It sounds like you're insinuating that he was wrong.
Dunno if overpass is or not, but I do think he was wrong to sit there while his team mates were fighting & outnumbered as a result, 2 Russians on 1 Canadian flailing away, well, I just dont see how you could just sit there and not go & help him out. I mean, this is your Buddy, your Teammate, your Brother in Arms, Countryman. You might not like fighting & violence, ok, I get that, but what about the harm & injury going down right in front of you? Pull a Tim Horton & just go Bear Hug one of the players off your teammate but do something to stop him from getting beaten up. Youve got to have each others backs and in doing what he did, his career & reputation is most unfortunately forever stained in quite a few peoples books. Not mine, but plenty of others.
Carl Brewer went through a similar experience & situation though the circumstances were quite a bit different. Brewer as your likely aware was a pretty edgy & mouthy player, semi-dirty in fact, one of the first to carve out the palms in his gloves so he could hold a guys jersey without being spotted by the ref. Extremely talented, great skater & stickhandler, terrific shot, paired with Bob Baun one of if not the best defensive tandems in the league.
Anyway, long story short, back then everyone fought, you didnt fight you were gone. So one night in December 1963 in a game against Chicago, the Bell Rings for Brewer and he doesnt answer it. Murray Balfour of Chicago challenges him to a fight after Brewer had earned the enmity of several of the Hawks, and Shack along with other Leafs were stirring the pot as well. So multiple brawls break out followed by the benches being cleared, Balfour chasing Brewer down who wouldnt fight, getting ahold of him on the players bench and off the ice & proceeding to lay a really nasty beating on him.
Brewer never recovered from it. Wasnt the same player thereafter and in his semi-autobiography The Power of Two about the NHL Pension Fight & his life & career dedicates quite a bit of time in explaining this event & how it changed his life permanently. How he was playing scared ever after & simply couldnt take the stain, the shame of having turn tailed & run, turtled. Incredible really that he'd even made it as far as the NHL without being challenged in Junior but not inconceivable. Or that he'd gotten away with what he had in the NHL for as long as he had without someone telling him to put up or shut up. Its hard, its callous, its cold I know, but thats the way the game was played, The Code. You beak off, run wild, dish dirt, youve got to back it up. Bench clearing brawl, you see one of your team mates being attacked by 2 guys, you go help him out.
Do I think anything less of Turgeon or Brewer as players because neither wanted any part of the violence in the game? No, not at all. Brewer belongs in the HHOF in the Builders Category for what he accomplished off the ice and as a nod to his great career as a player. Does Turgeon belong in the HHOF, forgetting altogether about that one incident & event? A case could be made for it sure, but at the lower end of the spectrum & threshold for entry. Id also like to think that something gripped him in that moment back in 1987, something that if given the chance to go back & right he would, and that rather than just sit there on the bench with his head down he'd jump over those boards & help out his team mates if by only grabbing & clutching an opponent, pulling him out of the fray & causing any damage. Ive seen guys
freeze, and thats exactly what he did there. Its not pretty. Im sure he's not proud of it, but I certainly dont condemn him for life for it. Was just a scared 17yr old kid who froze solid. Wasnt even there. Just gone. Total shutdown. Fugue state.
