I remember hearing that Lemieux took all the padding out of his gloves for greater flexibility. Well--whatever. Mario was always a dick IMO. That chop by Graves was pretty nasty but it wasn't anything unusual to see practically every game in those days. Really--you had Samuelsson and Kasparaitis running around with their knee to knee hits and those were cool. Scott Stevens handing out head shots left and right--concussions galore and no problem and this is what they decided to highlight because Lemieux and Gretzky were the two guys they marketed the game around. Messier was another one. Some players are immune because of their star status. Malkin slew foots and makes dangerous plays all the time. No suspensions. Messier put a lot of people in the hospital--no suspensions for him either.
Lemieux hypocritically complaining about dirty play and employing Matt Cooke and Brooks Orpik and the unsuspendable Malkin. There you go. It's like Bobbly Clarke--one of the dirtiest players of all time talking about cleaning up the game.