Marty McSorley

What happened between Marty McSorley and Donald Brashear?

With 4.6 seconds left in a Boston game against Vancouver on 21 February 2000, McSorley swung his stick and struck Donald Brashear in the head. Brashear fell backwards onto the ice, lost his helmet and suffered a grade III concussion. The two had fought earlier in the same game, and McSorley had been trying to get a rematch before the clock ran out.

McSorley has said since that he meant to catch Brashear's shoulder to provoke another fight rather than hit his head. He never played in the NHL again.

What did the court decide?

McSorley was charged in British Columbia and tried before a judge rather than a jury. On 6 October 2000 the judge found him guilty of assault with a weapon, rejecting the argument that the contact had been accidental. The sentence was an 18 month conditional discharge, which carried no jail time and left McSorley without a criminal record provided he met the conditions.

The verdict is what makes the case unusual rather than typical: criminal charges over on-ice conduct in the NHL have been rare, and convictions rarer still.

How long was Marty McSorley's suspension?

The NHL first suspended McSorley for the remainder of the 1999-2000 season and its playoffs, then extended the ban to a full year running to 21 February 2001. At the time it was the longest suspension handed out for an on-ice incident in the modern NHL, and the benchmark later cases were measured against.

McSorley was eligible to return once the year expired. No club signed him, and his career closed at 961 regular season games without him taking another NHL shift.

The illegal stick in the 1993 Stanley Cup Final

Los Angeles led Montreal 2-1 in Game 2 of the 1993 Stanley Cup Final on 3 June 1993, and the Kings led the series 1-0. With 1:45 left, Montreal coach Jacques Demers called for a measurement of McSorley's stick. The blade was illegal, McSorley took a two minute penalty at 18:15, and Eric Desjardins tied the game on the power play at 18:47 before winning it 51 seconds into overtime.

Montreal won the next three games and the Cup. Gretzky has told his own version of the stick measurement since.

Marty McSorley as Wayne Gretzky's bodyguard

Edmonton paired McSorley with Gretzky in the late 1980s, and when Gretzky was traded to Los Angeles in August 1988 McSorley went west in the same deal. The arrangement was explicit: opponents who took liberties with the best player in the game at the time would answer to McSorley, and the Kings paid for that insurance across eight seasons.

The two were close enough for the stories to outlast the hockey. McSorley has described what Gretzky was like in practice, and the one-liner that made Gretzky walk off.

Marty McSorley's two Stanley Cups in Edmonton

McSorley won the Stanley Cup with Edmonton in 1987 and again in 1988. He had arrived from Pittsburgh in 1985 and slotted into a roster that already had Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri and Paul Coffey, where his job was to make sure the skill players were left alone. He was gone by the time Edmonton won again in 1990, having left for Los Angeles with Gretzky.

Two is the correct number. Some accounts credit McSorley with three Edmonton Cups by counting 1985, a season he spent in Pittsburgh.

What Marty McSorley has done since the NHL

McSorley moved into coaching first, taking charge of the AHL Springfield Falcons from 2002 to 2004. He has worked as a television analyst for Sportsnet and on Hockey Night in Canada, and has taken acting roles in film and television.

He has also kept talking about the Brashear incident rather than avoiding it, which is unusual for a player attached to a moment of that kind. Younger opponents remember a different side of him, as the night a rookie Jeremy Roenick went up against McSorley shows.