In January 1975, Boston Bruins player Dave Forbes struck Minnesota North Stars player Henry Boucha in the eye with his hockey stick, leaving Boucha with double vision and an abruptly ended National Hockey League career.

Podcast host Bob Edholm was at that game. He was then a 21-year-old college student who sold beer and peanuts at Met Center in Bloomington, Minnesota. But because he was working behind his portable bar in the concourse serving customers, Bob did not see that attack by Forbes on Boucha.

That incident in 1975, though, was something that Bob thought about often over the next half-century. He was especially interested to learn what happened to both Forbes and Boucha in the decades that followed.

In Part One of this two-part episode, Bob sets the scene. A capacity crowd had filled the Met Center to watch the  ...