Habs and Nordiques Rivalry Hits Its Apex on Good Friday 1984

Happy Good Friday to all you Followers of the Cross and lovers of the right cross. We did a retrospective piece on the brawl-filled game between the Philadelphia Flyers and Ottawa Senators, a game that still holds the NHL's single-game penalty minute record. Now we’re taking a look back at another game that slugged its way into NHL lore – the Good Friday Brawl.

On April 20, 1984, provincial rivals Montreal Canadiens and Quebec Nordiques took the ice for Game 6 of a second-round playoff series. The teams traded wins in the first four games and Montreal took game 5 to put the Nordiques on the ropes of elimination. These two teams would be at each others’ throats for the entirety of the 80s, amidst a deep, multifaceted backdrop that ran the gamut from politics to business to hockey. There was genuine hatred in these games, and it was expected that things would come to a head in Game 6 on Good Friday 1984, a game that Canadiens brawler Chris Nilan would later call “the scariest thing I was ever involved in.”