The Bruins’ 2025 Sportsman’s Dinner is coming up quick, on May 3!
This week, we’re releasing bios for this year’s three special guest speakers, with today’s on Joey Kocur:
A fifth-round selection of the Detroit Red Wings (#88 overall) in the 1983 NHL Entry Draft, Kocur broke in full-time with the Wings during the 1985-86 season, making his presence felt immediately with a league-high 377 penalty minutes in 59 games as a 21-year-old.
Quick in establishing himself as one of the top heavyweights in the NHL, that ’86 campaign marked the first of what would be six-straight seasons with at least 213 PIMS, to open his career.
Midway through his seventh season, during the spring of ‘91, Kocur was traded to another Original Six team, joining the New York Rangers. He would go on to play six seasons in New York where he won his first Stanley Cup, suiting up for 20 games on the Rangers’ playoff run to their first championship in 54 years.
Following a brief seven-game stint with the Vancouver Canucks in 1996, Kocur returned to the Red Wings in the ‘96-97 season, where he would win back-to-back Stanley Cups in ’97 and ’98 with the team who had drafted him over a decade prior.
Kocur played 19 playoff games with the Wings on their ‘97 run, scoring a goal in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals versus Philadelphia, as Detroit went on to sweep the Legion of Doom Flyers 4-0 to win their first Cup since 1955.
The following year, Kocur again suited up for 18 games on the Wings’ run that resulted in a 4-0 series sweep of the Washington Capitals in the Finals, to make it back-to-back championships. Kocur again scored a goal in the opening game of the Cup Finals in ’98.
Kocur finished his NHL career with 2,519 penalty minutes in 820 regular season games. He played another 118 playoff games, winning three Stanley Cups as a player (’94, ’97, ’98), and a fourth as a coach with the 2002 Red Wings.
The Bruins’ 2025 Sportsman’s Dinner will be May 3 at the Power Dodge Curling Centre. Find tickets and full details at link below:
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Marty Martinson/Estevan Bruins PxP/Marketing Director
On X: @MartyMartyPxP1
