Like all sports, hockey is built on anticipation. We always are waiting for the next wow, the new best player to come along, tease our imaginations, steal our hearts, and ultimately feed us the memories that we carry to our oversized recliners, health clubs, or sports bars of choice. Nearly 18 years ago, anticipating very little, we watched Cam Neely begin to deliver all of that. Big, mean, and nasty, he played a power game that we never had seen before, some of which a few of us forgot until we saw bits of it roll past our eyes again last night in the videotaped montage of his career. On the night Neely formally said goodbye, his No. 8 retired to the Vault's rafters, it was those snippets of his fights that most entertained the sellout crowd.
It's high time forward's playing style came back
"It tells you something about what fans love to see," said Neely, when it was noted in a post-event news conference that the fans were stirred more by his punching than his scoring. "That's the way I had to play to be successful, and I have to tell you, I miss that part of my life."
The great Figure 8 is obviously not alone in that pining for pugilism. Of course, it wasn't so much about the fights as it was about the power, and the underlying ferocity of Neely's spirit. Artistically, virtually all hockey fights are abject failures. It's hard enough for two trained boxers in shoes and gloves to go toe-to-toe in an enclosed ring. But Neely grappled with the best of them, and in his words, "tuned" more than his share of willing opponents.
Somewhere in the space between his knuckles, he also squeezed out 395 goals. Fairly crafty work for a fighter.
The 10 years that Neely did all that, beginning with his arrival in the Hub of Hockey in the summer of '86, the NHL was a much different place. It not only tolerated fighting, it expected it, to the point that it marketed itself around what some of its detractors charged was a goon's mentality. There was only one referee on the ice, not the two-headed monster we have in today's game. There was no such thing as tagging someone with the "17 skidoo" -- 2 minutes for instigating, 5 more for fighting, and the added 10-minute misconduct. Fighting more than had a place. It held a certain cachet, respect, even valor.
