1999-2000 was the first season that we got to see the Superleague played live, and we noticed Banks almost immediately, with the remark of "Who's that ******?". Sadly, it wasn't just us - he really was like that. He eventually left the ISL with a suspension hanging over his head. Here's the full story as taken from The Ice Hockey Annual 2000-01 (many thanks to Stewart Roberts):

Darren Banks, another of London's hard men, went home in February after being told by his club that they wouldn't pay him if he was suspended by the league. Banks, a powerfully built 6ft, 2in forward from Toronto, was one of the more charmless nerks in a team that thinks that sort of thing is clever, as out old mum used to say.

The one-time Boston Bruins' enforcer was thrown out of Knights' game at Ayr on 30 January (major plus game plus gross) by referee Simon Kirkham for assaulting one of his linesmen - 'rag-dolling' him as one reporter put it - who was trying to break up a fight between Banks and Eagle Cam Bristow.

The club smartly stuck in an appeal so they Banks was able to carry on playing until dscipline chief Peter Woods could hear the case. But as the mutli-titfered Woods' priority was the GB team in Poland, this took two-and-a-half weeks.

Banks, who clocked up 2,649 penalty minutes in 521 games in North America, rewarded his club's quick thinking two days' later in London by getting a minor for showing disrespect to the national anthem.

Then in Eagles' return game in Docklands less than a week later, his antics reduced Ayr's Lithuanian forward Dino Bauba to muttering ruderies under his breath, thus getting himself suspended. Bauba was later exonerated on the grounds that only a linesman had heard the remark. Unless Dino harboured suicidal tendencies that had seemed pretty obvious from the start.

After Banks had joined Port Huron (Michigan) Border Cats in the Central League - his 15th club - Woods suspended him for 12 games and stuck on a 500ukp fine. As the minor leagues across the water don't acknowledge discipline dished out by foreign circuits like Superleague,the penalties would only be served on Banks' return to Britain.

Here's one punishment we hope never gets administered.

(Banks went on to play for the Phoenix Mustangs in the WCHL, the team that Kevin Brown joined after leaving Manchester. He was still up to his old tricks. Hopefully we'll hear more of Brown.)