Charles Barkley spent 16 seasons in the NBA and the past quarter of a century talking about it on television. Somewhere along the way he became one of hockey’s most enthusiastic admirers, and he summed up the reason in a single comparison on NHL on TNT on Wednesday.
“I saw a guy get like 55 stitches in a hockey game and came back in the game,” Barkley said. “If a basketball player got 10 stitches, he would retire on the spot and take the check.”
Hockey fans loved it, which is roughly the reaction Barkley tends to get whenever he wanders into their sport.
Who returned to an NHL game with 75 stitches?
He isn’t making it up either. The most famous example of a player behaving this unreasonably came a few seasons ago. In Game 1 of Winnipeg’s first-round series against Vegas in April 2023, Morgan Barron was cut above the right eye by the skate of Golden Knights goaltender Laurent Brossoit during a scramble at the net, leaving a trail of blood from the crease to the bench.
He took more than 75 stitches and was back on the ice in the second period wearing a full cage, finishing with 10:44 of ice time and three shots in a 5-1 Jets win. Teammate Adam Lowry offered the definitive description.
“Looks like he got attacked by a shark,” Lowry said.
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Barron’s own account was almost disappointingly calm about the whole thing.
“I was trying to figure out if the puck went in because it was pretty close. I saw the skate coming. It was an unlucky play,” Barron said, per the Washington Post. “The first thought was that I could see out of the eye was the main thing.”
Barkley, meanwhile, has become a regular fixture around TNT’s hockey coverage despite having no obvious connection to the sport, and appears to enjoy it considerably more than he enjoys defending his own.
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