"I saw the blood on the ice, but I didn’t know the right side of my face was caved in." That is how former Red Wings player Kris Draper remembers the beginning of what would be a vicious year-long rivalry between Detroit and Colorado.
Draper wrote about the infamous fight that followed in March if 1997 in an article on The Player's Tribune.
"It’s hard to believe that it was 20 years ago this month. But if I just tell you the story of that brawl, it won’t do it justice. A 21-year-old reading this right now was just a baby when it happened. If they’ve only seen the YouTube videos, they probably think we were all a bunch of animals. But the reason things got so out of hand on March 26, 1997, is because of everything that happened before and after that brawl," he wrote.
With the final season at Joe Louis Arena drawing to a close, Draper says he's been asked a lot lately about his favorite memories from The Joe. He says it's the Stanley Cups, but that the fans always want to here about that day in 1997.
Read the full article here.
