IN ORDER TO be a part of the Olympics I’d hung in there, but after that my play went downhill. So did the team’s. After the Olympic break, we won only three of our first eleven games, and on March 18 the Rangers traded defencemen Igor Ulanov and Filip Novák, along with their first-and second-round picks in 2002 and their fourth-rounder in 2003, for winger Pavel Bure. After that, my ice time diminished. It got to me. I felt that I had carried the team for half a year and suddenly, when Bure came in, he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I had not had a drink in fourteen months, and I admit I was on edge when Ronny Low and I had a big blowout about Bure in Toronto on April 4.
At the very end of the morning skate we usually did power-play drills. So when Ronny called out the names for the first unit—Bure, Lindros, Messier, Leetch and Malakhov—I couldn’t believe it. All of a sudden Yorkie, Lindros and I were a bunch of scrubs? Had Bure ever won a Stanley Cup? Had Bure ever won a gold medal? And Messier? What the fuck was he doing on the first line? He had done nothing all year except give the press a few good sound bites. So make him your marketing guy, don’t put him on your first-line power play.
Next, Ronny called the second unit—Yorkie, me and Adam Graves. I ignored him. It was a matter of principle. He chased down the ice toward me. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demanded to know. And I answered, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Ronny said, “You ain’t fucking playing tonight.” “That’s fine,” I said. “You are the fuckin’ coach, you can do whatever you want.”
I walked off, and as soon as I got into the dressing room I got the call from Slats. “Get up to my room. Right. Fucking. Now.”
Maybe I wasn’t playing as well as I should have been playing, I knew that, but I was pissed. So when he said, “What is fucking wrong with you?” I said, “What is wrong with me? What is wrong with fuckin’ Ronny? I think I have done my part here. Fuckin’ got my shit straightened around, and you bring in fuckin’ Bure who has won nothing in his career. I beat him in junior. In fact, I have beaten him just about every time I have played him. And fuckin’ Messier has done nothing all year.” We both knew that Mark Messier had six Stanley Cups, but I’d accomplished a lot in the game too.
It was the first time I had ever spoken up to management like that. I was pissed. A little bit hurt too. “And,” I said, “you know what? I deserve some fuckin’ respect. I know that I fucked you over last year ‘cause of what I went through. But still, whenever I had the opportunity to win, I was there for you, man. In the World Cup in ‘96, I came up to you when were losing the second game with ten minutes left, and I said, ‘Slats, do you want me to go out there and start World War III?’” That was what we needed to win when we were tanking, but he had said no. Nevertheless we both remembered the offer.
What I really wanted to say to him that day was, “You know what? You fucked me over in the ‘96 World Cup. I was the best player you had, and I sat on the bench and I didn’t say a word, even though I saw what was going on. Your fuckin’ boys were dying out there—Mess and Gretz—and you were going to live or die with those boys and I didn’t fuckin’ say a word.”
Whenever Slats and I had a conversation, it was always civil. He truly cared about me. I still call him every once in a while out of the blue to see how it’s going with him. He respected me as a player, but I was so tired of all the bullshit. I was tired of the game. I had gone through a lot in three years in New York, and then after winning the Olympic gold medal, I didn’t think I could accomplish any more.
Slats just said, “Be a team player,” and I said, “Fine.”
I went and spoke to Ronny. I said, “I know you think that Pavel Bure is better than me, but I don’t think so. When I have played against him I have won the majority of times. So if you think you can win with Pavel Bure rather than me, that is your decision. Your ass is on the line. I understand that.”
He said, “I am going with this decision.” We ended up missing the playoffs and he was fired when the regular season ended less than two weeks later.
THE PLAYERS HELD an end-of-the-year party at the Russian Tea Room on West 57th Street in New York. The whole place was ours. The cost didn’t matter—with our payroll, twenty grand for a get-together was chump change. We were sitting around, having a few laughs, and there was a bottle of vodka sitting directly in front of my right hand. I stared at that thing for two hours. The whole time, I was talking myself into a drink, then talking myself out of a drink, then talking myself back into it. “You deserve it. You earned a gold medal, for fuck sakes.” Followed by, “You know that if you have a drink, you’re going back to rehab. You know the pee tester will be there tomorrow morning.” That is the epitome of alcoholism. Finally, I grabbed the bottle and poured myself a twelve-ouncer, shot it back, and done. Euphoria. Think of a cancer patient in a lot of pain and finally the doctor says, “Okay, you have suffered long enough, you can have morphine.” The boys were looking at me, going, “Are you okay?” “Yeah,” I nodded, “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.”
I disappeared for three weeks. Vlad, my Russian limo driver, drove me and got me coke and some really pretty girls to hang out with. I stayed at the W Hotel near Times Square for the first week. Some nights I went out to the Mohegan Sun casino, other nights I would just stay in and party. I had no problem finding people to hang out with. I would be at a bar and some guy would recognize me. “Hey, Theo Fleury! You play for the Rangers!” “Yep, come on and party. I got a limo and broads—cocaine on the table in the hotel room, help yourself.” Nobody could keep up with me, of course. They’d drop out after a couple of days. When I wore out my welcome, I would find a new hotel. There was a boutique in every high-end hotel, so I would go down and pick out clothes. I could hold it together long enough to do that. I didn’t eat much, but it didn’t upset my Crohn’s disease. Turns out vodka and cocaine is the cure. Vlad was getting me pure coke, not stuff that has been cut. It was right off the boat, right off the brick, right up my nose.
A three-week, continuous, two-hundred-thousand-dollar party. I figured my career was over. “Thank you very much. It has been a slice. I hate hockey.”