On October 16, 1986, a massive bronze statue weighing four tons was erected in Detroit’s Hart Plaza. The statue, of a giant clenched right fist, was appropriately named The Fist. Created by world-renowned artist Robert Graham, the statue was twenty-four feet long and twenty-four feet high, and was suspended in the air by three steel beams that were propped in a tripod. The Fist floated in the air as if it were a punch being thrown; it honored Detroit native Joe Louis’s power both in the boxing ring and in breaking down racial stereotypes.
I like to think that Graham’s statue also doubles as a fist of steel that belonged to another famous citizen of the Motor City, a Red Wing forward named Joe Kocur. Kocur possessed a human fist, of course, not a piece of art. It was made of flesh and bone and something ungodly, and yet it, too, was unbreakable. It hit harder than nearly any fist before it, and because of this, it was a right hand that came with more warning labels than any other fist in the history of the league. It broke hel- mets, destroyed faces, and ended careers.
The first shot dismantled the hinges and loosened everything up. The second was absolute destruction, the kind of blow that takes a door down. If the Graham statue is a symbol of Joe Louis’s strength both as an athlete and as a vehicle for societal change, for a better, brighter, more tolerant world, Kocur’s right hand was the opposite: a symbol of annihilation, extinguishing all hope, bringing only dark- ness to those in its reach.
“Shaking his hand was like shaking a cement block,” Maltby says, his disbelief clear. Kocur has had numerous surgeries on his hand, and the layers of scar tissue that have built up over his knuckles have rendered his fist a virtual war club. “Most people, when they make a fist, the skin tightens up. His hand is one big piece of scar tissue from punching helmets and visors and faces. His right hand was known for throwing the hardest punches ever in fights,” Maltby adds.
Draper also expresses amazement. All his years of watching Joe Kocur wreck faces with his right fist left him astonished by one fact.
“When you saw Bob Probert or Marty McSorley or Donald Brassard, you saw their size,” Draper says. “The amazing thing is, as tough as Kocur was and how hard he punched, he was not a big guy.”
Most NHL fighters during the 1980s and ’90s had their own techniques: Bob Probert was all about endurance and would engage in drawn-out, jersey-tearing melees; Chris Nilan liked to get in close and tie down an opponent’s arms and fire off short punches; Dave Brown was 6'5" and left-handed and wanted to do the opposite of Nilan—that is, he’d string his opponent out and away from him and tag him with long-range missiles targeted directly at their eye sockets or nose; and Craig Berube was a straight-out brawler. Joe Kocur had one plan, and it was to hit you with his right hand. Everyone knew it, too, but no one could stop it. All he needed to do was connect once with his right fist, and down came the wall.
Jim Kyte was a snarling 6'5", 210-pound defenseman for the Winnipeg Jets when he took on Kocur on November 25, 1988. In a split second, Kocur hit Kyte in the head with a single thunderous punch that buckled Kyte’s entire body, his helmet instantly popping off. With all the walls and levels of protection now loosened up, Kocur shoved in the battering ram; this one hit Kyte so hard that the hulking man dropped to the ice in a thud. It would become the number-one hockey knockout of
all time, according to Bleacher Report, because it appeared that Kocur hit Kyte so hard he knocked the life right out of his body: as he fell to the ice, Kyte looked like a corpse falling into a coffin. Kyte lay prone on the ice, and then a spirit seemed to move over his limp body. His hands slowly moved, as if guided by a supernatural spirit, to his helmetless head, where his fingers began to explore his skull and hair, trying to see if, in fact, the man who owned the fingers was still alive. Then there was the time that Kocur hit Donald Brashear so hard that the victim’s pain lasted for days after the fight, the force of the right hand sending throbbing waves of misery through Brashear’s skull.
Then there was the time that Kocur hit Donald Brashear so hard that the victim’s pain lasted for days after the fight, the force of the right hand sending throbbing waves of misery through Brashear’s skull.
“Kocur was hitting me in the helmet like a power hammer, and in the end the helmet split!” Brashear says. During that fight, as the two men squared off, Bras- hear had circled Kocur with his fists spastically shaking up and down in antici- pation. Kocur just skated as calm as a gunslinger at high noon, his right fist cocked on his hip, and stared coldly ahead, waiting. Once engaged, Brashear immediately tied up Kocur’s right hand, and they got into a tangle of jerseys and pads. But then Kocur pulled the trigger, and boom—he landed a punch that hit Brashear so hard it cracked his helmet.
“I remember the next day I had a terrible pain; my gums on the left side of my head were hurting even though he was hitting me on the right side of my face,” Brashear says. “I couldn’t chew anything. I wondered what it would be if I didn’t have a helmet. Too scary.”
Kocur was drafted by the Red Wings in the fifth round in 1983 after he spent his youth career scoring goals and knocking guys out cold. Once he got called up to Detroit, he spent his formative years brawling through the NHL with his Bruise- Brother teammate Bob Probert, and they would become one of the most feared duos in league history.
“Back in the day in Detroit, when tough guys were coming into Detroit, they had a choice,” Draper says. “Fight Probert and have him embarrass you for two min- utes, or fight Kocur and he could knock you out with one punch. Pick your poi- son.”
Probert had developed a reputation as the toughest man in hockey. He was in- credibly strong and had a serious mean streak on the ice that burned through his veins like a flame swallowing a wick. He had the endurance to last through any fight and would just string fighters along in a marathon of clutching and grabbing and punching; he reached his most savage state late in brawls when his opponent was exhausted. His fights were basically long, drawn-out, jersey-tearing street fights. That was actually one of his strategies: Probert would disrobe as quickly as possible. His jersey sleeve would get loose, and he’d slip his arm out so he could swing more freely (the normal tie-down on his jersey back seemed to be an afterthought). When Probert got his arm free you had to look the hell out, because off came the elbow pad, the shoulder pads, the helmet, the whole jersey itself, and then he got to jackhammering with a snarl. His opponents had little ability to de- fend themselves, because there was nothing to hold on to.
While Probert was the marathon man, Kocur was the opposite. He earned the title of hardest puncher in the league, a man who could end a career in seconds, with just one hit.
More important, the pugilistic reputations that Probert and Kocur had earned preceded them wherever they went. Their dual brutality haunted the minds of the opposition as their game versus the Red Wings approached. Every team that faced the Detroit Red Wings during the 1980s had the unenviable task of having to try to corral both Probert and Kocur, two bulls without a matador. Probert and Kocur roamed free through the league and struck with impunity, rumored to go over
opposing lineups to decide which players they would try to intimidate, which play- ers they would try to fight, which rules were fair game to break (such as hitting the goalie), and which players each had a personal grievance against from previous games and encounters. Their verbal threats and violent antics weren’t simply for show. They served a purpose: to strike fear into the heart of the opposition. Probert’s and Kocur’s malice, their scowls, their cold eyes, their threats, their punches to the backs of unexpecting heads would get the skill players twitchy and nervous and always looking over their shoulders instead of focusing on scoring goals. Then when Probert and Kocur beat the tar out of the other team’s tough guys, all hope was lost for the night.
Even the toughest and scariest hockey players in the NHL needed to summon an extra shot of courage when dealing with Probert and Kocur. Craig Berube played more than one thousand NHL games in seventeen seasons, racking up over 240 NHL fights and 3,000 penalty minutes (seventh all-time). From a physical stand- point, Berube was one of the most willing combatants the league had ever seen. He was a solid checker and a sound defensive player, and at 6'1" and 215 pounds, he didn’t back down from anyone. In fact, on Berube’s first shift in his first game in the NHL for the Philadelphia Flyers, he asked Pittsburgh Penguins tough guy Dan Frawley if he wanted to fight.
“In that first game, I had, like, point-fifty-six seconds of total ice time and three fights and about forty-five minutes in penalties,” Berube says bluntly.
For much of his career, Berube and his rampaging playing style were like some- thing out of the movie Slap Shot. He is part Cree, one of the largest groups of First Nations or Native Americans in North America, and he was known league-wide simply by the nickname “Chief.” With numerous teeth knocked out, he looked like a jack-o’-lantern with fangs, and his nose had been broken and set so many times it had a knot on the bridge. When his hockey helmet got ripped off in a fight, it ex- posed a glorious black mullet that was its own helmet of hair. One time when Berube was in a heated fight with Lindy Ruff, the two referees tried to separate them. Berube got an arm loose and swung at Ruff but instead ended up cold- cocking one of the linesmen. With on-ice antics like that, Berube became the stuff of legend. But even he had his limits.
“I got called up from the minors and had to deal with . . . all that,” Berube says, chuckling at the absurdity of facing Probert and Kocur as a rookie with the Philadelphia Flyers.
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