Stanley Cup Update: Channeling His Inner Brooks Orpik

In the spring of 1970, the Penguins and their bitter rivals, the St. Louis Blues, brawled their way through a Semi-Final series.Scotty Bowman’s battlin’ Blues featured the roughhewn defensive tandem of Noel Picard and Bob Plager, aided and abetted by Bob’s swashbuckling older brother and one-time NHL penalty king, Barclay Plager.

Pens combatants included Tracy Pratt, Bryan Hextall (Ron’s dad) and agitators Glen “Slats” Sather and Bryan “Bugsy” Watson, early practitioners in the fine art of squirting gasoline on incipient fires a la the Panthers’ Brad Marchand. Even our goalie, Al Smith, was a battler, having famously slugged it out with the younger Plager at center ice one night at the old…