Name: Down Goes Brown: Team Byng vs. Team PIM, who wins?
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Down Goes Brown: Team Byng vs. Team PIM, who wins?

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Dec 4, 2020Picture a hockey player. Not a specific one, but your version of the archetypal player, the generic one that comes to mind when you think about the sport.Chances are, you’re picturing some growling menace with a black eye, missing teeth, and an angry expression. Maybe a scar or two, or cartoon-style bandage. That’s hockey, right? It’s a sport that’s all about toughness, where a punch in the face is just part of the deal. Not everyone plays like that, of course, but the real ones do. for the win, am I right?Except … lots of the ’s best ever players don’t really fit that mold, right? In fact, plenty of history’s top legends stayed out of rough stuff. We even have an award just for players like that: the Lady Byng, which recognizes sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct. And while Gordie wouldn’t have been caught anywhere near that thing, plenty of big stars have won it.So today, let’s pick a side. The gentlemen vs. the cavemen. Pacifists vs. lotsa fists. Who you got?Here’s how this will work.– For Team PIM, we’re picking from all the forwards and defensemen who, at some point in their NHL career, led their own team in regular season penalty minutes. That’s a high bar, especially once we get into the enforcer era, but we can find some good players who managed to do it. (Beyond “leading your own team,” we won’t be using any limits on how many minutes a player needs. I was initially going to, but the problem you run into is that PIM totals fluctuate so much based on era that if you set the bar at, say, 200 minutes, you just wind up with all guys from the mid-’70s to late-’90s and not much else.)– For Team Byng, it gets a little trickier. Forwards are easy; we just want guy who won the Lady Byng. But only three defensemen have ever won the award, so we’ll expand the criteria to any blueliner who ever finished in the top five in voting.– It doesn’t really make sense to use goaltenders for this, but that’s never stopped us before. Team PIM will be looking for goalies who racked up at least 250 PIM in their careers, while Team Byng will need guys who played at least five full seasons of 40 or more games without recording a single penalty minute (and only since 1970, since I don’t trust goalie penalty records before then).We’ll do full 20-man rosters for each team, and see which one looks like the best squad at the end. Let’s get ready to drop the gloves and/or awkwardly mill around afterwards picking them up.(Thanks to reader Sean D. for sending in this idea.)Well, I guess we have to start Team Byng with Wayne Gretzky.The greatest player in NHL history was also the league’s most gentlemanly in five seasons, the most in the modern era. (Frank Boucher won seven times in the ’20s and ’30s.) And we can give him two familiar linemates: One that he actually played with in Jari Kurri, and one who was his early rival for best player in hockey honors in Marcel Dionne.Yeah, Team Byng is going to be pretty good up front.But that’s OK, because true to character, Team PIM isn’t going to be a pushover. Somebody had to do the dirty work for Gretzky and Kurri in Edmonton, which means we can start our tough guy roster with Mark Messier, whose career-high 165 PIMs led the 1983-84 . And he’ll have two of history’s greatest wingers on his side, as Rocket Richard and Ted Lindsay both qualify. That gives us a solid top line that can …Wait.Something’s wrong. Where’s Gordie Howe?I mean, that was half the point of this whole thing, right? When you think of a grizzled player who can be the toughest guy on his own team and the best player in the league, Howe’s the standard by whom all others are judged. By the time he retired for the first time in 1971, he’d been the NHL’s active leader in penalty minutes for five years.Except … in 25 seasons in Detroit, he never led the Wings in PIMs. Not once. I swear, I checked this like five times. Despite being widely recognized as the NHL’s undisputed heavyweight champ for most of the Original Six era — — &nbsp;Howe never ranked higher than second on his own team.How is that possible? Well, we’ve already mentioned the answer. It’s Terrible Ted Lindsay, Howe’s teammate for 14 seasons. Lindsay led to the in penalty minutes most years, often racking up well over 100 in a season during an era where that was rare. Howe nearly caught him in 1953-54, when Lindsay took a photo finish with 110 minutes to Howe’s 109, but that’s as close as Mr. Hockey got.So we can’t use Gordie. I won’t lie, this is crushing for Team PIM. But if anyone can tough it out, it’s these guys, so let’s keep going.Team Byng keeps piling up the talent, as they can start their second line with two guys who know each other fairly well: Bobby Hull and Brett Hull. They each won the Lady Byng once, with Bobby taking it in 1965 and Brett earning the nod in 1990, on the way to racking up a combined 1,300-plus goals. Not bad for a second line.So who gets to center these two snipers? My first thought was Stan Mikita, Bobby’s longtime center in Chicago. He won the Lady Byng twice, so he’d be a fine pick. But there’s a problem: before famously transforming his playing style, Mikita was one of the league’s toughest players, and he led the in PIMs on multiple occasions. That means he could technically be the second-line center on both of our teams, which would be neat but also might feel kind of silly. I think the only reasonable thing we can do here is disqualify Mikita altogether, and find another playmaker to center the Hulls. I’d say would fit the bill, so he’s in.We’ll load up Team PIM’s second line with a few more big names, including two you probably weren’t expecting to see on this roster. We’ll start with our center, Jean Beliveau, a true gentleman off the ice who was a lot more willing to mix it up on the ice than most remember; when he retired in 1971, he was the league’s all-time leader in career PIMs among centers. He managed to rack up over 1,000 minutes, including 143 in 1955-56 to not only lead the but place him third in the entire league. It wasn’t the only time Beliveau led his team, and he went his entire 20-year career without ever receiving so much as a Lady Byng vote, so despite a well-earned reputation for pure class when out of uniform, he certainly qualifies for our squad.So does Alexander Ovechkin, whose career-high 89 PIMs in 2009-10 was more than enough to top a team where nobody else even had 70. (Should he actually be on the first line? Probably. But I’m not putting a guy who’s never cracked 100 minutes on the first-line of Team PIM. Yell at me all you want, it’s about principle, dammit.)After throwing two minor curveballs, we’ll round off our second line with a name you definitely did expect: , who led the 1994-95 and the 2003-04 Red Wings. Team Byng is still tough to beat, but Team PIM comes close on the second line. Let’s see what happens as we move down the lineup.There’s still an embarrassment of riches to choose from for Team Byng, as we can start our third line with Mike Bossy. We’ll give him Joe Sakic as his center, and put Paul Kariya on the other wing. Sakic has to do all the heavy-lifting in terms of longevity for this line, but otherwise it’s an excellent unit.But Team PIM can find some legends too, starting with Frank Mahovlich, who led the 1960-61 by over 40 minutes. We’ll play him with , who didn’t rack up as many penalties as you might remember but did lead the in 1998-99. And we’ll give the other wing spot to Theo Fleury, who not only led the in his early years but maybe more impressively also did it as a 33-year-old with the 2001-02 New York Rangers, racking up a career-high 216 PIMs to leave Sandy McCarthy and Matthew Barnaby in his dust.Even four lines in, Team Byng still has plenty of star power available. I’m going to go with a line of between Johnny Bucyk and Gilbert Perreault, although we could have also gone to names like Martin St. Louis, Dave Keon and Alex Delvecchio. And check back in a few years to see who ends up losing their spot to .That takes away a bit of the sting of missing out on a few stars you might have expected to be eligible. Mario Lemieux wasn’t anyone’s idea of a tough guy, but he , and never had a top-five Lady Byng finish. Neither did Steve Yzerman or , and Luc Robitaille and never even cracked the top-10. Guy Lafleur was a finalist twice and Teemu Selanne did it five times, but neither ever won. And then there’s the king of the Lady Byng near-miss: Adam Oates, who was a finalist in six separate seasons, including four straight years as the runner-up from 1993 to 1996.For Team PIM, we’re down to slim pickings. Let’s cover off a few names you’re probably waiting to see, but won’t. I was stunned to find out I couldn’t use Cam Neely, who came close to leading the in his early years but was constantly blocked in Boston by enforcers like Jay Miller and Lyndon Byers. actually never had more than 86 PIMs in a season, which wasn’t going to cut it on Calgary teams that had guys like Chris Simon, and Krzysztof Oliwa. Bobby Clarke spent lots of time in the penalty box, but not as much as his Broad Street Bully teammates. And then there’s a near-miss that I wasn’t expecting: , whose 110 minutes as a teenaged rookie on the 2005-06 left him just 14 behind for the team lead.Still, we can stock our fourth line with some pretty good players, starting with , a somewhat surprising name whose had a sprinkling of Byng votes in his day but also led the in PIMs just two years ago. Put him with Keith Tkachuk, who finished behind Tie Domi for a few years in Winnipeg but cracked the top of the list for the . In case you’re wondering, yes, both Matthew and Brady also qualify, and it’s tempting to go with an all-Tkachuk line, but . So instead, I’m going to give our last spot to &nbsp;, a prototype ’80s power winger who narrowly beat out candidates like Kevin Stevens, , Al Secord, Wendel Clark and Rick Vaive.We’re done with the forwards, and at this point I think it’s pretty clear that Team Byng is ahead on the scorecards. They should be, though, because the Lady Byng has always been a forward’s award. I’d expect Team PIM to make up some ground on the back end. Let’s see if that turns out to be the case.As a reminder, we’ve loosened the rules for Team Byng on the blue line, where we’ll accept anyone who finished in the top five of voting for the award. As it turns out, that still makes for a tough road, but it will help a little. Most importantly, it means we can use Nicklas Lidstrom, who never won but was a runner-up five times. We’ll pair him a fellow Red Wings legend in Red Kelly, whose four wins make hm the only defenseman to ever take home the award multiple times.That’s a really good start for Team Byng. Can Team PIM keep up? Yeah, I’d say so, because they can start their top pairing with a guy named Bobby Orr. He certainly wasn’t know as an enforcer, but he played during the days when a defenseman was expected to know how to hack a leg or two, and he racked up over 100 PIMs five times in his career, including a team-leading 125 for the 1969-70 . I’ll put him with Doug Harvey, who mostly kept his nose clean but still led the 1957-58 Habs by almost 40 minutes.It’s not easy to have an edge on the blue line when the other side has Nicklas Lidstrom, but I think Team PIM has pulled it off here. And things are only going to get tougher for Team Byng.We can start Team Byng with another reasonably big star: Brian Leetch, who barely sneaks in based on finishing third once, in 1992. Things start to get really thin after that, though, as the voters apparently decided that they didn’t need to vote for anyone who wasn’t named Lidstrom for the next few decades.Let’s cover off some of the names you might be expecting, but that aren’t available. Many aren’t even close, to be honest — for example, Paul Coffey played 21 years and was called soft the whole time, without getting so much as a single Lady Byng vote in his entire career. Neither did Larry Murphy. Scott Niedermayer never finished in the top 10, nor have or Erik Karlsson. Ray Bourque topped out at eighth, as did .Vote for more defensemen for the Lady Byng, PHWA writers!In fact, I’ll be honest here — I started writing this piece with the rule for defensemen being a top-three finish, only to realize that I literally wasn’t going to be able to fill out a roster. So we have to go with top five, which does open the door to a few more names. I’ll round out the second pairing with Borje Salming, who only barely qualifies; he finished fifth in 1977, then didn’t show up on another ballot for the remaining 13 years of his career.Meanwhile, Team PIM is having a much easier time. Let’s start with the greatest defenseman of the pre-Original Six era in Eddie Shore, who led the Bruins in PIMs several times and the entire league twice while also giving us the All-Star Game by . We’ll put him with Chris Chelios, who spent most of his career finishing behind various enforcers in Montreal and Chicago before leading the 2001-02 Red Wings at the age of 40.Team Byng is in full-on crisis mode here; it turns out there are entire decades where nobody was voting for defensemen. I pretty much have to give a spot to , who somehow won the award in 2012. He’s not a Hall of Famer, but he wasn’t bad, and I’m running low on options. I found a few near-misses in sixth-place finishes from and Tomas Kaberle, and had to at least consider some active names in recent fourth-place finishers and . I found myself leaning towards the only other blue line winner, Bill Quackenbush, even though he’s not an especially well-known name to modern fans.And then, I find some help from an unexpected name. No, really — it’s just about the last name I thought I’d be considering for the Team Byng roster: Howe.As in Mark Howe, Gordie’s son. He played 16 NHL seasons and got Byng votes in six of them, including top-five finishes in 1986 and 1987. If you’d told me at the start of this that I wouldn’t have a Howe on Team PIM but would slip one onto the roster of Team Byng, I’d have said you were crazy, but here we are.Meanwhile, Team PIM is having to turn people away. I was disappointed to realize I couldn’t find a team-leading season for thanks to teammates like Kelly Chase and George Parros, and Denis Potvin just misses the cut with a second-place finish as a rookie on the 1973-74 . But that’s fine, because I can throw out just about the ultimate “keep your head up” third pairing in Scott Stevens and . Stevens never led the but did pull it off in Washington, while Chara led both the Bruins and his early-day Islanders. And if we need extra depth, we could still turn to Brad Park or Pierre Pilotte or or P.K. Subban or … you get the picture. Team Byng had the advantage up front, but on the blueline, it’s Team PIM all the way.We’re heading down the stretch, and it’s close. Can the goalies break the logjam?So to recap the rules, Team Byng needs to find itself two goaltenders who went five full seasons of more than 40 games without a penalty minute. It’s a tougher bar to clear than you might think. Dominik Hasek never managed to go penalty-free for even one full season. Neither did Martin Brodeur. Grant Fuhr had one, as did , and (somewhat surprisingly) Bernie Parent. topped out at three, as did Ken Dryden, Rogie Vachon and .But that’s OK, because we can still find two pretty good goaltenders who certainly capture the spirit of what we’re looking for. Let’s start with , who went penalty-free a ridiculous 10 times in his career. He’s been in the league 15 years and has only 18 PIMs to his name, or two-thirds the total that racked up just from . We’ll pair The King with Tony Esposito, who arrives just in time for our 1970 cutoff and hit our qualifying mark five times (and also didn’t record a penalty in any of his last four years in the league).Team PIM needs guys with at least 250 career PIMs, and as you might expect, it’s a very short list. Just , to be exact. And that includes guys like Dan Bouchard and Don Beaupre who, with all due respect, won’t be getting anywhere near what’s meant to be a roster of all-time greats.Luckily, we don’t need them, because we have three Hall of Famers to choose from, plus some other worthwhile names to consider. There’s Tom Barrasso, who had 70 minutes in 1988-89, which is the highest single-season total of any goaltender ever, except for one. That would of course be all-time goalie PIM king Ron Hextall, who owns the three highest season totals, including two where he topped 100 minutes. (And that doesn’t even count his .)But as much as Hextall would seem like a poster child for this sort of team, I don’t think he makes the cut. Instead, I’ll go with an obvious name that we’ve already mentioned: Patrick Roy. He doesn’t make it with much room to spare, and I was a little surprised to see that his career-high season was just 39 PIMs in 1997-98, with almost all of that coming from the Chris Osgood game. Still, he was a certified lunatic out there, and I think he fits what we’re looking for. And we’ll back him up with Billy Smith, who edges out Eddie Belfour, if only so we have somebody to antagonize Gretzky.Best-of-seven series, who you got?Team ByngTeam PIMYou could shift guys around the lines if you wanted, with Beliveau moving up past Messier or a Hull or two playing with Gretzky, but that’s not really important. The key here is which lineup is better — does Team Byng’s obvious edge in forward depth make up for Team PIM’s better blue line? Is there enough of a goaltending edge to make a difference? And maybe most importantly, which guys have I missed off of Team PIM, because I’m sure there’s at least a few.As it stands, I think Team Byng is the better team, but Team PIM would probably be more fun to watch. And as for who wins a seven-game series, it might depend on when it was played. Today? Team Byng all the way. In the mid-’70s? Team PIM probably sweeps, if they don’t all get arrested first.(Top photo of Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier: David E. Klutho / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)

Dec 4, 2020Picture a hockey player. Not a specific one, but your version of the archetypal player, the generic one that comes to mind when you think about the sport.Chances are, you’re picturing some growling menace with a black eye, missing teeth, and an angry expression. Maybe a scar or two, or cartoon-style bandage. That’s hockey, right? It’s a sport that’s all about toughness, where a punch in the face is just part of the deal. Not everyone plays like that, of course, but the real ones do. for the win, am I right?Except … lots of the ’s best ever players don’t really fit that mold,...

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Sean McIndoe

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Down Goes Brown: Team Byng vs. Team PIM, who wins?

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