A few seasons ago, Teddy Purcell and his Tampa Bay teammates were warming up at the rink, playing a handball-type game in the concourse. At one point, chasing after the ball, Purcell slipped underneath a hotdog stand and, in his words, “fileted my ankle.” The cut was too fine to fix with stitches, so trainers poured what Purcell described as “this gunpowder stuff” onto the wound. The powder stung badly enough. The presence of an observer did not help Purcell’s mood, either.
“It was so painful and Stammer was standing right over, looking at the cut,” he says.