Despite the obvious hazards to his mind and body, Brown showed up every day at the rink for his teammates. His reputation was built slowly and steadily, one game after another, one shift after another, and eventually, one fight after the next. He would suit up, climb over the boards, and engage. That was his job. When he fought, it was a laborious affair, no different than a man digging a ditch.
“I took as many as I got,” Brown says humbly. “Everybody asks me who the toughest guy I fought was. Back in my day, everyone had a tough guy, and he was someone to deal with, and it wasn’t easy. What people don’t realize is that every- one was tough. If you had a bad night, you could get beat by anybody. I found it as difficult as anyone else fighting me. It was tough for me to fight everyone.”
HUMILITY ASIDE, DAVE BROWN was so effective at his job and struck such fear in other players that teams had to strategize ways to neutralize him, which is an amazing fact considering he was a fourth-line guy who played limited minutes. His time on the Edmonton Oilers, when he was a foot soldier on the front lines in the Battle of Alberta—a provincial grudge match between the Calgary Flames and the Edmonton Oilers that took place in the late 1980s and early ’90s—was a prime example of what he could provide a team.
“The rivalry was intense for a long time, probably as intense as any rivalry in the history of the league,” Brown points out. “Calgary just happened to be in the same division and conference as Edmonton. If they were on the other side, they probably would have gone to the finals as much as the Oilers.”
Between 1983 and 1990, the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames repre- sented the Western Conference in the Stanley Cup Finals a combined eight times (Edmonton won five Cups and lost one, while Calgary won one and lost one). But the Battle of Alberta was more than just a pumped-up sports rivalry. Their hate was personal, a bristling animosity between two towns in the same province that dated back centuries.
During the 1980s, the malice between Edmonton, the capital and more liberal city, and Calgary, the western cowboy and oil town with a more conservative bent, manifested itself in the form of two elite hockey teams that were conveniently in the same conference. This created an arms race of talent through the 1980s and ’90s, with both teams stockpiling elite talent as well as grinders of the dirtiest ilk. Edmonton had a quiver loaded with Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Jari Kurri, Paul Coffey, Glenn Anderson, and Grant Fuhr. Calgary countered with Joe Nieuwendyk, Joe Mullen, Doug Gilmour, Al MacInnis, Lanny McDonald, Gary Roberts, and Mike Vernon. But the Flames also had Joel Otto and Tim Hunter, and they were there to make life miserable for the talented Oiler players. The Oilers countered with Marty McSorley, Don Jackson, Dave Semenko, and, of course, Dave Brown.
In a much-anticipated home-and-home pair of games between Calgary and Edmonton in January 1990, the Calgary Flames called up a player named Stu Grim- son from the minor leagues to counterbalance Brown. Grimson, 6'6" and 240 pounds, was a tough young stud playing for the Salt Lake Golden Eagles in the IHL who had amassed more than 300 penalty minutes and was reportedly undefeated in fights. In the first game between Calgary and Edmonton, Grimson and Brown
fought twice. Grimson got some solid shots in, and when a previous cut reopened on Brown, a good amount of blood spewed.
“In that that series, Stu Grimson made his name,” says Paul Ranheim, a former Calgary Flames forward. “I will never forget that first night in Edmonton. Stu caught Brown off his game, and Brown was pissed. It all ended up in the papers, too. A tale of the tape. It was all building, and we knew it was going to be a battle the next game.”
Calgary ended up winning the Edmonton game 3–1. In the postgame interviews, Grimson and the Calgary staff and a few other players had some choice things to say. The media stoked the fire between the two men—and, more important, the two teams—by declaring that Grimson had won the fights and handled himself against the heavyweight Brown.
Two days later, the teams played again in the Saddledome in Calgary. In the opening minutes of the second game, Brown went to work to set things straight, to do the job he had to do, and this time he was going to do it correctly.
Four minutes into the first period, Brown and Grimson dropped the gloves, and Brown delivered a beating so absolute that it still stands as one of the worst ever in the NHL. Brown unleashed a torrent of lefts that instantly buckled Grimson. Brown hit Grimson with so much conviction it was like a stern reckoning not just between two players but between two teams and two cities. Grimson took the punches with barely any defense and was lunging and grasping desperately for a grip, like a man falling through a hole in the ice. As the two men spun around, Brown kept lashing his left fist into Grimson’s face, savagely breaking his cheek and orbital bone.
“I was sitting on the bench ten feet away,” Ranheim says gravely. “They’re danc- ing, and Brown catches Stu and you could hear this pop. It was frightening.”
Brown knocked Grimson to the ice in a flailing heap and then fell on top of him. When the fight was over, Brown rose to one knee on the ice and for a second sim- ply inspected his left hand for damage. Then Brown got up slowly and stood menacingly before everyone. He did not strut. He did not puff up. He did not point. He just turned his cold, angry eyes toward the entire Calgary bench and gave them a piercing look.
Grimson headed to the penalty box and served his full five-minute penalty with his face completely broken. It was the worst beating of his career.
“He broke my cheekbone and fractured my orbital bone in three places,” Grim- son says. “I had to have reconstructive surgery to square it all away.”
After he served his penalty, Grimson skated across the ice and instantly re- treated to the locker room and removed his pads. Then he headed straight to the hospital. The Oilers went on to win the Stanley Cup that year.
“That moment, that fight, might have been the end for a lot of guys,” says Ran- heim. “But Stu was mentally tough. He knew what he wanted. He knew what he could do, and he wasn’t afraid.”
The very next season the Battle of Alberta raged on. The Flames finished above the Oilers during the regular season, and the two teams met in the 1991 playoffs. With the Oilers up two games to one in the series, the Flames were looking for a spark. In the third period of Game 4, with Edmonton leading 5–2, the Flames’ main fighter, Tim Hunter, a rugged man with a legendary hockey schnoz that was pound- ed steeper than a black-diamond ski slope, jumped a face-off. Hunter proceeded to have words with the Oilers’ Steve Smith and stuck him with his stick; a scrum en- sued. Brown was naturally on the ice as the counterweight to Hunter and moved in to mediate. Then the Flames’ Gary Roberts face-washed Smith, and the fuse was lit.
Flames defenseman Jim Kyte, strong as a bull, paired up with Brown, and they ended up fighting. After trading blows for a few seconds, Brown knocked Kyte to the ice. Brown’s punches had carried him forward, and he leaned over the fallen Flame. As Brown crouched there, he held back his punches, because Kyte was clearly vulnerable. During this unilateral cease-fire, Kyte unwisely used the oppor- tunity to sneak in a few punches. He tagged Brown in the face.
Joel Otto, the ursine Calgary centerman, was right there during the Brown beat- down of Kyte. Years later in Philadelphia, when Otto was a teammate of both Shjon Podein and Dave Brown, he regaled Podes with the story.
“Brownie’s got Kyte on the ground. Brown’s right arm of his jersey was always loose. He was a pure lefty, and the left sleeve was so tight you couldn’t even snap it. It had been shortened all the way up to the elbow pad, too,” Podein says. “[Now] Brown’s on top of Kyte and pounding him. As he pounded him he asked him, ‘Do you give up? Do you give up?’ Kyte said, ‘Hell no!’ ”
Brown pounded Kyte mercilessly right into the ice, to the point where his own Edmonton teammates tried to step in and stop him.
Minutes after destroying Kyte, though, Brown helped the man he had just beat- en into submission get up from the ice. As they skated around, clutched together, it appeared that Brown was holding Kyte up. For several minutes Brown talked to a wobbling Kyte as the latter stared glassy-eyed around the arena. Concussed, with noodles for legs, having just been buried alive and resurrected, Kyte was like the skating dead.
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