THANKS TO MY KNEE INJURY, I got to see my daughter Tatym born on March 15, 1999. I have seen all four of my kids born. It was exciting. If anybody needs a midwife, I’m your man. We always liked Tatum O’Neal’s name, and when we found out it meant “light-hearted” we thought it was perfect. We picked a different way to spell it, like we had done with Beaux. What is special about Tatym is that she is exactly like me. She is kind of laid-back and doesn’t get too excited about too many things. But when I watch her ride horses, it’s amazing. You see this cute little quiet girl, and yet when she gets on her horse she is totally focused, just zoned right in. I love that about her. She is serious when it comes to competing. She hates to lose—like, hates to lose.
I went back on the road with the Avalanche, playing in Phoenix a couple of nights after Tatym was born. The doctors there were shooting up my knee, no problem. I played 14 more games with 24 points (10 goals, 14 assists) before the end of the regular season, and I think it’s fair to say I contributed. Our record was 10–3–2 in the final fifteen games, making us the second seed in the Western Conference behind the Dallas Stars. I was doing what the Avs had hired me to do. In our final game against Dallas in the regular season, I scored my 40th goal with thirteen seconds to play in the game. We won 2–1. We were pumped and ready to take home the Cup.
Then, on April 20, 1999, the massacre at Columbine High School happened. Two students shot and killed twelve other students and a teacher, and wounded twenty-three more before committing suicide. This all happened in Jefferson County, Colorado, which is a quiet, middle-class suburb of Denver, where we played. It was an awful, awful thing and just devastated the entire city. The playoffs were delayed by three days, and we moved the first two games to San Jose. It was all we talked about in the dressing room. In fact, we wore CHS patches on our jerseys and went to the hospital to visit some of the kids who had been wounded. I didn’t know what to expect, because they had been severely traumatized. Seeing their schoolmates killed—I couldn’t imagine it. For us to be able to go and cheer those kids up and let them know that we were all behind them was really important.
We all had sympathy, we all had compassion, but it was time to play, and we focused back on hockey. We were one of the favourites to win the Stanley Cup.
In the first game, I had two assists and drew a four-minute high-sticking penalty against Vincent Damphousse when he cut me on the nose. We came away with a 3–1 win. Those fuckin’ Sharks just hated me. During a timeout they showed a feature on the Jumbotron called “Celebrity Look-a-Likes.” It showed the bugs from the movie A Bug’s Life and then my picture next to them. It was hilarious. The fans went crazy.
I loved getting to the San Jose guys. When the ref was busy I’d give someone a face wash with my glove, or tap their goalie, or peck at the back of a guy’s calves, where there’s no padding, with my stick. Guys hate it when you do that. And when I scored, I made sure the fans ate it with lemons by pointing at the crowd and riding my stick. Those laid-back California hockey fans would absolutely lose it.
My rookie roomie Milan Hejduk scored at 13:12 of sudden-death overtime to clinch the series in six games. I hadn’t been past the first round of playoffs in ten years. It was an unbelievable feeling! I raced over to Milan and jumped on top of him. He gave me that stunned look again, and I started laughing. He killed me, that kid. Things were looking good for me. I had 11 points (3 goals, 8 assists) in our six-game series victory over San Jose.
In the next round against Detroit, the press had us pegged as the underdogs. The Red Wings had taken home the Cup for the past two years. Chris Dingman, who had been playing for the Avs’ affiliate, the Hershey Bears, was called up. Detroit and the Avs had developed a rivalry a lot like the one between Calgary and Edmonton. It all started long before I got there, in game three of the Western Conference final in 1996, when Slava Kozlov of Detroit drove Adam Foote’s face into the glass with his fist and there was no penalty. Foote needed twenty stitches to close his forehead. So Claudie Lemieux punched Kozlov in the mouth.
In the parking lot after the game, when Claudie and his wife and new baby were walking to their car, Red Wings coach Scotty Bowman just went nuts, swearing and calling him all kinds of names. In front of a wife and baby? No matter what has happened during a game, you just do not do that. Not ever.
That kind of disrespect toward his family obviously did not sit well with Claudie, because three games later he cranked Kris Draper into the boards from behind. The problem was that the player’s gate was open and Kris crashed into the hard edge of the open door. Draper’s face basically caved in. As Claudie stood there watching the carnage, Detroit’s Darren McCarty sucker-punched him and they went at it. Then, almost a year later, on March 26, 1997, McCarty went after Claudie again, just beating the shit out of him. Patrick Roy tried to intervene and ended up scrapping with Mike Vernon, who was now Detroit’s goalie, at centre ice. Things got uglier during the Western Conference final that year, when Avs coach Marc Crawford, the same calm, cool and collected guy who had stood behind the bench for us at Nagano, was fined ten grand for calling Bowman out during game four. He got so mad he tried to climb the partition that separates the benches.
So there was bad blood between the Avs and Detroit, and when Detroit beat us the first two at home, our fans booed us out of the building. But we were a team of disciplined veterans. We took responsibility and responded with two wins on their turf—we were a great road team. We swept the rest of the series. I was winning about 64 per cent of my faceoffs, and in the two rounds I had 14 points in the playoffs, tied with Joe Sakic for third in the league. The Denver press was screaming for the team to sign me, and that suited me fine. I loved it there. I thought that if we could beat Dallas in the conference finals, I might be buying another home in the Rockies.
We jumped out to an early lead in the series, stealing the opener in Dallas. It was hard fought all the way, but my buddy Valeri Kamensky scored the winner late in the third to seal a 2–1 victory.
We were confident, bigger, younger, maybe faster and more skilled, but they wanted it more. We played two strong periods in game two and were tied 1–1. But in the third, they threw everything at us, out-shooting us 15–1. Mike Modano and my old Flames teammate Joe Nieuwendyk scored, and they took the game 4–2.
The series moved to our home turf, McNichols Arena, but Dallas just kept coming. Newie, who was just incredible in the playoffs that year, had a goal and two assists and they blanked us 3–0. I was frustrated. I wasn’t getting into the slot. Sakic and I were both pressing.
Game four was one of the most intense games of my career. Roy stepped up as the team leader and became more vocal than ever. He challenged us to “get it the fuck going.” We were all a lot more physical. Milan was steered into the boards by Dallas defenceman Richard Matvichuk and ended up with a broken collarbone. Matvichuk put a tough hit on Forsberg, injuring his shoulder too. We were already missing Kamensky due to a wrist injury—this is why depth is so important. I put up a fuckin’ tent in front of Eddie Belfour, screening him like crazy. Joe scored the first goal off me and Hejduk. We were tied 2–2 at 19:29 of overtime when Chris Drury shelved it over Eddie Belfour’s right shoulder. Shots were 45-all. Heck of a game.
Then I came down with a wicked flu. I never got sick. Never. I think I missed seven games in my eleven years with the Flames. On May 30, as we were ready to go into our game five against the Stars back in Dallas, I literally could not get out of bed. Despite the speculation later on, this was not due to partying or any bullshit like that. I was just sick, period. Thankfully, we ended up winning 7–5 with two goals from Drury and two from Kamensky. The next game could decide it for us.
But it didn’t. I dragged my ass out of bed and watched Eddie Belfour come up huge, stopping 26 of 27 for a 4–1 win. We had three days to get ready for a seventh game.
I knew that game seven would create an opportunity for one great individual effort to make the big difference, and I wanted that effort to be mine. The new owners of the Avalanche, Bill and Nancy Laurie, were not paying me to finish one game short of the final. I was making $2.4 million, and knew I could get three times that as a free agent. Basically, winning game seven would be a big step toward convincing the owners to sign a big-number paycheque for me next season.
It didn’t happen. Mike Keane, my old friend and teammate from the Moose Jaw junior days, did the damage with two goals. Dallas won the series and went on to face the Sabres and win the Cup on a disputed goal by Brett Hull, whose skate was clearly in the goal crease while he swatted in a rebound. Everybody on our team was disappointed, Patrick Roy maybe most of all. He could not get over game six. He took it very personally.
When we lost, only one game short of the Stanley Cup final, I knew I wasn’t going to be re-signed by Colorado. They were just carrying too much payroll. Peter Forsberg made $9 million, Roy took home $7.5 million, Sandis Ozolinsh was at $4 million, Adam Foote made $3.1 million and Claudie $2.5 million. It wasn’t in the cards for me. Losing fuckin’ sucks. Big time.