Bob Probert was the most feared fighter of his era and, for one season, a 29-goal scorer. Those two facts sat in the same man and the same year, and nobody in NHL history has repeated the combination.
He played 935 NHL games across 16 seasons for Detroit and Chicago, scored 384 points, and took 3,300 penalty minutes — fifth-most in league history. He also went to prison, lost a season to a motorcycle crash, came back, retired at 37, died at 45, and became one of the first hockey players confirmed to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
This page covers all of it.
Who was Bob Probert?
Robert Alan Probert was born on 5 June 1965 in Windsor, Ontario — directly across the river from Detroit, the city whose team he would eventually define. He played junior hockey in the OHL for Brantford, Hamilton and Sault Ste. Marie, and Detroit took him in the third round of the 1983 NHL Entry Draft, 46th overall.
He was 6-foot-3 and 225 pounds, shot left, and made the Red Wings for the 1985-86 season at 20.
For nine seasons in Detroit he was one half of the “Bruise Brothers” alongside Joey Kocur — a pairing that made the Red Wings the most physically intimidating team in hockey in the late 1980s. He wore number 24. After Detroit released him in 1994 he spent seven seasons with the Chicago Blackhawks, retiring in 2002.
He was known throughout his career simply as Probie.
Bob Probert’s career stats
| GP | G | A | Pts | PIM | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regular season | 935 | 163 | 221 | 384 | 3,300 |
| Playoffs | 81 | 16 | 32 | 48 | 274 |
His 3,300 penalty minutes rank fifth in NHL history. His 2,090 penalty minutes as a Red Wing remain the franchise record, as does his single-season 398.
Bob Probert’s penalty minutes by season
The shape of a career: a violent peak in Detroit, a suspended season at 21 minutes, then a long second act in Chicago.
| Season | Team | PIM |
|---|---|---|
| 1985-86 | Detroit | 186 |
| 1986-87 | Detroit | 221 |
| 1987-88 | Detroit | 398 |
| 1988-89 | Detroit | 106 |
| 1989-90 | Detroit | 21 |
| 1990-91 | Detroit | 315 |
| 1991-92 | Detroit | 276 |
| 1992-93 | Detroit | 292 |
| 1993-94 | Detroit | 275 |
| 1994-95 | did not play | — |
| 1995-96 | Chicago | 237 |
| 1996-97 | Chicago | 326 |
| 1997-98 | Chicago | 48 |
| 1998-99 | Chicago | 206 |
| 1999-00 | Chicago | 114 |
| 2000-01 | Chicago | 103 |
| 2001-02 | Chicago | 176 |
| Career | 3,300 |
How good a hockey player was Bob Probert?
In 1987-88 Probert played 74 games, scored 29 goals and 33 assists for 62 points, finished +16 — and took 398 penalty minutes, the sixth-highest single-season total in NHL history. He was named to the Campbell Conference team for what would be his only NHL All-Star Game.
Then he was Detroit’s best player in the playoffs. With Steve Yzerman out for all but the last three games of the run with a knee injury, Probert put up 8 goals and 13 assists in 16 games — 21 points, leading the team.
No other player has produced a 60-point season and a 350-penalty-minute season simultaneously. That year is one argument for why Probert is remembered differently from the other heavyweights of the era.
How many fights did Bob Probert have?
There is no official answer. The NHL does not record fights as a statistic. What it records is major penalties, and Probert’s official career total is 238 majors in 935 games. That is the closest thing to an authoritative figure that exists.
But a major is not automatically a fight. Fighting is the most common way to draw one, and it is by some distance the main reason Probert drew his — but spearing, charging, butt-ending and high-sticking can all be assessed as majors too. So 238 is a close upper bound on his fights, not a count of them.
The fan-compiled databases, which log fights from video and box scores rather than league data, land in the same neighbourhood — HockeyFights lists somewhere around 240 across regular season, playoffs and preseason, and other compilations put the figure slightly higher.
The honest answer is: roughly 240, and the reason nobody can be more precise than that is that the league never counted.
Did Bob Probert ever lose a fight?
Yes. The most famous one is the reason a journeyman named Troy Crowder had a career.
On 4 October 1990, in the opening game of Probert’s first full season back after his suspension, Crowder — a 22-year-old with New Jersey — beat him, badly and on camera, and cut his cheek. It made Crowder’s name overnight and set up a rematch that was among the most anticipated fights of the decade: the two met twice more in a single game on 28 January 1991.
Probert lost fights across a 16-year career during which he fought roughly 240 times, mostly against men whose entire job was fighting. What made his reputation was not that he never lost — it was that for most of a decade nobody wanted the assignment.
Read more: Bob Probert paused a fight to say six words to Troy Crowder · Bob Probert’s hardest jab — Daryl Stanley didn’t stand a chance
Who did Bob Probert fight the most?
The recurring names span his whole career and most of them were the designated heavyweights of their own teams:
- Tie Domi — the defining rivalry of the era, fought repeatedly across Domi’s time with the Rangers, Winnipeg and Toronto. How Domi talked him into the first one →
- Craig Coxe — two celebrated bouts in the mid-1980s with Vancouver
- Stu Grimson — a series that ran from Detroit into the Chicago years. His honest words about Probert →
- Marty McSorley — including a February 1994 fight that ran close to 100 seconds
- Joey Kocur — his own Bruise Brother, once they ended up on opposite sides. Kocur on their first fight →
- Craig Berube — who fought him four times in three days
- Troy Crowder — the October 1990 fight, then two more on a single night in January 1991
- Jody Shelley — three fights in a single game in January 2002, near the end. How Shelley challenged him by accident →
- Donald Brashear, Wendel Clark, Darren Langdon and Scott Parker — Parker regretted his instantly
Bob Probert vs Tie Domi
The rivalry that defined heavyweight hockey in the 1990s. Domi arrived in the league openly campaigning for the fight, got it, and the two met repeatedly over the following decade — through Domi’s spells with the Rangers, Winnipeg and Toronto.
The context that gets forgotten: Domi finished with 3,515 career penalty minutes and Probert with 3,300, so this was the two of the five most-penalized players in NHL history fighting each other, at their peaks, several times a season.
Read more: Tie Domi reveals the player who punched him the hardest · Tie Domi refused to name his toughest opponent · When Peter Forsberg messed with Tie Domi and Bob Probert
Bob Probert vs Tony Twist
Tony Twist was the St. Louis heavyweight, and St. Louis was the team Probert faced more than any other — 75 regular-season games, more than against any other franchise. Probert took 291 penalty minutes and 19 majors against the Blues, his third-highest total against anyone.
Read more: Bob Probert’s words to Twist before their final fight says it all
What was Bob Probert’s nickname?
Probie. It is what teammates, opponents and Detroit called him for 16 years and what is still on the tribute jerseys.
He also shared one: the Bruise Brothers, the name given to him and Joey Kocur as a Red Wings pairing in the late 1980s. It stuck hard enough to become the title of a book about the two of them.
Why was Bob Probert suspended?
In March 1989 Probert was stopped at the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel crossing with 14 grams of cocaine. He was convicted, served three months in a federal prison in Minnesota followed by three months in a halfway house, and was suspended indefinitely by the NHL.
He was reinstated in 1990 on completing his sentence. The conviction also triggered deportation proceedings against him as a Canadian citizen living in the United States; his appeal was not resolved until December 1992, when his travel privileges were restored.
The 21 penalty minutes in the 1989-90 column of the table above are what a season looks like when almost all of it is served away from the rink.
Read more: Bob Probert’s perfect response after getting mocked by an opponent’s coach
Why did Detroit release Bob Probert?
On 15 July 1994 Probert crashed his motorcycle in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan. His blood alcohol level was roughly three times the legal limit and there were traces of cocaine in his system.
Detroit released him four days later, ending nine seasons. Chicago signed him within the week — on 23 July — but he did not play at all in 1994-95, spending the year in treatment and rehabilitation. His Blackhawks career began in 1995-96 and ran seven seasons.
How did Bob Probert die?
Probert died on 5 July 2010, aged 45.
He was boating on Lake St. Clair with his family during a severe heat wave when he developed chest pain and collapsed early in the afternoon. His stepfather-in-law, a Cornwall, Ontario police chief, performed CPR. He was pronounced dead at Windsor Regional Hospital. The cause was a heart attack.
His funeral was held in Windsor on 9 July. Steve Yzerman gave the eulogy. The procession was led by 54 motorcyclists and his casket was carried on a custom-built motorcycle sidecar.
In April 2017, at the final game played at Joe Louis Arena, his ashes were spread in the Red Wings penalty box.
Read more: Steve Yzerman’s final words to Bob Probert during eulogy
Did Bob Probert have CTE?
Yes. In September 2010, two months after his death, his family announced they were donating his brain to the Sports Legacy Institute for study — a decision Probert had discussed with his wife before he died.
In March 2011, researchers at Boston University confirmed that his brain showed evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative disease associated with repeated head trauma. He was among the first NHL players in whom it was identified.
The finding carried particular weight because of who he was. Probert had fought roughly 240 times in the NHL, and the diagnosis moved the argument about fighting in hockey from the abstract to the specific.
Bob Probert’s family
Probert married Danielle Wood in 1993 and they had four children. Dani Probert has spoken publicly about his career, his death and the CTE finding in the years since, and worked on his memoir.
Tough Guy: My Life on the Edge, written with Kirstie McLellan Day, was published in October 2010, three months after he died. He had completed the interviews for it before his death.
Which team did Bob Probert take the most penalty minutes against?
Toronto — 383 penalty minutes in 65 games, a rate of 5.89 per game against a career rate of 3.53. Chicago is second at 299, taken entirely before he signed there.
More on Bob Probert
Every Bob Probert story we have published — the fights, the stories his opponents tell, and the man away from the rink — is collected here: all our Bob Probert articles.
