updated 1:16 a.m. ET March 5, 2006

NEW YORK - Rick Tocchet did it all in 18 NHL seasons. He scored, he checked, he punched.

He won two Canada Cup titles with Wayne Gretzky, lost twice to him in the Stanley Cup finals and played with him on the Los Angeles Kings.

Tocchet caused the kind of havoc that sparked his teammates and brought thrilled fans in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and even Phoenix out of their seats.

The good kind of havoc. The hockey kind. On the ice.

Now at 41, Tocchet is one of the faces of a growing hockey scandal. He is the focus of a police investigation into a gambling ring and accused of being the money man in a multimillion dollar operation that took wagers from NHL players and at least one prominent celebrity.

As a player, Tocchet could win with the puck on his stick, with a ramming hit into the boards, or on many occasions, with a right to the jaw. He wasn’t an MVP and he wasn’t a goon.

No, the 6-foot, 214-pounder from Ontario rested somewhere in between. He was simply a hockey player.

The Philadelphia Flyers drafted him in the sixth round in 1983, and he was in the NHL the following year when he was 20.

By the time he finished his second stint with the Flyers in 2002, he was 12th on the team’s career scoring list with 508 points; tied with Mark Recchi for 10th in goals with 232; and No. 1 in penalty minutes with 1,817 — nearly 500 more than famed bruiser Dave Schultz.

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That makes Tocchet the biggest bully in the history of the Broad Street Bullies.

“He was the type of player that stood up for his teammates,” former Flyers forward Keith Acton said Friday. “He’s the kind of teammate that you really respected.”

And one that tough Flyers fans adored.

Tocchet was so popular he had a horse named for him. Daniel Borislow, a Philadelphia native, campaigned Toccet for two years, and the colt was a Kentucky Derby contender before he was injured in 2003.

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Flying on the hardwood, racing on the rink, getting physical on the gridiron, and much more. more photos

Tocchet scored 14 goals in each of his first two NHL seasons. But as his scoring prowess grew, so did his time in the penalty box.

He flirted with 300 minutes in his second, third and fourth years — posting a career-high 299 during the 1987-88 season, the same one in which he led Philadelphia with 31 goals.

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