no reason, here’s an article about it.
Since last week
The Flames got back on the playoff track with a decisive 4-1 win against Montreal!
But you know what comes next whenever the Flames look like they’re back on track. That’s right, the Ottawa Senators, and they’ve ruined the season again. Darryl Sutter still has his job, however, so maybe it wasn’t that bad.
Scorchstack #34 said goodbye to our trade deadline losses, made yet another bold proclamation, and outlined our vision for the future.
Small Monday Thing? You absolute imbecile.
Post-Trade Deadline Calgary Flames With A Sam Bennett Mustache
Post-Trade Deadline Calgary Flames With A Sam Bennett Mustache
by Floob (@itlooksreal)
As we all know by now, Sam Bennett is gone. The former fourth overall pick is now plying his trade at centre in Sunrise, Florida for a Panthers team poised to make a playoff run, and Bennett already has three goals in three games. Things are looking up.
On the homefront, life just hasn’t felt the same since Sam made his trek south. I think many of us can agree that while he wasn’t the best player, we definitely liked him a lot, and his absence on this roster is noted.
But what if there was a way to hold onto a piece of him to preserve his memory? What if I told you that was possible? What if I told you that all we need to lionize Sam Bennett is one singular part of what made him who he was?
Well, guess what, bucko, that’s true, and we’ve done it. We here at the Scorchstack have preserved the legacy left behind by Sam Bennett by growing his mustache on several members of the post-trade deadline team. The look is sleek, provides players extra confidence, and I dare say just makes everyone extra handsome.
So now, without further adieu, Post-Trade Deadline Calgary Flames With A Sam Bennett Mustache
Mikael Backlund
Dillon Dube
Johnny Gaudreau
Milan Lucic
Elias Lindholm
all right, well
Andrew Mangiapane
Sean Monahan
Derek Ryan
Matthew Tkachuk
Rasmus Andersson
Mark Giordano
Noah Hanifin
Oliver Kylington
Chris Tanev
Juuso Valimaki
Jacob Markstrom
Scorch
I don’t know about you but I just feel better already.
How to never get below 0.500
I can't believe nobody has done this
by ramz (@ramzreboot)
So the title is a little clickbait-y. I’m not necessarily lying, just hear me out. I have found a way that teams will never lose a game in regulation. They will always get at least one point. Now, I know if you lose like 10 games in OT or shootout you’re not 0.500 or anything, even though you’re still getting 50% of the points available, which is why the title is clickbait-y, but the point still stands. Actually, I don’t know if you are 0.500 in that case or not, I literally do not understand anything to do with the NHL. What the fuck is a puck?
Anyway, here’s what I had in mind. I briefly touched on this in this piece where I made this incredible diagram:
This idea is similar, but a little different. First, the goalie has to stay right up to the net and positioned like this practically the whole game:
Of course, he’s wearing pads and equipment, so it’s more like:
I drew it in blue so you could see. Now, we have two players standing on each side with their arms spread out, so it looks like this:
However, they’re also both wearing equipment, so it’s really like this:
There is literally zero empty space there. You could be in your own zone the entire time, you could get outshot 70-0 and it would still be 0-0 after 60 minutes of play. This is all you have to do for the entire game and you will literally never get scored on. Once you get to OT? Do it again. Then you get to a shootout where, unfortunately, you can’t do this. However, you’re still getting at least a point. So you will not finish the game with less than 50% of the points available, giving you a real shot at playoffs.
Will the game be extremely boring? Yes. But that’s not my issue, take up with a judge.
The Flames vs Mighty Ducks brawl, or a salute to Dave Lowry
There is no special occasion for this, I just don't want to talk about current hockey anymore and this was in my YouTube recommendations
by Christian (@decayinwtheboys)
Last week, I found the only video evidence of Rico Fata playing for the Calgary Flames: a preseason fight.
The YouTube algorithm must’ve keyed in on three things: vintage, Calgary Flames, hockey fights. Naturally, this classic Flames vs Mighty Ducks brawl popped into my recommendations, so I watched it.
And I need to break this down, because:
a) It’s a Scorchstack staple to break down bizarre hockey videos, and
b) There was so much more going on than just twenty minutes of hockey fighting. There are shirtless drunkards, two very sad goalies, a 20-year-old man challenging a 60-year-old to a fight, one of the greatest middle fingers I’ve seen in hockey, a Flames tradition (maybe) being dishonoured, and so much more.
Come with me as we dive into this very old, until-now unremarkable piece of Flames history.
Background: It’s December 8th, 2001. The Flames are in a rough patch of the year. They’ve started the season with only two regulation losses through their first 21 games, but the wheels are falling off. Heading into this game, they’ve only won once in their previous ten. They’re still better than the Mighty Ducks, who have only won twice in their last 15 and have only scraped overtime points from three of those games. Both teams are hungry for a win.
But it’s the overmatched Ducks who are winning this one, and decisively too. The Flames are relying on the shell of team legend Mike Vernon (Roman Turek is hurt), and it’s going just as well as you could hope for a 38-year-old goalie pressed into starting action.
0:00: It’s 4-0 Ducks and it’s unclear how much time is left, as there’s no score bug. I think this is being broadcast on Calgary 7 (Global), but Peter Maher is commentating for some reason. It seems like whoever made this video ripped both the radio broadcast audio and the video independently and stitched them together. I can’t figure out how that happened.
Anyways, it’s late in the third period. Hockey Reference tells me there’s 4:16 left.
0:08 - Here’s our inciting incident. The Flames dump the puck in behind the net and J.S. Giguere goes out of the net to dump it back out. Flames pugilist Craig Berube (who we’ve previously discussed as one of the worst Flames of all time) is chasing, but he gives Giguere a pretty stiff bump after he clears the puck. This gets the crowd amped, as indicated by the dude with the air horn letting out a few blasts to show his approval.
Naturally, Giguere takes exception and gives Berube a catcher to the face to show his objection. The hapless Niclas Havelid steps in to defend his goaltender. It does not go well for him.
The broadcast should’ve edited in the “anvil dropped on head” cartoon noise here. I think it would’ve been funny.
The fireworks don’t start here, though. Everyone seems levelheaded right now. There’s the customary locking up when things get violent, but no one’s dropped the gloves yet and the situation mostly looks defused.
There’s some pretty strong bias on behalf of Peter Maher, who doesn’t understand the Anaheim objections, as Berube laid a “clean” hit on Giguere. Let’s go back a few seconds.
Here’s where Giguere releases the puck. Berube has about a second to change course or apply the breaks. I’ll give Berube this: it’s not enough time and contact was maybe inevitable, but it still doesn’t really explain why Berube was beelining for Giguere or why he feels it necessary to finish his check. We’d also give the benefit of the doubt to Berube, who is closing in on 3,000 career penalty minutes at this point in his career.
The refs give him that penalty, and make it a double for both roughing and charging. They’re trying that game management that NHL refs are famous for, giving Berube four minutes to hopefully keep him out of the game until the final buzzer sounds. There is 4:16 left in the game. They have not done basic math. This comes up again.
1:45 - Based on the cut, we’re a bit further into the game now. Nothing appears to have happened in the interim between Berube and now, but that’s all about to change thanks to Kevin Sawyer.
If that name doesn’t ring any bells, it’s because he’s a very low-level AHL pugilist who has only played a handful of NHL games in his seven-year pro career. He’s on the Ducks right now because they don’t have anyone else. This is probably the only Kevin Sawyer clip available, and it’s the highlight play of his career:
Okay, look, don’t blame me for the quality of this screenshot. This video was uploaded in 2006, when quality standards weren’t that high. There’s no tracking or static in this entire video either, so we can’t blame a VHS for reducing the quality. I feel like this was passed around Limewire for years, but I can’t verify that. My best guess is that this is a homebrew video stitched together from both the radio and television broadcasts by someone who was holding onto this for a while. Bizarre stuff.
(If you’re so inclined, here’s a higher quality edit of sports networks covering the event, but it’s not the full thing)
A/V nerd rant is over. Here’s Kevin Sawyer’s career-defining moment in what YouTube assures me is 240p. In case you can’t tell, the mass of humanity in the middle of that picture is Sawyer running into Vernon a few seconds after the whistle.
Naturally, chaos ensues. Sawyer knows this is his moment and has dropped his gloves and undone his helmet before he even turns around to see who’s fighting him. It’s a very rare non-bald Robyn Regehr who squares up with Sawyer.
Jarome Iginla is also sticking up for his goalie by fighting a very bald Denny Lambert. In a matter of seconds, Iginla has managed to rip off all of Lambert’s upper padding and jersey, which is stuck on Lambert’s wrist, and now he’s using it as a weapon (I couldn’t get a good screenshot, but he is flailing a whole chest protector as well as elbow pads at Iginla’s head and still losing).
No one seems to care about what’s happening here, as there’s another fight happening right now and Vernon is still down on the ice. There’s 1:25 left in the game, there’s an injury, and a few people have been kicked out. This has to be over, right?
Nope, play doesn’t even start back up before something has happened again. Dean McAmmond has knocked down Oleg Tverdovsky and gets kicked out. Tverdovsky points to the scoreboard on the way back to the bench. Everyone kinda seems like they’re waiting for this to wind down. We still have 17 minutes left in this video, probably just some post-game interviews and whatnot.
6:47 - Most of this video early on is refs and players milling about, trying to figure out penalties and clear gloves and sticks off the ice. We get a lot of fan shots, including this gem.
Whatever happened to shirtless fans? I swear there was at least a few guys sans shirt per game. That dropped off. I know it’s December, but guy #3 needs to work on his tan.
7:03 - I can’t screenshot this so you’ll have to verify it for yourself, but Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” is playing in the background. The Flames are currently losing 4-0. I was always under the impression that “Ring of Fire” was the Flames’ victory song (you know, cause of the “and the Flames, they went higher” part?), was that not always the case? Did they play that on accident? How did they botch that?
7:21- Alright, we’ve been bantering about for about four minutes now, we have 1:25 left in the game, and play is finally set to resume. Let’s get this over with.
7:22-
Nope.
We got Bob Boughner, Denis Gauthier, Steve Begin, and Clarke Wilm all fighting. Somewhere in here, Ruslan Salei headbutts someone. He gets an intent to injure penalty, but we don’t get to see it. Steve Begin is very upset about it.
Boughner is here pointing at something.
I can’t figure out what it is, it can’t be the scoreboard. I don’t want to load the article up with a lot of pictures, but he’s talking to an Anaheim coach. I think he’s challenging a 60-year-old man to fight in the parking lot after the game?
9:30- We’re back to milling about, waiting for everything to settle down. Peter Maher plugs Alberta Boots and their famous Boot Trick, if any Calgary Flames player scores three goals, they’ll win a new pair of boots from Alberta Boots. I wrote that from memory, by the way.
But it’s still 4-0 Anaheim and there’s 1:24 left in this game.
10:20- Colour commentator Doug Barkley is upset that Iginla had to fight but the Ducks were smart enough to sit Paul Kariya in the box. He’s spent about half this video flip-flopping between “well that’s what these guys are paid to do” and “this is just unnecessary” and now he’s doing it with “I understand why you don’t want your best players fighting” and “it’s good that your best players are fighting.” He is very, very close to making a good point and he always shuts up before he puts it together.
11:28- If you’ve come for the fights, I’m sorry, but there’s a lot of filler in this video and consequently in this article. I just want to point out that they’re playing the Metallica Mission Impossible 2 song in the background. Hey. Hey-hey-heyyyyyyyyyy. Ain’t no mercy, ain’t no mercy left for meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. That’s a great segue to-
12:53-
We finally get a sign of life from Mike Vernon, who is still in this game for some reason. You can still see the terror in his eyes through all the pixels.
I imagine Vernon’s flashing back to the only fight he’s had in his career, the famous Red Wings-Avalanche brawl from a few years prior. He’s remembering when all 5’9” of Mike Vernon had to jump into at least two or three fights before squaring off against Patrick Roy to prove himself. In the end, he somehow bloodied up Roy in a spirited battle. With all the honour on the line, he did the last thing anyone expected Mike Vernon to do.
Four years later, he’s found himself back where his NHL career all started, except he’s 38 now, he sucks, the team around him sucks, and every player who has stepped on the ice for the past one second of game time has fought someone else. He is already losing 4-0 to a basement expansion team, is probably concussed, and 12 minutes ago he saw his natural fight partner J.S. Giguere punch one of the NHL’s most well-decorated goons in Craig Berube for daring to touch him. He is surrounded by about approximately 10,000 bloodthirsty, riled-up fans, and whichever players who haven’t been kicked out are willing to oblige.
Vernon is waiting for that clock to hit 0:00. His career is almost over, but he does not want it to end here. This is not worth it.
13:00- Sorry Mike, it’s fight time again. Rob Niedermeyer squares off with Mike Leclerc in what could really just be called violent hugging, while Toni Lydman has a more lively battle with Pavel Trnka. If it’s any consolation, the scorer runs an extra two seconds off despite the fights happening right after the puck is dropped. Everything is more obligatory now, so things get cleaned up quite quickly.
14:34- Dave Lowry, Flames captain, is at the penalty box yet again getting instructions from the refs to cool it. This is very important to point out because of what Lowry does later in the game. Please keep this in mind.
15:10- I think about eight seconds of game time has burned off since the original fighting began at 1:45 in this video. If you don’t count the time burned off at the third round of fighting at 13:00, most of that game time happens here where the players don’t start fighting after the puck is dropped.
No, it takes three seconds, and then the fights resume. Ronald Petrovicky and Dan Bylsma (it is weird how many future Cup-winning coaches are in this game) have a pretty vicious fight. Away from the cameras, Lowry is trying to incite another fight by shooting the puck at Jason York. This is very funny considering the last timestamp, but this is not what I was referring to.
16:13- That past fight was relatively uniform, as we’re already back in action. Everyone wants this game to end.
16:48- Congratulations everyone, we’ve made it to the longest stretch of this video where actual hockey is played. The fans are booing that there’s no longer any fighting. The Ducks have the puck in their end and they’re just burning the clock.
16:58- Well that didn’t last long. Here comes Scott Nichol to end this ceasefire and he doesn’t even disguise what he’s here to do:
His attempted bodyslam on Tverdovsky is interrupted by Giguere, who has been waiting for the fights to return to the Anaheim end. Vernon is happy to stay in his net. Giguere gets kicked out with 31 seconds left, ending his shutout bid.
17:41- Oh my god is that Don Henderson.
That is Don Henderson, Peter Maher has confirmed it. Don is wrestling Scott Nichol back to the bench (Nichol apparently spat at the Mighty Ducks bench, which is why Henderson took action) at approximately the same spot where he will be rudely sent into early retirement by Dennis Wideman 15 years later. I don’t know what to make of this other than Don should’ve learned right here that working a Flames game was a bad idea.
19:05- All right, this has to be over now. There is literally almost no one on the bench. Marc Savard, who has not been seen for the entire video, is now on the ice and the Flames can’t afford to lose him.
19:22- Here’s the big Dave Lowry payoff you’ve been waiting for.
So we’ve spent the last 18 minutes or so watching hockey players go at each other wave after wave like it’s WWI trench warfare. The refs keep telling the coaches and the captains to knock it off for real this time. With nearly everyone kicked out and only the good players remaining, there’s no reason to do anything. The teams will pass it back and for to each other to run things down.
Dave Lowry has heard all of this, and he doesn’t care. He’s already shot the puck at Jason York in order to get something going, and he’s tangled up with a few players, but no one is interested in continuing this but him.
“That’s fine” he probably says to himself, smugly concocting this devilish plan in his head and telling no one.
Play resumes, players are passing the puck around trying to get the clock to zero. Lowry’s playing D (I don’t think there are any defencemen left) and gets the puck passed back to him. He flips it out over the boards immediately. Peter Maher generously says he lost control of the puck.
Remember Craig Berube’s four-minute minor with 4:16 remaining? There is now 13.5 seconds remaining, and there’s a break in the action. Craig Berube can step out of the penalty box now.
This is the 240p smile of a diabolical genius. He’s letting the man who started it all out of the box to end it all, as a fuck you to the refs and to the Mighty Ducks.
I never had any real strong feelings towards Lowry because I was too young to appreciate him, but he’s now up there with the all-time Flames greats. What a move. Down 4-0, nothing to gain, fines and suspensions on the line, and literally just seconds to kill and he refuses to end this. That is some all-time dickery.
20:13- Okay, well maybe it’s not that cool of a move because Berube immediately goes after Jeff Friesen when the puck is dropped despite Friesen knowing what’s coming and skating the hell away. Friesen wants this to end and turtles on the ice while Berube just beats him. It takes all of the refs to get that to end. I guess we have to hold Lowry responsible for that.
21:11- Here’s Kay Whitmore.
He is a very sad man.
There are probably a few reasons he’s sad, but I think he’s mostly sad because he’s a failure. Whitmore was the 26th overall pick in the 1985 draft, but he’s spent the majority of his career in the minors due to being bad. In fact, he’s spent almost every season from 1995 onwards in the minors. Although he had a brief redemption in the AHL in 2000 with the Bruins, he blew his NHL opportunity yet again and had to start over again in Saint John with the Baby Flames.
Now he’s back in the NHL, but only because Roman Turek is injured. And he’s spent the past twenty minutes sitting on the bench watching a constant stream of players head to the locker room early in defence of Mike Vernon, who the Flames won’t take out of the net despite all the circumstances. He’s hurting, the Flames don’t have another goaltender available, and the game has descended into pure lawlessness where players are openly ignoring the refs. A second run at Mike Vernon would likely cost them their only NHL goalie (which is not saying much given how bad Mike Vernon was in 2001). They still won’t put Whitmore in. He’s been watching and waiting for 20 minutes and things never stooped to the point where it’s “Put Kay Whitmore in for 90 seconds” bad. That is the ultimate slap in the face.
21:40- Look, if we’re already disregarding all laws of hockey, why not one more fight. Anaheim’s Sergei Krivokrasov and Igor Kravchuk have one more fight after declining to fight each other earlier in the game. Those showy Russians.
Aftermath:
Kevin Sawyer was suspended five games, Craig Berube for three, Flames coach Greg Gilbert suspended for two, and Scott Nichol for two as well. Ruslan Salei received a $1,000 fine, and the Flames were dinged $25,000. Dave Lowry escaped punishment technically, as the $25,000 fine was put on the team instead of him. All of that seems light.
I want to include this quote from Eric Duhatschek’s post-game about this one. Not because it’s insightful or anything, but because it’s just one last thing to laugh at:
In the latest issue of Sports Illustrated, Sawyer was profiled for his "astounding readiness to drop the gloves by amassing a league-high 118 penalty minutes and 16 fighting majors." The headline said it nicely: "Punch-drunk with joy."
Just the type of person, in other words, that the Walt Disney corporation, owners of the Mighty Ducks, wants representing their organization.
Demanding to speak to the manager of Disney in the national press. Good job man.
Up Next Week
Well the Flames are still mathematically alive, and the Habs appear to want it less than the Flames do, so I guess we actually have some reason to be invested? Then again, COVID appears to have made the Canucks powerful so there’s that to deal with.
Scorchstack: a podcast now?
How many games left in this cursed season? 11? Oh god.