Who owns the record for fewest shots on goal in a season?

What I remember best about Grimson occurred at the very beginning of his career, his third and fourth career games as I recall. It was 1989-90 and he was trying to break in with Calgary who were defending Cup champs at the time. In January there was a home-and-home series between the Flames and Oilers. Calgary won the first game 3-1 here in Edmonton, and the unknown Grimson had a scrap with Oilers’ heavy Dave Brown in which the young goon got the jump on the veteran enforcer and got the better of it. There was some post-fight trash talking and Grimson started talking himself up in the papers as the “Grim Reaper” blah blah blah.

Well, come the aptly-named “rematch” in Calgary two nights later, and Brown reportedly advised his media buddies not to go for coffee early in the game. The two heavyweights got out there together in the early going and Brown got right after it, starting the “lawnmower” on Grimson and not letting up until Grimson was flat on his back. To his credit Grimson skated off under his own steam, but wound up in hsopital with the dreaded fractured orbital bone as I recall. Out for a few weeks, then straight back to the minors.

Grimson was beaten so badly he had not one but two excuses, that he had the flu and (my favourite) that he had trouble dropping the gloves becuase his hands were swollen from the first fight. Anyway, the media in these parts changed Grimson’s nickname to “the Dim Sleeper” to great hilarity.

Of much more historical importance was that this game was one of the turning points in Oilers’ season. They came back to win that game in the Saddledome, 3-2 in overtime on a goal by Marty Gelinas, and the team seemed to regain a swagger that had largely been missing since the Gretzky sale. Eventually of course they would go on to win the Stanley Cup and recover it from its one-year hiatus in southern Alberta.

Dave Brown was very, very popular among his teammates; note their unusual reaction right after the fight. I also remember how they responded when Brown lifted the Stanley Cup in Boston a few months later, which was a much bigger deal than your usual “extra in street clothes” scene. Brown had been an important contributor to that team over the course of the season.