When Tie Domi released his book, ’Shift Work,’ he said he’s not proud of everything he’s done. But ’it is what it is.’ He’s referring to the fact that he played for 16 years and had 1,118 games and 3,753 penalty minutes in the NHL. Domi fought a record 333 times during his NHL career. He’s not proud of everything, but it was it is.
There’s no shortage of hockey stories for Domi. For a guy who fought more times than any other, it’s pretty natural that some funny, weird, or dumb stuff happens. Domi is a cult hero in Toronto, and in modern-day hockey, no players like Domi are left.
Domi served his fair share of suspensions of the year and was in several controversial incidents where he delivered massive cheap shots and nasty hits.
He’s perhaps most known for sucker-punching Ulf Samuelsson, knocking him out cold. But he doesn’t have any regrets about that. Instead, it’s another incident he refers to as the one he regrets the most in his career, which happened in the 2001 playoffs.
”That wasn’t the biggest regret I had in my career. The biggest regret I had in my career was the Rob Niedermayer elbow,” Domi said on the Raw Knuckles podcast.
”And just to play that back … I was playing the best game of my career; I was going to be the first star of the game. Ron MacLean and Don Cherry were waiting for me to give me the first star of the game; the place was chanting my name, ’Domi! Domi!’ And Pat Quinn is thinking, because everybody is yelling my name, that he’s going to put me out there so the fans can go crazy.
”I’m not thinking of that because we’re up a couple of goals with 30 seconds left. I’m thinking, ’Is Niedermayer out there?’ And I see him, he’s out there.”
Domi hadn’t forgotten about an incident that occurred between the two just two games earlier in the playoffs.
”Two games before, this is in the playoffs, I said, ’I’m gonna run you every time you touch the puck.’
”I ended up coming at him at full speed; I had him zoomed. And I was pretty fast, believe it or not, and as soon as I got close to him, and go to hit him, he turned and just put the stick up; sliced me wide open. I got blood coming out my face, stitches in my face. But no penalty. And during commercial, you know, I said to him between the benches, ’I might not get you tonight, but I’ll get you back.’ And sure enough, two games later, that happened.
Domi was suspended for the rest of the playoffs and the first eight games of the next season.
”People think I just did it out of, you know, ’oh I just want to go elbow him.’ No, this was two games before. Unfortunately, I took their best player out, and we still freakin’ lost. It didn’t help! But you know, I was very effective that year, and that was probably the best hockey of my career that I was playing,” he said.
