Heavyweight · The 1990s · Montreal Canadiens
The Animal. Ewen fought everyone in the league during Montreal's 1993 Cup run — he was the bridge between the Nilan era and the Brashear era in that city. Died by suicide in 2015 at 49. His brain was initially ruled CTE-free, then re-examined and controversially re-classified, a dispute that still divides researchers.
Todd Ewen operated at the heavyweight tier — the tier where matchups were scheduled before the opening face-off and nobody needed a reason to drop the gloves. The NHL career numbers tell the short version: 518 regular-season games, 1,914 penalty minutes, 36 goals, 76 points. That is 3.69 penalty minutes per game across a full NHL life — a workload that, in today's game, would end most careers inside three seasons.
The bulk of his work was done in a Montreal Canadiens sweater, a franchise identity that defined him the way he defined the franchise. The 1990s was the environment in which his style made sense — a league where the rules, the rinks, and the roster sizes all allowed a role player to build an entire career out of a specific kind of willingness.
Todd Ewen is no longer with us. The section further down the page on his legacy covers the circumstances and the research that has come out of the post-career health conversations the enforcer generation continues to drive.
The 1990s heavyweight was a television event. Staged fights, marquee cards, crossover recognition with fans who didn't otherwise follow the sport — the position's commercial peak.
At 3.69 PIM per game, Todd Ewen was firmly in the regular-shift enforcer bracket — big enough minutes to develop two-way habits, willing enough to drop the gloves when the roster demanded it.
In a Montreal Canadiens jersey, that identity was sharpened by franchise history. Every organization has a different tolerance for the role and a different set of expectations for the man who plays it, and Todd Ewen's career cannot be separated from the building in which he played it.
That context matters because the enforcer conversation has collapsed into a few oversimplified arguments — pro-fighting vs. anti-fighting, goon vs. artist — that ignore the actual craft of the job. Todd Ewen is one of fewer than a hundred men who ever did this work at NHL level for long enough to learn it. The details of how he did it — the opponents he matched up with, the years he was on the ice, the team that employed him — are the only way to take the position seriously.
NHL regular-season totals, sortable by column. Minor-league and playoff numbers are excluded for clarity.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | PIM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1986-1987 | St. Louis Blues | 23 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 84 |
| 1986-1987 | St. Louis Blues | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 23 |
| 1987-1988 | St. Louis Blues | 64 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 227 |
| 1987-1988 | St. Louis Blues | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 21 |
| 1988-1989 | St. Louis Blues | 34 | 4 | 5 | 9 | 171 |
| 1988-1989 | St. Louis Blues | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 21 |
| 1989-1990 | St. Louis Blues | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 11 |
| 1989-1990 | Montréal Canadiens | 41 | 4 | 6 | 10 | 158 |
| 1989-1990 | Montréal Canadiens | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| 1990-1991 | Montréal Canadiens | 28 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 128 |
| 1991-1992 | Montréal Canadiens | 46 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 130 |
| 1991-1992 | Montréal Canadiens | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 18 |
| 1992-1993 | Montréal Canadiens | 75 | 5 | 9 | 14 | 193 |
| 1992-1993 | Montréal Canadiens | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 1993-1994 | Anaheim Ducks | 76 | 9 | 9 | 18 | 272 |
| 1994-1995 | Anaheim Ducks | 24 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 93 |
| 1995-1996 | Anaheim Ducks | 53 | 4 | 3 | 7 | 285 |
| 1996-1997 | San Jose Sharks | 51 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 162 |
The men Todd Ewen faced most often on the end of a dropped pair of gloves. Opponents linked below have their own profiles in the encyclopedia.
The 1990s were the era of the staged fight. Heavyweight bouts became scheduled events — opening face-off, a nod, the gloves come off, the crowd comes to its feet. Tie Domi vs. Bob Probert at Madison Square Garden in 1992 is the fight everyone of a certain generation watched on repeat. Rob Ray, Tony Twist, Stu Grimson, Sandy McCarthy — the rotation of legitimate heavyweights was so deep you could have iced a second All-Star team of men who averaged three minutes of ice time a night. It was also the decade the injuries started catching up and the conversations began about what the job was quietly costing.
Todd Ewen passed away in 2015. The post-career conversation around enforcers of his generation has been unforgiving — substance abuse, chronic pain, concussion sequelae, and the quiet retirements of men who were never meant to play 15 seasons at that tempo. Todd Ewen's name is now part of the public record on CTE in hockey — the evidence that the toll of the job was real, biological, and measurable, not just the folklore around grizzled retirements. His legacy is both the highlight reel and the cautionary tale, and Slapshot Diaries exists in part to make sure both halves are remembered accurately.