The tooth about the playoffs
If Andrew Shaw did bite Victor Hedman, it was another example of a Cup-hungry player
TAMPA, FLA.— Perhaps you’ve seen the most-analyzed moment of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final. Video replay showed Tampa Bay defenceman Victor Hedman on the bench, showing off a wound to his midsection while appearing to mouth the words “He bit me.”
The “he” was Andrew Shaw of the Chicago Blackhawks, who was involved in a first-period scrum with Hedman wherein Shaw’s head found itself in the vicinity of Hedman’s torso.
Asked after the game if he’d been gnawed by Shaw, Hedman wasn’t exactly definitive
“It felt like it,” Hedman told reporters. “I have a little bruise, so maybe.”
Jim Peplinski, who knows a thing or two about being an in-game snack in the Stanley Cup final, laughed a little when he heard of Hedman’s hedging.
“Maybe?” said Peplinski. “If you’ve been bitten, you know it . . . It is a unique feeling.”
In a sport known for toothlessness, Peplinski was central to one of the more infamous instances of teeth-baring ruthlessness. Game 4 of the 1986 cham- pionship series between the Calgary Flames and Montreal Canadiens featured a brawl wherein Canadiens disturber Claude Lemieux bit Peplinski’s finger. As in Hedman’s case, there was immediate doubt about the origin of the hurt.
Peplinski, speaking on the phone from his vacation home in Muskoka, remembered showing referee Denis Morel the tooth marks that cut to the bone of his bleeding digit.
“I said, ‘Jesus, Denis, look what he did.’ And you know what Denis says? He says, ‘How do I know you didn’t bite yourself?’ ” Peplinski said, laughing. “And I said, ‘Because I’m not stupid.’”
NHLers are required to pass neither an IQ test nor an ethics course to win a Stanley Cup. And there are those who’ve walked in the shoes of the likes of Le- mieux and Shaw — the latter of whom hasn’t yet been made available for comment, was not penalized and will not be subject to NHL discipline —who don’t have a problem with the idea of one player sinking his teeth into another.
Tiger Williams, the league’s all-time leader in penalty minutes, said he was bitten a handful of times during his career. And like Peplinski, he scoffed at the notion that Hedman wasn’t quite sure if he’d been chomped. He suggested that anyone interested in comprehending the feeling of an angry opponent’s teeth penetrating one’s skin should “slam a finger in a door and see how it feels.”
“Getting bit, it zaps you good. Anybody that’s played hockey has had some pain in their life. But this is different,” Williams said. “It’s bad. It hurts. It’s a good way to get anybody’s attention. Ask Mike Tyson.”
The sports world has long known its infamous chompers.
Tyson, the great heavyweight boxer, took off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear in 1997. Luis Suarez, the unhinged soccer star, was banned from the 2014 World Cup for biting an opponent. And the 2011 Stanley Cup final, in which Vancouver’s Alex Burrows appeared to sink his teeth into the gloved finger of Boston’s Patrice Bergeron, was another in a line of hockey’s long tradition of dental aggression.
“(Dave Schultz) didn’t want to engage. I was a little frustrated. So I chomped him at the end of the nose. He squealed like the guy in the movie Deliverance.” TIGER WILLIAMS FORMER NHL STAR
It all seems tame compared to Williams’ recollections of the latter part of the 1970s, the hockey decade famous for the Broad Street Bullies and bench-clearing brawls, wherein the legendary tough guy recalls biting being nearly as rampant as brawling.
“There’s some coaches coaching today and some general managers general-managing today that (bit) me,” Williams said. “But nobody knows about that. And that can stay where it is.”
Nobody knows, Williams said, because nobody told. “To squeal on a guy . . . you should get whipped with a bicycle chain at city hall,” Williams said. “You can’t squeal on each other. The next time you get a chance, bite the bastard back if you think he did it on purpose.”
Did Tiger ever chow down on opposing flesh? “Once,” he said. The victim was Dave Schultz, the Philadelphia Flyers bruiser.
“We got into it and he didn’t want to engage. I was a little frustrated. So I chomped him at the end of the nose,” Williams said, speaking from his cottage on Saskatchewan’s Lake Diefenbaker. “He squealed like the guy in the movie Deliverance. I think he’s still pissed off at me.”
A long list of NHLers, from Chris Chelios to Mikhail Grabovski to Marc Savard, have been accused of toothy sins in the past couple of decades. Willi Plett, who traded punches in the era of Tiger Williams, said he once had the option of biting the fingers of fellow enforcer Jerry Korab, this after Korab gouged at Plett’s eyes and mouth in a scrum. Plett said he chose instead to remove Korab’s fingers from his mouth and dislocate Korab’s thumb.
“We did crazy things back in the day,” Plett said from his home near Atlanta. “If you did that now, you’d get 20 games.”
What is it about the game, and the Stanley Cup, that makes one man want to chew on another?
“There’s some individuals who’ve played the game that just don’t have it in them to do that. And then there’s some who’d cut your throat to win a game. We’re all different,” Williams said. “Everybody can say, ‘Oh, I would never do that.’ But you know what? You’re assuming you would have 100% control of yourself at all times.”
Peplinski, thinking back to the moment he yanked his finger from the jaws of Lemieux, said he doesn’t resent the bloodshed as much as he appreciates the hot-bloodedness that drove it.
“The thing it causes me to remember is he was a helluva competitor. He was doing everything he could to win, and he ended up winning that year, too,” said Peplinski, whose Flames hoisted the Cup in 1989. “Life goes on. My hands function well . . . At the time it was a big deal. Now, the older I get, the more comical it becomes.”