Gretzky's Off the Ice: Hockey's Criminal Cases: Gretzky's Bodyguard

With 2.7 seconds remaining in a game his team was losing 5-2, Marty McSorley swung his hockey stick two-handed and struck Donald Brashear across the right side of the head.Brashear fell to the ice. He did not get up. He had a grand mal seizure on the ice at General Motors Place in Vancouver, in front of 18,000 fans and a television audience watching a live broadcast. He suffered a grade three concussion. He missed 20 games. He testified at trial that he still had no memory of the incident.The act was committed by one of the most accomplished enforcers in NHL history, in the final seconds of the final game he would ever play. Marty McSorley had spent eight years as Wayne Gretzky's on-ice bodyguard. He had won two Stanley Cups with the Edmonton Oilers. He had played 961 NHL games over 17 seasons. He had accumulated 3,381 career penalty minutes - the fourth-highest total in NHL history.His career ended in those 2.7 seconds.Gretzky's Bodyguard tells the complete story: The Enforcer - McSorley came out of Cayuga, Ontario undrafted, signed as a free agent, and built a career that no one predicted. He was Gretzky's trusted bodyguard: when the blockbuster 1988 trade sent Gretzky from Edmonton to Los Angeles, Gretzky reportedly insisted McSorley come with him. McSorley won two Cups, reached the Stanley Cup Finals (where his famous illegal stick in Game 2 contributed to the Montreal Canadiens' comeback), and spent 17 years playing the sport's most physically punishing role.The Incident - February 21, 2000. The game was over. Brashear had won their first-period fight and taunted the Bruins bench. He had declined a second challenge from McSorley. With 2.7 seconds left, McSorley made a decision. The television cameras captured it from multiple angles. The visual record of what he did is more complete than almost any act of violence in sports history.The Trial - R. v. McSorley, British Columbia Provincial Court. The first criminal trial of an NHL player for an on-ice act in more than a decade. The prosecution played 14 minutes of multi-angle video. Judge William Kitchen, acknowledging the broader question many people were asking, said: "If this is the trial of Canadian hockey, the judge and jury is the Canadian public." Then he convicted McSorley. "Brashear was struck as intended. I have no doubt that he intended to hit Brashear in the head."The Aftermath - An 18-month conditional discharge. The longest NHL suspension in history. The end of a 17-year career. McSorley never played another NHL game.Gretzky's Bodyguard is the third book in the Off the Ice series: hockey's criminal cases told in full.