Durbano quickly gained a reputation for being one of the toughest players in the league, amassing 1,411 major league-career penalty minutes, including an NHL-leading 370 PIM in the 1975–76 season.
In the very first game of the 1974–75 season, he was checked by Philadelphia Flyers defenceman Andre Dupont and suffered a fractured left wrist.
He was arrested on February 7, 1981, at Toronto International Airport aboard an Air Canada flight from Miami; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police seized about 474 grams of cocaine, estimated by police to be worth about $71,000.
[4] After his release, he was arrested once for shoplifting, and, in 1995, he was sent back to prison after he attempted to recruit an undercover police officer into an escort service in Welland, Ontario.
[5] He later moved to the Northwest Territories to seek a calmer life, and died there on November 16, 2002, of liver cancer at the age of 50.