ON JANUARY 1, 1989, the Flames were going through a bit of a midseason slump. They were struggling with complacency. And after the in-your-face attitude I’d shown in training camp, I guess they thought this snotty-nosed little bastard from Russell might stir things up.
I remember being extremely nervous because I knew that I was only going to get two, or at most, three, games to show that I belonged. Was I afraid? Absolutely. For the first time in a long time, I felt some doubt. “Don’t fuck up. You’ve got to play better than you have ever played in your life.”
The team booked me a room at the nicest hotel in the city, the Palliser. I dumped my stuffand immediately headed for practice. The next day, we were scheduled to play Quebec. My dad’s sister, Auntie Rose, and her husband, Uncle Don Odgers, drove in from Oxbow, Saskatchewan, and took me out to dinner at the Calgary Tower. It was the tallest structure in the city at that time and had a revolving restaurant on the top. They told me to have anything I wanted on the menu, so I ordered lobster. A few hours later, I woke up puking all over the place. I couldn’t believe it—of all the times to get sick, but I managed to get back to sleep. The next night, I remember stepping onto the ice and looking at the team. The Calgary Flames were the biggest and deepest team in the NHL. Except for the goalies, Rick Wamsley and Mike Vernon, and three players—Dougie Gilmour, Joey Mullen and Håkan Loob—everyone else was over six feet and weighed more than 200 pounds. Cliff Fletcher had been building the Flames since they started in Atlanta in 1972, and they were always known for size. I read that after a game with the original Atlanta Flames, Stan Mikita—who, at five-nine and 169, was a star centre with the Chicago Blackhawks—said, “It was like skating in a forest of giant redwoods.”
When I showed up in the dressing room, I remember Al MacInnis sitting with his back against a wall and his arms crossed, saying, “What the fuck are you doing here?” I didn’t say much, just kind of quietly answered, “They called me up.”
I’m sure they all knew that I was just fuckin’ lighting it up in Salt Lake. Vets watch the farm teams. They want to know who is coming up on their asses. Back then, you’d ask the scouts—“How’s this guy doing? How’s that guy doing?” We didn’t have the Internet like we do now. I don’t think players feel enough of that fear that pushes them to play hard now. Under the collective bargaining agreement, teams aren’t allowed to bring a player in halfway through the season and start fucking around with the chemistry of the team unless there are injuries. The rules are different, and this is why you have so much complacency.
The coaches were behind me. Obviously, my call-up was their decision, so I knew I had their support. Al MacNeil was always great to me, always talking to me and giving me pointers. “Do exactly what you have been doing down in Salt Lake. Play that way. That’s why you are here, that’s why we called you up. Don’t change a thing, and don’t worry about what the guys are thinking. You are here because you deserve to be here. You have earned your chance, make the most of it.”
But most of the guys had the deep-freeze thing going on. I didn’t like it, but I could live with it. I didn’t blame the guys. They didn’t want their group messed with. They were all pretty comfortable. For the most part, they were kind of mellow and cool, and in comes this dorky kid who is full of energy. They didn’t like the dynamic. I sat between Colin Patterson and Rick Wamsley, and those two guys treated me well from day one. They knew that I was fuckin’ shit-scared sittin’ there, but if Lanny McDonald sat out and I played instead, you could feel that shit. My linemates were Brian MacLellan and Timmy Hunter. Timmy was another one who was great to me, ‘cause he got more scoring chances playing with me than he ever did before.
I played my first game that night. It was pretty awesome—twenty thousand people at the Saddledome. I came out and hit everything in sight. I was going after guys left, right and centre. Joe Sakic moving toward the puck? Boom! Into the boards. Peter Stastny? Wham! A mid-ice collision. Big Walt Poddubny? No problem. Hit after hit. I didn’t see size and I didn’t care about the name. I hit every guy that came my way. I had two secret weapons: anger and a high tolerance for pain. I played with swollen eyes, missing teeth and bruised cheekbones. It did not bother me. Our coach, Terry Crisp, said I was like an India-rubber ball. “You throw it against the wall and it comes back at you twice as hard.” I don’t think this made me any more popular in the dressing room. Because I was so aggressive, bigger guys had to start hitting too. They didn’t want to get embarrassed by this jerk-off little rookie.
I didn’t score any goals in that first game, but I was part of the power play and took a regular shift. In my second game, against L.A., we were down 5–2 after two periods when they put me on a line with Gilmour and Mullen. I ended up getting three assists, we won 8–6 and people started to think, “Okay, this guy can contribute.” In the very next game, against Edmonton, I scored my first two NHL goals. So in three games, given a limited amount of ice time, I had five points. After that, there was no doubt in the minds of the management and coaching staff that I belonged, but I still had to win over my teammates.
Then one night against L.A., I had to fight Ken Baumgartner. When I first arrived with the Flames they’d also called up Kenny Sabourin, another rookie from Salt Lake. Kenny was six foot three, 205 pounds. His first time on the ice he took a run at Wayne Gretzky—just smoked him, flattened him in the corner. This was not easy to do, because Gretz had tremendous peripheral vision. He could see guys coming from behind. Unfortunately, when it happened, Jay Miller and Ken Baumgartner were on the ice with him. I was on too, with Timmy Hunter and Jiří Hrdina. So this five-on-five brawl broke out. When their tough guys, Baumgartner and Miller, went two-on-one with Timmy Hunter, I thought, “Oh fuck, I gotta go help my teammate.”
So I skated in and jumped on Baumgartner’s back. He’s huge and I was maybe 145 pounds. He reached behind his neck and plucked me off like I was a spider crawling up his sweater. Then he held me out in front of him at arm’s length, with my skates dangling in the air, and—wham!—a fist to my forehead. He split it open about eight inches, from above my right eyebrow to the corner of the left, and dropped me to the ice like a dirty Kleenex. Blood gushed out, streaming down my face. I was a little disoriented for a minute. “Where am I?” I wondered as I looked around at the crowd.
I got up and put up my fists ready to go at it again, but I felt this hand on the back of my jersey pulling me out of there. It was Gretz. “C’mon, kid,” he said, “let’s get you to the bench.” Gretz was always good to me. I dunno why. We skated a little ways, him keeping me steady on my feet and me feeling conflicted. I wasn’t too sure of my obligation to the team—“Should I sucker Wayne? Should I pop him one?” It took me a minute, but I realized that would be stupid.
Why did so few go after Gretz? Well, would you want to fight Dave Semenko and Marty McSorley? These guys could split hockey helmets with their fists. Marty suckered me one night in L.A., out of the blue. I was standing near the blue line, then pow! Now, I have a hard head, but I felt that one. It knocked me over, but it didn’t knock me out. So I got up and shook it off, sticking my chin out. “Is that all you got?” Geez, that pissed him off. “You little fucker!” he growled.
Anyway, Wayne dropped me off at our bench and I went in to get stitched up, came back and scored two goals. What was really weird is that my skin is extra thick, like rhinoceros hide, so they broke three needles closing the wound.
That altercation turned out to be the statement I had to make to be accepted by my team. I could see it in their eyes—“This guy is here to help us win and he will do anything to make it happen.” Suddenly, I was not just a phenom or a five-foot-fuck-all circus act.
DOUG GILMOUR joined the Flames in a trade just before the 1988–89 season. He was called Killer. He got the nickname because when he played with Brian Sutter in St. Louis, Sutter thought he looked like Charles Manson. He called him Charlie for a while, then it became just Killer. Doug looked and dressed like a movie star, with his perfect smile and tailor-made double-breasted suits. He was kind of the last piece of the Flames puzzle—not huge, but a highly competitive player. He had leadership qualities, and at the same time he was fun to be around.
Playing in the west means life on the road—fifteen road trips to twenty cities, more than sixty thousand miles in a season. In order to keep everyone loose, Killer was always dreaming up practical jokes. We all used blow-dryers to get that swept-back look. It was a cool late-′80s hairstyle. Sometimes Killer would shake half a can of baby powder into one of the blow-dryers at the sink so that when you turned it on you would get it full in the face and you’d have to head back to the showers. He’d put shaving cream in the towels and fold them back up on the rack, so when you pulled a towel you’d be covered in it. Saran wrap on the toilet seats was another one of his favourites. Everyone was a target. You would never know.
Joe Mullen, Killer and Lanny McDonald were the best of friends.Joe had a million nicknames, the most common were Mullie, Pecka or Schmoe. He answered to all of them. He was really well liked. Joe came from Hell’s Kitchen in New York, yet he was one of the mellowest guys you’d ever meet.
There were jokers, and there were victims. Joel Otto was a victim. Colin Patterson and Rob Ramage were always cutting the toes out of his socks. They got off on foot jokes. I cannot tell you how many times I came out after a game and saw good Italian loafers screwed onto the bench. And if you were late for practice, you would find your skate laces sliced down the middle.
Jim Peplinski—we called him Pep—was sometimes a victim and sometimes a joker. Lanny roomed with him on the road and scared the shit out of him at every opportunity. One time, Lanny lay under Pep’s hotel room bed for what must have been three hours, waiting for Pep to come in and crawl into bed just so he could grab Pep’s leg.
An interesting fellow, Mr. Peplinski. He treated me like a little brother and dragged me around everywhere. After a practice in Washington he said, “Wanna do something this afternoon?” I was like, “Sure, I got nothing planned.” So we went to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, that long stone wall engraved with all the names of the servicemen and-women killed over there. There are nearly sixty thousand names so it makes an impression. And there are flowers and letters lying at the base of it. I had a lump in my throat and I could tell Pep did too.
For about three months, every time Mark Hunter got into the shower after practice, Pep would steal his ignition key from his locker bag, take it to the skate sharpener and shave it off a little. Each day it got harder for Hunter to turn the key in the ignition. And he was constantly complaining about his cheap fuckin’ car. We would all be falling over laughing every time he said anything about it. Hunter thought it was because his stories were so enjoyable. I roomed with Mark. He was a grizzled veteran, tough and strong—a middleweight who was sent to fight the heavyweights. He never backed down. But off the ice, real quiet. He was a gullible, big teddy bear.
Another good gag was the shoe check. At dinner, someone would crawl around under the table and dump a dab of butter or mayo or some sort of food on a guy’s shoe and try not to get caught. When the perpetrator took his seat, he would use a spoon and ding-ding-ding his glass to get everyone’s attention. And you’d check to see if it was you with the shit on your shoe. Nick Fotiu, a tough, tough left winger who was gone by the time I got there, was the king of the shoe check. One night, he got every player at one meal hiding under the buffet table.
It was a solid group of guys. But there were occasions when someone went too far. I was not all that big on anything that destroyed property. It’s not that I put all that much importance on material goods, but I’d had so little while growing up. I didn’t have a new pair of skates until I was in junior. Once, someone cut my new tie while I was sleeping on the plane. I found out it was a rookie named Todd Harkins. Some vet had put him up to it. I retaliated by chopping the sleeves of his $1,500 leather jacket. After that, most guys left me alone. I think they felt I was not quite into the spirit.
Drinking was a favourite pastime for lots of us. I rarely drank with the boys because I was 20 and I thought most of them were grandpas. A lot of get-togethers were family events—what was I going to do, sit and gossip with the wives? Even though I had my fiancée, Shannon, and our baby, Josh, living in a hotel with me for the first three months, I would take off to the bars by myself. I was a full-blown alcoholic, hooked from the first time I took a sip at age 16. How much did I drink? As much as I could, as often as I could.
As I said before, drinking in the NHL happened. It was like any group of college kids or twenty-somethings. Getting pissed was a great way to bond. Most of the coaches left you alone as long as you produced. I showed up many times in the morning completely annihilated.I hadn’t even gone home yet. How did I perform? Awesome. Sometimes, I would come in a little slow, hung over from the night before, but I dealt with it by drinking a coffee and smoking three or four cigarettes. I was having a full-body orgasm. Money, fame and chicks. I made the most of it. What was I going to do? Slow down, stay home every night and watch TV? Forget it.
Of course, if I had, things would have turned out very differently.