The Quebec Nordiques may have only been in the NHL for 16 seasons, but in that span their rivalry with the Montreal Canadiens became one of the league’s most storied. And no game better captures the extent of that bad blood than game six of their 1984 playoff series. Quebec had a better record than Montreal that season and got out to a convincing 2–0 series lead before the Habs stormed back to win three straight heading into April 20, 1984, at the Montreal Forum. Nobody who was on the ice, in the building or watching across the country will ever forget it.

Guy Carbonneau, C, Montreal I had the chance to play a long time in the NHL. But nothing I experienced ever compared to Montreal and Quebec City.

Clint Malarchuk, G, Quebec There was just this intensity, and not just with the players but the fans, too. When we pulled up three hours before a game there were already fans outside the Forum chanting and whatnot. You knew you were in a war, and it wasn’t just on the ice.

Larry Robinson, D, Montreal I think it went way back to before the Nordiques were in the NHL, when we took Jean Béliveau, who was playing for the Quebec Aces before he ended up signing with the Canadiens. I think that rivalry started a little bit then. But there’s always been a rivalry between Quebec and Montreal. There’s always been this thing: Which one is a truer French city? It goes way beyond hockey, to the politics and everything else.

Carbonneau You had Montreal, the bigger city, versus the smaller city, Quebec City. You had Molson versus O’Keefe. We had Jacques Lemaire behind the bench, they had Michel Bergeron. They had Dale Hunter, we had Mario Tremblay.

Louis Sleigher, W, Quebec Even during the season, a regular game was built up for weeks and weeks in the papers. You had two coaches who really liked to, you know, speak out in the paper, too.

Carbonneau There’d be quotes in the paper with guys saying, “I don’t like you,” and the next day the other guy saying, “That’s OK, I don’t like you either.” There were always fights, sticking each other, yapping. I know when we went to Quebec, the things you’d hear from the stands .

Tony McKegney, W, QUE The thing was we beat them so handily all year long. We beat them seven out of eight games that year. One game we beat them 7–1 in Montreal. We had their number all season.

Carbonneau They had a good team—Peter Stastny and the Stastny brothers, Michel Goulet, Dale Hunter. A really good team.

Sleigher Knowing the rivalry and everything that was built up—the year before we beat them in the playoffs—every game for us against Montreal was like a Stanley Cup game.

Carbonneau Everybody was on a high, nervous. I’m sure a lot of guys had a tough time getting through that afternoon.

Robinson I remember, you’re sitting in your room waiting for the games to start and your stomach is rolling, almost to the point where you want to throw up.

The nerves may have been setting in early for Montreal, who found themselves down 1–0 after a first-period goal by Quebec star Peter Stastny. But with time running out in the second and the Habs desperate to turn the tide, tensions reached a boiling point and all hell broke loose.

Sleigher At the end of the period, I was on the ice with Michel Goulet and Dale Hunter. Everybody knows Dale: Every whistle, every chance, he’ll give a little something back [to opponents]. In that moment he was no different. He took a shot on net and kept going to the goalie.

Carbonneau There was Hunter hitting our goalie, so I kind of jumped on him.

Sleigher When Dale got involved in a little scuffle around the goal everything was normal. But when [Chris] Nilan got on the ice he jumped on Randy Moller. And that’s when things got pretty wild.

McKegney Do you know how the brawl started? Chris Nilan sucker-punched Randy Moller.

Carbonneau When you’re up, you try to calm things down and stay focused; when you’re down you try to create something. And Chris is a guy who would try to seize that moment, to be able to look at the game and say, “Oh my god, we’re going down the wrong path, our momentum is heading in the wrong direction. I need to beat the crap out of somebody and see if the team can bounce back from that.” In those years, there was no instigator penalty, no third-man-in. When there was a fight, everybody fought. Everybody jumped on the ice, and it escalated. It really escalated.

McKegney There was the fine—$10,000 for the first guy off the bench. Back then guys were making on average $180, $190 grand, maybe. So $10,000 was a lot of money. Anybody would think twice about jumping over the boards, so it became a the-more-the-merrier type thing. It wasn’t one guy going—everybody was going.

Malarchuk It was just my second year [in the NHL]. I had grown up playing in the Western Hockey League, and line brawls back then were fairly common. So I would have normally been comfortable with that, but that game I was on the bench and I was definitely not comfortable. What do I do? Do I get up and fight? Will I get a penalty? I was just a kid and didn’t want to set the team back. It was very intimidating.

McKegney I was hooked up with the guys who were thinking the same thing I was: Let’s get the game going again. We were just hanging on to each other, tossing around, kind of moving from pile to pile.

Malarchuk There was some intense fighting going on. [Having jumped on the ice,] I was just trying to make sure that there wouldn’t be a situation where you had two Canadiens on one Nordique, or that nobody got sucker-punched.

Carbonneau I never really had to worry about protecting anybody. I had the chance to play with Chris Nilan. [Laughs]

Malarchuk I was just cruising around the ice, trying to watch guys’ backs, like Dale Hunter, who was in the middle of it all. [Montreal’s goalie] Richard Sévigny was probably doing the same thing, and that’s when we got kind of hooked up. Everybody was basically pairing off.

McKegney When I was hanging on to Bob Gainey we drove ass-over-teakettle into a pile of eight guys. It was everybody just going from one situation to another. Crazy.

Sleigher I grabbed Jean Hamel. I pulled him away from the fight, and that’s when I saw Mario Tremblay just giving it to Peter Stastny. It was funny because it seemed Montreal was after our best players, but Montreal’s best players weren’t there. Lafleur was hanging his stick; Shutt and these guys weren’t in the fight.

Carbonneau At one point I think it was Mario Tremblay who broke Peter Stastny’s nose.

Robinson The only one who really got hurt after that was Jean Hamel.

McKegney I was five feet from Louis Sleigher when he knocked out Jean Hamel. Hamel was out cold before he even hit the ice.

Robinson Mario Tremblay went in to intervene between him and Louis Sleigher and got a hold of Hamel to keep him from getting involved in the fight, and that’s when Hamel got hit.

Carbonneau I can still see Jean Hamel falling on the ice. There are a lot of things that happen during a game, a lot of things that are said. The fighting wasn’t a problem; we were used to that. But everybody who was there remembers the scary sight of Jean Hamel lying on the ice and not moving.

Malarchuk You knew he was hurt bad …

Robinson It damaged his eye—he almost lost his eye.

Malarchuk I think it ended his career.

McKegney Jean was on our team at training camp and the first part of the year. Then he went from Quebec to Montreal. He was kind of a loner, and just didn’t really fit in with the group.

Sleigher Jean was our teammate. He was my roommate on the road. But the thing that made me hit Jean Hamel at the end was because Mario Tremblay came—and you can see on the tape—I didn’t know if he was going to hit me, and he pushed my face into the glass. I said to myself, “Jeez, this is going to get ugly here.” It was just like, in the moment, a reflex to hit Jean. Between him and Mario I wanted to get rid of one.

Malarchuk Sleigher was kind of a good ol’ boy, really laid-back. He could fight, like a lot of guys, but it wasn’t like he got into a fight every second game or anything like that.

Carbonneau Everybody was in shock. We all felt for Jean Hamel. He was a really good player whom everybody enjoyed being around. So it went from “Holy, what the heck just happened?!” to really feeling for Jean. Knowing the character that we had, the guys we had in the room, one of the big reasons we came back was because of Jean.

McKegney Everybody just stopped at that point. Guys were saying, “What are we doing?” and that just put an end to it.

Sleigher [Jean and I] did an interview together, maybe five or six years after that game. And it really didn’t go well. I never talked to him after that.

The referees called off the period early and sent both teams to the dressing rooms. But the confusion only got worse as they tried to figure out the consequences of the bench-clearing brawl, which featured as many as 14 fights at once.

Malarchuk We were all just trying to figure it out: Who got kicked out? Who’s still in? The referees at that point were still in conference, and maybe some league officials, too, to sort it out.

McKegney How do you choose anybody? How do you differentiate between anybody with all of that going on?

Sleigher At that point we didn’t know what was going to happen. We sure didn’t know we were going to be going out onto the ice. I was undressing in the dressing room. Michel Bergeron came and said, “Get dressed. Everybody on the ice!” I said, “What?” The referee had pulled “Bergy” into another room and told him to get everybody out onto the ice. So I got dressed in about three minutes.

Carbonneau I still remember going out and seeing the guys who shouldn’t have been there still on the ice. That was a shock.

Sleigher It was a real big mistake by the referee to send us back onto the ice after the first fight.

Bruce Hood, referee, from his memoir, Calling the Shots After a moment’s hesitation [I] realized that there had been a screw-up. Nilan had been tossed out of the game after the brawl and wasn’t supposed to be back on the ice for the start of the third period. Then I looked around and saw Sleigher, Stastny and Tremblay out there. No one had informed the teams which players had been ejected from the game!

Carbonneau Once those guys were back on the ice, they had nothing to lose.

Malarchuk The puck wasn’t even dropped in the third period when everyone started brawling again.

Robinson They brought everybody back out to start the third, and that’s when they started to make the announcements of the penalties.

McKegney Guys were getting upset [saying] “What did he do?” Everybody was doing the same thing, outside of Nilan starting it.

Robinson Somebody told Mark Hunter that he was one of the ones getting the boot, so right off the bat, he went after their best player. He figured he might as well take some guys with him. [Laughs.] And that’s how the whole thing started again.

Sleigher We heard [the announcer] and every time he was screaming a name, that player would go after somebody else. So it was wild.

Hood Mark Hunter stopped at the centre red line near the Quebec bench, yelled something at Sleigher and dropped his gloves. I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t need this! Not again!

Malarchuk It just escalated after that. Again, everybody is in defence of their teammates—on both teams. That’s the hockey mentality.

Carbonneau That was one of the dangerous problems we had with fighting in those years—when all 10 guys were on the ice, fighting. In that case there were more than 10 guys.

Hood The situation seemed to be settling down again when Hunter skated toward Sleigher in the corner. It was obvious the Habs had cooked up a plan during the intermission to get back at Sleigher for punching Hamel—they were doing everything possible to surround him. I was between Hunter and Sleigher, trying desperately to keep them at arm’s length. Wilf Paiement of Quebec came over and grabbed Hunter’s stick. Hunter was trying to swing it at Sleigher, who was obviously frightened and was doing his best to duck behind [linesman John] D’Amico.

Michel Bergeron, QUE head coach, after the game I hope not too many children in the province of Quebec were watching that hockey game tonight. It’s very disappointing. It’s disgusting.

Hood Mark Hunter decided he still wanted to get Sleigher and went after him again, shaking off his brother, Dale. He circled around in back of Sleigher, who was now being held by D’Amico. Dale was just trying to grab Sleigher when Tremblay came flying through the air and tackled him to the ice. This triggered a quick and violent chain reaction: André Doré jumped on top of Tremblay and began punching him in the back of the head. Rick LaPointe and Chris Chelios then leaped in and the whole pile of players went crashing to the ice in front of the Quebec bench. Doré and Tremblay got up and continued punching. Then they fell to the ice again, with Tremblay on top. Peter Statsny, standing by himself in front of the bench, calmly peeled off his gloves, then skated over to the fight scene, bent down and started punching Tremblay in the back. And they say Europeans never fight! Dale Hunter took over from Stastny and started pummelling Tremblay. Then Mark Hunter skated in from behind and jumped his brother.

Malarchuk The average hockey fan, and the media, see that and go, “Whoa! These two brothers going at it.” But if you knew the Hunters, that wasn’t the first time they fought. That’s a farm-boy family. All brothers. They fought all the time. It was no big deal to them—it just happened to be during a hockey game in front of thousands of people.

Hood Thankfully, once [linesman Bob] Hodges separated the Hunters, all of the fighting seemed to stop.

Carbonneau In the moment you don’t really think about anything, you just want to protect yourself and your teammates. And there’s a game to win, a series to win. But looking at things with perspective, I think everybody would say “Wow, this was way too much.” It was bound to happen, but still, way too much.

After a near-hour-long delay, and with only the Hunter brothers left fighting, things finally cooled as the referees managed to get the guilty parties off the ice. All told, 11 players were tossed and a whopping 252 penalty minutes were handed out. But there was still a game to be played. Things looked particularly bleak for Montreal when Michel Goulet scored for Quebec two minutes into the final period. But the Habs weren’t done, and started a spectacular run that would see them score five unanswered to put an end to both the game and the series.

McKegney In the first shift after it all ended, Larry Robinson hits Anton Stastny with one of those classic open-ice hits. Like, classic. And that set the tone for the rest of the game.

Robinson After that we scored a quick one. And then the crowd got going, our guys got pumped, and we basically took the game over.

McKegney Steve Shutt hadn’t done much at all that year, or in the playoffs. It was like he was reincarnated from the old days. I hadn’t seen him in the series and he gets two goals out of the blue. He was on the downturn of his career. I think he was playing on the fourth line. He was basically sitting on the bench. I don’t remember anything about him during that series—except for that game.

Sleigher Steve Shutt. I mean, wow.

McKegney You could just feel the momentum building on their side. Their crowd got into it … it was just like an avalanche. And we lost big players—probably, I don’t know, six or seven of our better players, including our goalie. They didn’t lose anybody who was that good. You lose Peter Stastny and Dale Hunter, our two best centremen. I mean, Goulet scored one of our first goals, and he had 50 goals for five-straight seasons with Dale as his center. So you take his centreman away from him …

Sleigher We basically lost two good lines. We didn’t have much left for the third period.

Robinson They lost their spiritual leader with Peter gone. Plus, I think Bergy got a little too emotional himself, so he lost his composure behind the bench. And he had every right to—the officials did screw up and should have had everything sorted out before the teams came out. As a coach I understand that now more than I did then.

Sleigher Everybody got caught in the moment. All of us.

Carbonneau I remember years later, we were in the playoffs in ’93, and we were again down 2–0 against the Nordiques, and Rob Ramage got hit in the face by a puck. I think he broke his jaw, lost some teeth. We thought he was finished. And then in the second period or whatever he comes back, face brutally stitched. Everybody looked at each other on the bench and nobody needed to say it, but the thought was, “OK, if he can come back from that we can, too. Let’s get going.” And we won the series. Moments like that are really important. So I’m not saying that the fight, or whatever happened that day, is completely the reason we came back, but … maybe it’s something where we went one notch higher and they went one notch lower, I don’t know.

Malarchuk That’s obviously going to be debated, and it’s arguable, but no, I don’t think [the brawl] is why we lost. It was a fair fight in that both teams went through it all the same. That’s just the way it ended up, somebody had to win. If you asked them, they might say, “For sure, we came back because of that,” but I don’t know.

While the Montreal–Quebec City rivalry would enjoy another decade of memories, game six—or the “Good Friday Massacre,” as it came to be known—marked the end of an era, even if we still can’t stop talking about it.

Malarchuk That was the beginning of the end for bench-clearing brawls. I guess I have a little bit of pride in being a part of that.

Carbonneau I don’t remember too many incidents like that afterwards. The mindset became: A rivalry is one thing, but let’s keep it on the ice, keep it civilized.

Sleigher After that the rules changed. They got the benches on the same side, and the referee would get on the ice and get one team to leave before the other. Before that it was a common act that teams would meet at centre ice, or on their way to the dressing room. It used to happen a lot before. Just not as bad as that night.

Robinson People remember that game in particular, because of the brawl and everything else, but anybody that wasn’t involved didn’t realize the true pressure on the players in those games. Those games we played against the Nordiques were like most games when you’re playing for the Stanley Cup final. I don’t think the people really cared whether we won the Cup or not, just as long as we beat the other Quebecers. That’s how much emphasis was placed on those games. It was a great rivalry.

McKegney That game heightened the rivalry even further. How could it not?

EPILOGUE

Quebec lost the game, but won some rock’n’roll cred

McKegney Everybody in Quebec was watching the game. Van Halen was in Quebec City, playing a concert in our arena the following day. So these guys were at the bars, and the game was on every TV, so they’re watching it going, “Holy Christ, what’s going on here?” They weren’t really into hockey and just couldn’t believe it.

So as we’re clearing out our lockers, having an end-of-the-year beer and pizza, hanging around, they’re setting up for a soundcheck. It was the 1984 “Jump” tour. So we’re down in the same area as them, they’re using three or four locker rooms for the band and the crew. Except for David Lee Roth. He had his own room away from everybody. Had his own makeup person and everything—he was just separate from the band. Before soundcheck he’s just alone in the stands, like doing some virtuoso deal, like leading them, orchestrating them. He thought he was Van Halen. I figured out then that the stories about his ego were true. He didn’t want to talk to any of us. The other three guys were great guys.

Alex [Van Halen is] in the locker room with us, and he drinks six beers in 15 minutes. Eddie comes in and says, “Look guys, would you mind? Get my brother out of here. We have a soundcheck to do and a concert to play tonight.” But Alex drank six beers on the spot; I’ve never seen anything like that. Remember the old-style stubbies? Well, he was tipping them back with no hands. He drains three of those—glug, glug, glug, glug, glug—with no hands!

In Michael Anthony’s rider he specified that he was to be provided a case of Jack Daniels at each gig—he actually had a guitar in the shape of a Jack Daniels bottle. So he’s in the room with us, too, and he takes a couple of shots and says, “Eh, I’m tired of this,” and he gave us all the Jack Daniels. So 25 of us went through that in no time at all. Nice guys. They were just mesmerized from what they saw the night before with the brawl. They’d never seen anything like it. They’re sitting around with the road crew as this game heightened and it drew everybody to it. I remember them asking us, “How do you guys do this? Is this what you do every game?” We’re sitting there with black eyes. They thought we were crazy.

Sleigher Yes, Van Halen was there. That was our big moment, I suppose. I would have preferred to beat Montreal, though.