LATEST | Former NHLer Brian McGrattan says he wanted to 'drop' John Tortorella during hallway incident
It's been just over nine years since the infamous Vancouver Canucks-Calgary Flames brawl to start a game in January 2014.
The away team, which was Calgary, needed to have their lineup in first and decided to start their fourth line of Brian McGrattan, Kevin Westgarth and Blair Jones, along with defencemen Ladislav Smid and Chris Butler.
This frustrated Canucks head coach John Tortorella, who then put out his fourth line, which featured Dale Weise, Tom Sestito and Kellan Lain, who was making his NHL debut. On the backend, Torts went with Kevin Bieksa and Jason Garrison.
As soon as the puck dropped, the fireworks started and John Tortorella was pissed, understandably, and went over to yell at the Flames bench, towards their head coach Bob Hartley.
At the conclusion of the first period, Tortorella walked around to the hallway where the Flames' dressing room was and it appeared that a fight was going to occur. Cooler heads eventually prevailed with the Flames being ushered into their dressing room.
Former Calgary enforcer Brian McGrattan was a guest on the 'Missin Curfew' podcast and said that he wanted to 'drop' John Tortorella during the incident in the hallway.
He added, "So I just stiff-arm him to the wall, right over the glove dryer and I got Torts kinda pinned against everything and you couldn't see, but their coaches are down the hall and I was going to drop my glove and drop Torts."
That game will always be remembered by fans on both sides, so it's interesting all these years later to hear stories like this from players that were involved in the game.
"I was going to drop my glove and drop Torts"
A look back on the #Flames #Canucks Brawl with the @bigern10
Full Story from Brian McGrattan is available on our YouTube Channel!
🎥: https://t.co/mUblB86RZh pic.twitter.com/Ewk6OZ8LTr� Missin Curfew (@MissinCurfew) July 11, 2023
| POLL | ||
Do you remember this game and incident? | ||
| Yes | 287 | 67.5 % |
| No, I didn't watch it | 104 | 24.5 % |
| See Results | 34 | 8 % |
| List of polls | ||
