On Labor Day weekend, Stu Grimson drove down from Nashville — the last of eight stops he made over the course of his long and violent career in the National Hockey League — to Panama City, Fla. There, he threw himself into the surf, a short vacation from his new professional life as a lawyer and an occasional hockey commentator. It's been nearly 10 years since he last traded punches: On December 12, 2001, he fought the last of hundreds of fights, a messy heavyweight bout against Sandy McCarthy of the New York Rangers.1 It's been so long hardly anybody calls him The Grim Reaper anymore.

One of the best of a golden age of fighters, Grimson — now A. Stuart Grimson, Of Counsel, for the firm of Kay, Griffin, Enkema, & Colbert — fought virtually every big-name enforcer in the league, most of them more than once. He had epic, bloody battles with Bob Probert, Rob Ray, Georges Laraque, Peter Worrell, Krzysztof Oliwa, Rocky Thompson — names that hockey fans will forever attach to unforgettable images of taped wrists and fight straps.

In December 1998, Grimson fought a young Prairie kid and member of the Colorado Avalanche named Wade Belak. It was only the ninth fight of Belak's career; like Grimson before him, he was trying to establish a reputation for fearlessness, for toughness. Like Grimson, Belak had no illusions about what was expected of him and his career. He understood the perils that he faced, the potential costs of his profession. Both men had done their math. Maybe they wouldn't be the players they had dreamed that they might be, but they would be players, at least.

Two weeks ago, Belak, 35, arthritic and facing down his first winter without professional hockey, hanged himself in a Toronto hotel room. His was a stunning death for a thousand reasons, but not least because, on the surface, he was buoyant and funny, a happy presence so long as he wasn't trying to fill you in.

He was also the third young man, each of whom had made his living by f...