I was always thankful that I never played against Wayne Gretzky in an NHL playoff series—not because I didn’t like to play against the best, but because I probably would have had to break his hand.
I would not have wanted to injure Gretzky, mind you. I loved the guy. He was our sport’s greatest ambassador. He was and always has been a classy person. How could you not like a guy like Wayne Gretzky? That’s why I never touched him on the ice in a regular season game. I made every effort to frustrate him but I never attempted to injure him. I had too much respect for how he played and how he carried himself.
That said, I’m sure he believed I wanted to hurt him because I always tried to leave that impression. That’s probably why he got caught by that famous check from Gary Suter in the 1991 Canada Cup. As Gretzky and I chased the puck, he was so worried about me smashing him into the boards that he didn’t even consider Suter might hurt him from behind.
But I can say without question I would have tried to hurt him if we had been matched up in the playoffs. In my mind, there were no friends in a playoff series. It was survival of the fittest.
I’m not talking about elbowing someone in the head or going after someone’s knees. That can cause long-term injury. I’m talking about a strategic slash. To me, slashing someone’s hand or breaking someone’s fingers was nothing. It was part of the game.
Broken hands heal. Fingers heal. The pain that comes from losing does not.
It’s true that I once came into the Chicago Blackhawks dressing room between periods and asked who was going to step up and “break Brett Hull’s arm.”
Hullie was a good friend of mine, and yet I would have knocked him out under the right circumstances.
Friendships cease to exist in the NHL postseason. That’s the way I played. That’s the way Mark Messier played, too. I was glad I never faced him in the playoffs either, because I would have had to go after him and he probably would have cross-checked me in the face.
In the 1980s and 1990s, players used to hate each other more than they do today. Guys tried to hurt me when we played. Today, guys are always switching teams and players seem to all know each other more than we did when I was in the prime of my career.
But I didn’t need to hate people to hurt them. Hull and I were good friends, but he understood that about me. He didn’t like it but he understood it. Hull was always worried that I was going to hurt him, and I liked it that way.
Blackhawks coach Mike Keenan knew how ruthless I could be, and he would hint strongly when he wanted me to go after someone. He wouldn’t tell me directly to go after an opponent, but he would describe in detail how badly the player was hurting us.
In one regular season game that player was Messier, but I resisted. You go to war when it is time to go to war. You don’t go to war in a regular season game.
Once, Hullie thought that Keenan wanted me (or one of my teammates) to go after him. When we lined up for the opening faceoff, Hullie asked, “You aren’t going to listen to that asshole, are you?”
Sometimes my reputation was enough to knock someone off his game without me even touching him. Other times action was required.
During the 1991 Canada Cup, I was playing for the American team against the Czech Republic. Tomas Jelinek took a run at Brian Leetch and injured Leetch’s shoulder. Then, Jelinek nicked Kevin Hatcher with a high stick. On the bench, guys were talking about going after Jelinek. I said I would take care of it. And I did.
Jelinek, who played briefly with the Ottawa Senators, was leaving for a change when I jumped on the ice. I cross-checked him in the mouth and watched his front teeth fly over my shoulder.
He just stood there screaming my name. I went right back to the bench.
My U.S. teammate Mike Modano saw what happened and he located Jelinek’s teeth, stickhandled them, and then placed them carefully on the dasher with the blade of his stick. All of the guys on the bench were laughing.
Later that night, I was riding the elevator at our hotel when the door opened and there stood Jelinek. He had just returned from the hospital and his face was all stitched up. A row of his teeth was missing.
Thank heavens I happened to be with Hatcher, who was about 6’5”. Jelinek didn’t start any trouble.
By playing the way I did, I accepted the fact that I would be on a lot of hit lists around the league. Much of the time, I got what I deserved.
That might have been the case in 1985 when Boston’s Terry O’Reilly caught me with a check that forced me to have knee surgery. On the play, I was coming around the back of the net and Geoff Courtnall pushed me, knocking me off balance. At the same time, O’Reilly cut me off from the other side. Right when he went to hit me, he dropped down and his hips drove right into my knee. No penalty was called on the play.
The Canadiens and the Bruins were fierce rivals at the time, and O’Reilly and I had crossed paths before. As a result, I have always suspected that hit was no accident. In fact, I probably had it coming.
One of his teammates later told me that O’Reilly said hurting me “was better than winning the Stanley Cup.”
“How would he know?” I asked. “He never won a Stanley Cup.”
I’m not sure if the guy was joking or not, but it seemed like something O’Reilly might say.
I am buddies with Keith Tkachuk, my former Team USA teammate and a great NHL player, but he told ESPN.com that, despite the bond we had after playing together for our country, I had “a face you wanted to punch.”
That probably had something to do with the fact that I once put him in a choke hold during a pileup in an important game. When his feet stopped kicking, I let him go, tapped him on the chest, and said, “Got you.”
In the penalty box, he claimed that I could’ve killed him. But that’s crazy—it wasn’t even a playoff game.
As a general rule, I only became totally ruthless during the postseason. But there were other trigger points that would set me off. For example, I didn’t like showboating, and I didn’t like guys padding their statistics at my team’s expense.
I went after Luc Robitaille of the Los Angeles Kings once because he had two goals and I knew all he was thinking about was getting his hat trick. He came back after me, and I laughed right in his face. I threw a couple of punches before the linesmen stepped in and stopped me from destroying him.
It was common in those days for linesmen to step in when a non-fighter like Robitaille was involved in a scrap. That always bothered me, because when I was getting beat up in a fight, nobody ever stepped in and saved me. Honestly, I think the linesmen enjoyed watching me get pummeled because I was a pain in their ass.
At the time, Robitaille and I had the same agent, Pat Brisson, and Pat was mad at me because he wanted Luc to get his hat trick. But I was very pleased that I took Robitaille off the ice. He is about the nicest guy in the world but he always made it look easy on the ice. He would shoot the puck, and the puck would go in the net. It was that simple for him. And it bothered me when guys made the game look simple, because it wasn’t for me.
I’ve always had crazy strength for someone my size. I only weighed 187 pounds, but my slap shot was timed at 101 miles per hour. My dad taught me how to arm wrestle, and no one my size has ever defeated me. I’ve always half-believed in that Greek warrior mystique.
You have to be ruthless to stay on top in this game, and I know how to thrive when the line between acceptable and unacceptable is blurred. That is true on and off the ice.
My former Montreal Canadiens teammate Larry Robinson once called me a “junkyard dog” who would do anything to win.
“He’ll do whatever it takes to defend his end of the ice,” Robinson said. “He’ll break your ankle with a slash or put his stick right through you if he has to.”
That’s all true.
Some players talk about doing whatever it takes to win. I actually did whatever it took to win. That certainly played a role in helping me become a Hall of Fame player in 2013.
Included in the pages of this book is the story of how I wound up standing at that podium. I hope you enjoy the trip as much as I did.