More than 10 years after coming face to face with Claude Lemieux on the ice, more than 10 years after pummeling him into submission and releasing a year's worth of pent-up anger, Darren McCarty met his nemesis for the first time off the ice. Neither the passage of time nor the casual circumstances -- the two were in Toronto to tape an interview together -- dulled McCarty's emotions.
He was still raring to go.
"I was cold. I was still, fu*k you. I was still in defensive mode," McCarty said on 97.1 The Ticket's podcast The Time That. "And then he was the one that lowered it down and turned it into a man-to-man conversation. Now I’d be fine with him. If I played against him and he did that hit again, though, I’d be the first one to fu*king go after him."
In the lore of the Red Wings' last dynasty, and certainly in the legend of McCarty's 13-year tenure with the team, March 26, 1997 is a date that will forever stand out. It was the day McCarty and the Wings leveled the score with Lemieux and the Avalanche and launched a championship run several years in the making.
Since then, McCarty guesses he's signed close to 100,000 copies of that iconic photo in which he's standing over Lemieux and raining down punches on behalf of his best friend Kris Draper and the entire city of Detroit. Matter of fact, McCarty and Lemieux have sat side by side and signed the photo together.
McCarty admits it took him a long time to get past Lemieux's dastardly hit against Draper in the 1996 playoffs -- "I never let it go," he said -- but the two first met in 2010 and have since forged a relationship built on mutual respect.
"The one thing I’ll say about Claude, as a man, I have respect for him. This was after meeting him and doing the autographs and giving money to charity. You find that some guys, you hate him as a player because you don’t like what they stand for as a player, but as a man, yeah, I’d go golfing with him," McCarty said.
As for the fight, McCarty said it was something he simply had to do.
"Lemieux hits Draper from behind in Game 6, we lose. We don’t know how bad Drapes is. He crushed his orbital bone, broke his jaw, has a hole in his face. That’s my best friend, my centermen. You go through the summer and you’re golfing and then you look down (to hit a shot) and you just see Lemieux's face and you’re like, man, this isn’t ever going to go away," McCarty said. "That's true.
"It wasn't until the beginning of March when I was driving myself crazy that I just prayed. I said, 'God, whatever happens, can I be the messenger please? Just let me be the messenger, whatever your plan is.' This ain't a religious thing, this ain't anything other than I had to let it go."
To this day, McCarty laughs at how he got out of the melee without incurring a penalty for fighting.
"I didn't get a major. I got four minutes for roughing and a 10-minute misconduct for felonious assault," he joked.
The other twist: McCarty delivered the first blow with his offhand.
"I'm a lefty but I hit him with the right. I tell everyone, the whole Red Wing nation -- man, woman, child, granny -- whoever wanted a piece of this guy, I was the messenger. My right is hard but it's got no accuracy, and this one I split him right down the pipe, on the button. He said he didn’t turtle. He said he was knocked out, seeing starts. Said it’s the hardest he’s ever been hit," McCarty said.
And to put a bow on the evening, McCarty would later score the game-winning goal.
"It’s a Hollywood script that nobody could have wrote," he said.
So, now that they're friendly, have McCarty and Lemieux discussed the hit that triggered their rivalry?