So as many of you know, I'm a Denver native, and was a late-teen during the best days of the Avs/Wings rivalry, and have a distinct memory of shouting at Konstantinov at one point during the Lemieux fracas that I 'hope you get hit by a truck!', in an edgy teen kind of way. Obviously that's not QUITE what happened, but there was a strong feeling of guilt there for a while afterwards regardless.
And even as diehard anti-Detroit as I was (and still kind of am- my 'Red Wings Suck' puck is on a shelf next to me with my 'in progress' miniature painting), I won't lie, watching him get wheeled around the ice with the Cup in his wheelchair the next year is one of my absolute favorite hockey moments.
It's hard to remember sometimes, with all that happened to him and all the years since, just how good that guy really was. It was a different era, so it's hard to compare him to modern defensemen like Makar or Fox, but in his day he was a top-ten defenseman, which made him so readily-hateable for an Avs fan. Dude was GOOD- tough, great at causing turnovers (I distinctly remember him absolutely turning Valeri Kamensky inside-out during one playoff game), just everything you could want on your blue line. That he wasn't quite Norris caliber back then speaks less of him and more of how next-level guys like Bourque and Leetch really were in those days.
Truly one of the greats of his era, and if he'd finished his career out he'd probably have gone to the Hall like so many of his other Red Wing cohorts.
