In 1995, Claude Lemieux won the Conn Smythe Trophy as Playoff MVP when he led the NJ Devils to the Stanley Cup in spite of going through a very public, nasty divorce. In a preliminary round Matthew Barnaby, the king of agitation and trash talk was all over Lemieux, trying to get him off his game.
Claude approached me at a stoppage in play with tears in his eyes and asked me to please tell Barnaby not to speak to him about his personal life. Claude told me that he was going through a terrible divorce and that Barnaby had made some extremely derogatory and obscene comments about his estranged wife.
As far as I'm concerned a player's family is off limits. I immediately called Matthew Barnaby over insisted that he apologize to Claude Lemieux or I would throw him out of the game. Barney didn't believe I could or would do it until I firmly said, "Try me."
It took two Barnaby two attempts because I didn't think the first one offer to Lemieux was sincere enough. Claude accepted the second one and skated away leaving me to threaten Matthew Barnaby never to say those types of things again or he would get an early shower.
Full article is here: http://tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=384217
Fraser does a good job with his articles, this one in particular mentions an incident I never heard of.
