Friday Figher 1/8/2016: Dale Purinton
“Let ‘Em Wail Dale” is what they still call this guy. A pure bred force from Fort Wayne, Indiana, this 6’3 230 lb load used to rack up body counts and PIMs for the New York Rangers and Hartford Wolf Pack. Since Dale left Hartford, the city has dropped over 40 spots on the “Most Dangerous US Cities” list. In 9 years, Dale managed to get suspended 13 different times in the AHL and NHL. His most impressive suspensions? In September 2001, Dale was suspended for 4 games for “beating up” goaltender Garth Snow in a pre-season game. If that wasn’t savage enough, a month later Dale got a 10 game suspension for “attempting to eye-gouge” Colton Orr in a pre-season game. Holy shit did this guy deserve a Cup or what? Playing the pre-season like it was Game 7 in ’94. Gotta respect that.
Dale was known for nothing but his mean right and left hooks. Sometimes, Dale would even throw an elbow in for good measure. His NHL totals read like this: 181 GP, 4 goals, 16 assists, and an astonishing 578 PIMs. However, this animal’s most impressive season came in the 1999-2000 AHL season with the Hartford Wolf Pack, when Dale amassed 4 goals, 4 assists, and 415 PIMs in 62 games played. That’s right, four hundred and fifteen penalty minutes in 62 games. That’s roughly 7 minutes of penalties per game. Basically, if you went to a Wolf Pack game that season, you were getting at least one unreal Dale boxing match in which case he most likely stole away all manhood of his opponent. And it doesn’t look like Dale is done stealing things, as he was arrested in August of 2015 for suspicion of first-degree burglary. And in case you were wondering, Dale was miraculously +21 in that 1999-2000 season, a year referred to as “The Bloodbath in Hartford”. What a guy. Raise a fist for Dale.