Few players in NHL history have been as rock-solid as Scott Stevens. He won the Stanley Cup three times and entered the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2008. And talked about well-deserved.
Stevens played over 1600 games in the NHL and was known for his hard-hitting and outstanding leadership. His opponent’s feared him, but his teammates all loved him. But his hard play style sometimes even followed to the practice ice.
”I would like to say that being on the ice with him on practice was different, but it wasn’t. It still was that fear. I remember a drill where we were doing some fore-checking thing and I caught him a little bit with something, and I saw his eyes roll back and I just thought, ’Oh, oh. This is not gonna be good.’ But luckily he realized it was just practice‚” former teammate and New Jersey Devils captain Jamie Langenbrunner said on The Cam & Strick Podcast.
Jamie Langenbrunner also shared a great story on what a competitor and hard-working guy Scott Stevens were.
”We were up at his cabins in the woods one time, and we thought we were going up to just party. We just thought we would hang out with Scott and have fun. But you know, it was just a big work-out up there,” he said.
”We were chopping woods and we were like, ‘We thought we were going up here to drink beer and hang out.’ So we’re chopping this wood, and there was like a 100 pounds logs and we were trying to split them. I just couldn’t. The axe was just getting stuck, and Scott comes over to us and gets mad for not being fast enough. So he just takes the axe with one hand, and hammering that thing, and he turned to us and said, ’What is wrong with you guys?”
”That is a leader and a guy that won for a reason.”
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