About damn time.

Good riddance to bad trash.

Cue all the New Jersey fans and the Stevens apologists with their "ZOMG YOUR JUST MAD CUZ YOUR TEAM SUX N WE HAV 3 CUPZ D00D" and "Scott Stevens has only been called for elbowing FOUR TIMES in his whole career, therefore he's a good player and you're just upset about Shane Willis and Ron Francis."

I've got two words for those folks:

Fuck off.

Scott Stevens being called for elbowing only four times in his career doesn't make him a clean player any more than the horrors wrought upon the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina qualify as urban renewal. In other words, just because it's legal to lop your own nards off in the public square, that doesn't mean that it's right.

You can lay blame on the guys that he's hit all you want--but that doesn't change the fact that this man was the master of the cheap hit. Even notorious Stevens fanboy Bill bloody Clement admits that Stevens pushes the limits of the rules with his hits (which is as close as he'll ever come to saying that the guy's a cheap-ass piece of shit that's just really good at disguising his handiwork).

For every unlucky sod like Shane Willis or Eric Lindros, there's a guy like Ron Francis who really did get cheapshotted by a man who's a master at leading with the shoulder and following through with the elbow.

I say this as somebody who is neutral about Ron Francis, by the way.

I challenge you to watch the tape of that hit, people. It came AFTER Francis had passed the puck, Stevens left his feet when he made that hit, and he followed through with the elbow. If it was anyone else that had done that, the refs would have been all over him like Don Koharski on a cruller and he'd have been suspended. But since it was Scott Stevens the zebras just looked the other way--not even a penalty--and gave the more classless members of the Devils fanbase lots of ammo for jackassery (not that they needed any more).

You can go on and on until you're blue in the face about what a great player he was and how he revolutionized the position of defenseman--and I won't argue with you. But it doesn't take away the fact that he was still a cheap piece of shit whenever he had the chance.

Good riddance, fuckhead.