One of Claude Lemieux’s longtime rivals had touching words for the four-time Stanley Cup winner, who died by suicide at the age of 60.
“This is extremely sad no matter what feelings from past or present you hold,” former Red Wings forward Darren McCarty wrote on X. “My thoughts and prayers to his family and friends and people who got to see the person off the ice wasn’t the person on.”
McCarty and Lemieux are central figures to the Avalanche-Red Wings rivalry of the late 1990s, with Lemieux infamously injuring Detroit’s Kris Draper with a vicious check from behind in Game 6 of the 1996 Western Conference Final, breaking multiple bones in Draper’s face and requiring reconstructive surgery.
McCarty and his teammates watched Lemieux raise the Stanley Cup — the third of his career — that spring. The following season, in their fourth matchup of 1996-97 and what would later become known as “Fight Night at the Joe,” the McCarty cold-cocked Lemieux and proceeded to rain down punches on him as he lay on the ice at Joe Louis Arena, and later dragged him to where Draper stood on the Red Wings bench.
The game — the regular season finale — served as a rallying point for Detroit, which went on to win the first of back-to-back Cups.
Any ill will between the pair dissipated over the years, with McCarty and Lemieux becoming friends and using their feud to fundraise for charity.
“As I’ve said and will always call it as I see it,” McCarty opined on X, “‘If your on the ICE with Claude Lemieux and your turn your back. YOU Are an IDIOT. But off the ICE I’ll turn mine.’”
Lemieux’s death was announced Thursday, with TMZ reporting the Devils icon was found after committing suicide by one of his adult sons in the family’s furniture store in Florida.
It came days after he returned to Montreal, where he won his first Stanley Cup in 1986 with the Canadiens, to amp up the crowd ahead of the franchise’s Game 3 against the Hurricanes on Monday.
“If you are struggling at all please reach out and talk to someone,” McCarty wrote.
“Godspeed my friend.”
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