Armchair Pools Blog

Over 1215 NHL games, Lemieux totalled 1777 penalty minutes. Thats 73rd on the all time list - 5 points behind Paul Coffey. Not exactly numbers you'd expect from the world's dirtiest hockey player. But if you ever watch Lemieux play, you'd understand. Unlike the Tootoo's and the Nilan's, Lemieux tried to perform his dirty work unnoticed. He was the master of the suckerpunch behind the play, the accidental poke or the quick slash when no one was looking.

Check out this video clip from 1998. Lemieux "accidentally" wipes out Boston Goalie Andy Moog without either of the Bruins defensemen noticing.




In March, 1995 while sitting at his own bench during a nearby scrum, Lemieux carefully scanned the referee's positions before delivering a suckerpunch to the head of Brett Lindros.

Voted the 7th dirtiest pro sports player by ESPN, Lemieux has attracted the hate of many players around the league for his dirty play. However, Lemiuex cautions people to let go of their anger. ''You don't hate." said Lemieux, "you just dislike. How can you hate someone you don't even know? If you have any Christian belief, it's not O.K. to hate anyone. But there are a lot of players out there who dislike how I play.''

One player who may have a "dislike" for Lemieux's style of play is Kris Draper. Draper was the recipient of Claude Lemieux's most well-known pieces of dirtywork. From hockeydraftcentral.com

Perhaps more than anything else, Claude Lemieux's NHL career will be remembered for a vicious hit against Detroit's Kris Draper during Game 6 of Colorado's Western Conference finals series vs. Detroit on May 30, 1996. At 14:07 of the first period, Lemieux checked Draper from behind as Draper was playing the puck along the boards near center ice. Draper's face crashed into the boards, leaving him with a fractured upper jaw, a fractured cheekbone, a broken nose, a 30-stitch cut on the inside of his mouth and five displaced teeth. As a result of the hit, the NHL suspended Lemieux for the first two games of the 1996 Stanley Cup Finals and fined him $1,000.

Maybe Lemieux summed up his style of play the best during an interview published by the New York Times when he said "You'll whack somebody sometimes, maybe just give a guy a slash, maybe 15 seconds of little shooting pain. That takes him off his game. ... It's just a mean game. Just a little bit of a crazy game we play.''

Crazy? I'll tell you who's crazy. Claude Lemiuex is crazy. And dirty.