The best insight into Lemieux's dirty, dark, shriveled soul was the Kris Draper incident. He ran Draper into the boards in a premeditated fashion, then laughed about it. Seventy-six stitches later, Draper stopped bleeding. This incident puts into perspective all the pathetic wailing about supposedly dirty hits in the current playoffs.

In light of Lemieux-Draper, it's funny to hear all the fuss over the Gary Roberts and Jeff O'Neill hits, which looked reasonable to me. I suspect that if Claude hit someone as hard and dirty as he hit Draper that night, the ESPN booth crew might actually wet its pants.

Perhaps the best measure of dirtiness is peer evaluation. To quote Dino Ciccarelli on Lemieux after that fateful Detroit-Colorado series: "I can't believe I shook his freakin' hand."