Episode 371 - Chris Knuckles Nilan!!!

Earl Skakel (0:03)

All right, ladies and gentlemen, I don't get very excited to interview people anymore, but I'm smiling with anticipation of how great this is going to be. This man is a true legend. He's one of the, and I hope I don't insult him by saying this, one of the all-time great NHL enforcers. He's someone I grew up watching. He's got the best hockey podcast going right now, by far. Please welcome the one, the only NHL legend, Mr. Chris Nilan.

Chris Nilan (0:37)

Earl, thanks for having me, pal. I really appreciate it. And yeah, legend maybe in my mother's mind, and my father's mind maybe, but legend?

Earl Skakel (0:50)

I think you are. I mean.

Chris Nilan (0:53)

Well, I appreciate it. Thank you for the kind words.

Earl Skakel (0:56)

Because you grew up maybe in the last era, to me anyway, and I'm just an idiot fan of true toughness in the NHL, where every team had three to four heavyweights, and probably another three to four guys who could fight, and then probably another two agitators, like Ken Linsman and so on. So as a player who wasn't gigantic, I mean, you were a big guy, six feet, 205, but how did you navigate all those years in the league, fighting mostly bigger players than you?

Chris Nilan (1:34)

Well, first of all, when I came into the league, when I came to my first training camp, I was nervous as all hell.

I didn't really think I was going to come in and be a fighter, put it that way. Growing up in Boston, every kid growing up in Boston in my era, the late 60s, early 70s, wanted to be Bobby Orr. And those are lofty aspirations for young kids, but Bobby Orr just took that city by storm. So, you know, my idea of hockey was the way he played it. But I also saw how the Bruins played for years. They played tough. They had a lot of guys that could handle themselves, and they stuck together as a team. And that resonated with me in the way I grew up with my family and my friends, that sticking together as friends, sticking up for each other, that kind of stuff. So that was already ingrained in me. And then, because I loved the game so much, when it came time to play in it, and I couldn't play that way in high school, I couldn't play that way in college. I did play physical, but I never really fought. All the fighting I did was on the street. So when I got to the NHL, coming to Montreal, my first camp, I was intimidated. I was nervous as all hell. I felt out of place.

You know, coming in to an organization who just won four Stanley Cups in a row, going for their fifth. I'm like, you know, nobody thought I had a chance in hell, including me, but I was going to give it my best. And when I got there, you know, I went to camp. I got sent to the American Hockey League. I had a five-game trial for $200 a game, and I didn't play the first four games. We're in Halifax. And the first game I was going to play in was in Maine. Maine was Philadelphia's farm team, and they had a lot of tough guys. And the year before, they beat the Voyagers, the team I was playing for. They beat them in the playoffs, four straight. They kicked the shit out of them. They spooked them. They slashed them. They beat them up. And they were scared to touch the puck. So my first year, they were trying to, you know, get a bigger, tougher team down in Halifax. So I didn't know I was destined for that. The coach wasn't a big, Burt Templeton. He didn't like college kids or US kids. So there's one strike against me. And anyway, I played that first game in Maine, and my family's there, everybody's there. My first shift, I go out and I hit Glenn Cochran. Glenn was 6'4, I don't know, 2'30. Big kid, arms down to his ankles. And I hit him hard. He turned around and slashed me. I slashed him back, and then he dropped his glove. So I said, here we go. And I fought him. And I cut him open really bad under his eye. And he was bleeding, and he went nuts, and we both got kicked out of the game. The next day, I'm in my room. Of course, my father was pissed because he came up there all that way, and so I didn't play. I got kicked out after one fight.