And Now for the Rest of the Story

Eric has a great video of when John Wensink of the Bruins challenged the whole Minnesota North Stars bench to a fight. While what Wensink did made great theater - in the end it though was a huge tactical mistake that really cost his team.

Let me explain.

This happened back in the 1980-81 season. The coach of the North Stars Glen Sonmor knew three things about the dynamics between the Bruins and North Stars; 1) his team was intimidated by the Bruins (see the Wensink video for exhibit A), 2) it was most likely that the Bruins would be the North Star's first round playoff opponent and 3) the coach had to do something about his team being intimidated. The result was the game on February 26, 1981.

This was the game that set records for the most penalty minutes at the time. Before the game instead of drawing up plays on the chalkboard - the coach drew up fight assignments as in "you take this guy, you take this guy" etc. As soon as the puck was dropped - all the North Stars on the ice dropped their gloves and "it" was on.

The result of the donnybrook was a 180 in attitude. No longer were the North Stars intimidated by the Bruins (if anything it was now the Bruins who were intimidated). This change in attitude directly led to Minnesota sweeping the now somewhat timid Bruins in three games in the playoffs. The North Stars ended up making the Stanley Cup finals that year (losing to the great Islander team) and I would argue they made the finals because of the adjustment in attitude from that February 26th game.

And now you know the rest of the story.