Wendel Clark and Bob Probert built one of the great rivalries of their era, dropping the gloves against each other as many as nine times by Clark’s own count. One Saturday night in Toronto stood out, though – not because of how the fights went, but because of the reason Probert gave for wanting them.
The backstory explains why the moment mattered so much to him. Probert was arrested at the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel in March 1989 for cocaine possession and served three months in a federal prison. He was initially ordered deported and appealed, which let him keep playing for Detroit but barred him from traveling with the team to Canada, since he wouldn’t have been allowed back into the United States. That restriction wasn’t lifted until December 1992.
Clark’s fights with Bob Probert
So when Probert finally got to play a Saturday night game in Toronto, he wasted no time going after the Maple Leafs captain. Once, then again, and possibly a third time in the same game. Somewhere in the middle of it, Clark finally asked what exactly they were doing out there.
Clark told the story on the Clearing The Crease podcast, and Probert’s explanation was as simple as it gets.
“All of a sudden, he’s playing and it was two or three times in Toronto. And I go, ‘What are we doing?’ He goes, ‘My mom’s at the game. She hasn’t seen me play in Canada,'” Clark said. “Who fights in front of their mother?”
READ MORE: Bob Probert’s penalty minutes against every NHL team
Clark couldn’t get through that last line without cracking up. Once he composed himself, though, the tone shifted to something closer to reverence.
“And Probie, I always put him down as probably your toughest or one of the toughest,” Clark said.
Probert, a Windsor, Ontario native, was widely considered the most feared enforcer of his generation, though he was never only that. He spent time on a line with Detroit captain Steve Yzerman and put up multiple 20-goal seasons, which was almost unheard of for a player in his role.
Praise to Probert
What Clark admired most wasn’t any single fight. It was that Probert kept answering the bell deep into his 30s, long after most players in that job had quietly stopped.
“At 35, 36, he was still answering the bell for every heavyweight. Every 18, 19, 20-year-old coming in,” Clark said. “He would do it because he did it when he was a kid. That’s a level of mental toughness.”
Clark also pointed out how rare that is, given how the role tends to wind down.
“At the end of every tough guy’s career, he’s holding on, he’s not fighting,” Clark said. “At his first eight years of his career, he is actually really trying to hurt the guy he’s fighting because that guy’s trying to hurt him, but at the end, he’s just trying to get four more years of a contract. That’s where I give it to Probie.”
READ MORE: Bob Probert: the complete career of the NHL’s most feared enforcer
