Tony Twist played ten seasons in the NHL, and he didn’t last that long because of his goal-scoring abilities or great playmaking.
However, he had other great attributes that made him a beloved teammate and a huge fan favorite in St. Louis.
Twist was a great fighter and an old-school enforcer who did everything to win, defend his teammate, and strike fear into his opponent.
Throughout his 445 career games, he only scored ten goals and 28 points. Still, everyone who played with him absolutely loved him, and it had everything to do with him accumulating 1,121 penalty minutes.
Twist was a huge guy, and with his 6,1” and 230 pounds, he was a nightmare to drop the gloves with.
Twist is often acknowledged as one of the best fighters the NHL has ever seen, and if there were a heavyweight champion, Twist would definitely have been in the mix.
Twist was the guy to fight if you were in the NHL, but it wasn’t an easy task. One time, Toronto brought up a player named Frank Bialowas from the minors, and his mission with the Leafs was clear:
To fight Twist. And the media did their best to hype the fight up.
”It’s all over the paper that the fight card had been set,” Twist said in a piece for The Athletic.
But Twister had other plans. In the morning skate, he did the most humiliating thing against his opponents, which set the tone for the following fight.
”In the morning skate, I go over to their bench. I’ve got no shirt on, and I’m taping my stick on their bench and I’m drinking their water. Nobody said a word. I fought Frank that night, and he didn’t last long in the NHL,” Twist said.
Frank Bialowas earned the nickname ’The Animal,’ but he only played four games in the NHL. He didn’t get many chances in the NHL after the fight with Tony Twist, and he was yet again sent down to the AHL, where he the same season accumulated 352 penalty minutes.
