There are few more storied rivalries in hockey than that between the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames.
Boiling points were often reached with ease between Alberta’s two NHL clubs back in the 1980s, and if you asked anyone in the province, they’d surely have some kind of story to tell fight nights they remembered.
Two players who had front-row seats to much of the action were Craig MacTavish and Paul Coffey, who not only played hundreds of games in the Blue and Orange, but hundreds from behind the bench, too.
Known for different styles of play, both MacTavish and Coffey found themselves caught in the fray often during those heated games, and on Saturday night, they joined hosts Scott Oake and Louie DeBrusk on Sportsnet’s After Hours program reminiscing on those days.
On the Battle of Alberta:
MacTavish: “I was talking to Kevin Lowe earlier today and he was speaking about fans will say ‘You must have really enjoyed the Battle of Alberta,’ and Kevin said ‘No, I hated it,’ because they challenged every bit of your manhood in those games.’ I remember back in Calgary, most of the crazy meetings we all had over the course of our career in Edmonton, the crazy team meetings were always in Calgary for whatever reason.“We were always best when we challenged one another. When Calgary was good, it made us better. We were just a little bit better than Calgary back in those days, but we made them better and they had plenty of toughness.”Coffey: “For one thing, I’m surprised Kevin would say that because that’s when he played his best hockey, when his feet were in the fire, so to speak. I was so long in the tooth I played in the Corral before the Saddledome was there, 7,000 seat arena. I just remember warmups, skating around looking at these guys. Mess would come into the dressing room and say ‘They got these guys from the penal league.’“But as Mac alluded too, first period would be fight night, then we’d end up beating them 7 to 8 to 1. When Cliff came along, Bob Johnson came along, Terry Crisp came along and they started getting really good hockey players, it turned out to be even better.”
Coffey on a January 10th, 1982 fight with Flames forward Mel Bridgeman:
“That’s when Mel Bridgeman was going to take Mess on and I said ‘I got him, Mess,’ and Bridgeman hit me with so many lefts I was begging for a right.”
MacTavish on the day he pulled out Harvey the Hound’s tongue:
“It never gets old, Harvey the Hound. That was a wild phenomenon. I remember post-game, and the great writer here, Terry Jones, he didn’t miss much, but after the game he didn’t catch wind of any of that, and he was kind of a little bit incredulous on why I was taking the lot. I came in and Bryan Ross showed me the video right after the game and it was pretty funny.”
I remember running into Ken King on the concourse in Calgary and he said ‘Mac, I’ll give you $10,000 to walk around the concourse with Harvey the Hound.’
On Dave Semenko:
Coffey: “He took on all comers. Semenko was the heavy weight champion in the league and had the guys coming up from the Western League. You see Tim Hunter there, that was his dance card most nights. Donny Jackson, Peplinski, McClellan, Baxter, but Semenk was a very, very, very important part of our team, and he made it very safe to go in and play every rink in the league.”MacTavish: “Unbelievable person. He could defuse any type of tension. He didn’t like a lot of tension, and poor Tim Hunter took the lot of that. One quick story I’ve heard about Dave Semenko, and I asked Tim Hunter about this, and he didn’t deny it.“Dave started the game one time with Wayne and Jari, and Gretz did what he did and saucered one over to Semenk, and Semenk put it in the net. They went back to centre ice, and the puck drops and Semenk drops his gloves and does a pretty good job on Tim Hunter. They get to the penalty box and Tim Hunter’s looking at Dave Semenko like incredulously, and Dave goes ‘What?’ (Hunter) goes “What did you do that for Sammy?’ and Dave goes ‘Well you said Sammy let’s go.’ Tim says ‘No, I said Sammy, nice goal.”
Coffey on remembering a fight between Kevin McClelland and Tim Hunter:
“I will tell you a funny Kevin McClelland – Tim Hunter story. They were fighting in front of our bench and Mac’s a lefty, they’re going at it, and Hunts hit him with one, and you could just hear his nose go like that [gestures to a broken nose], and Mac looks at the bench and goes ‘didn’t hurt!’ as he kept throwing them.”
On there being fewer games against rivals like the Flames now than in the ’80s, the changing face of the Battle of Alberta
Coffey: “I think we should play each other more… There’s not enough grudging to be built up.”MacTavish: “It’s hard for the schedulers if you want to see every team and every player in your building, it’s hard to get five or six games against the Flames, but (an) unbalanced schedule could probably accomodate that.”
You can listen to the full After Hours appearance below.
Zach Laing is Oilersnation’s associate editor, senior columnist, and The Nation Network’s news director. He also makes up one-half of the DFO DFS Report. He can be followed on Twitter, currently known as X, at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach.laing@bettercollective.com.
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