SLAVA BLACKSOCKS AND THE YO-YO YEAR
So. It turned out I did still have an NHL career.
I must admit, there were times when I thought my charterplane days were over, and I was almost OK with that. Almost. You spend your whole life trying to get to the next level, trying to get a little bit better. But that can’t go on forever. Everyone has to plateau at some point. I look at guys who’ve signed multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts, and a lot of them seem to lose their appetite for going into the corners, or for blocking shots, or whatever. People say those guys are lazy. And I’m sure that’s part of it. But only part. I think a bigger part is that they worked for years to get as far as they could, and once they figure they’ve gone as far as they can, once it stops being a challenge to see how far they can go, it starts being a job.
My point is that money is only part of the reason why guys want to play professional hockey. The challenge is a huge part of it. Once you think you’ve reached the highest point you will ever reach, you begin to approach hockey differently. Obviously, you think about what you could have differently from what you won’t have. I was beginning to think that I’d had my run in the NHL.
So to get another shot at the big time was a welcome surprise. Just when I thought it was over, I packed my bags for Columbus. For those of you keeping score at home, the Blue Jackets was NHL organization number six.
I remember walking into the Blue Jackets locker room a few days before camp. Surprisingly, I didn’t know that many guys. When you play for as many teams as I did the over/under is around five former teammates. I knew two. Mike Sillinger, whom I’d played with in Anaheim, and Tyler Wright from my Pittsburgh days. Sillinger was a thirty-year-old man who looked like he was forty and acted like he was twenty. (I’m quoting him, by the way.) He was one of those guys you couldn’t help but like because he was always such an affable dude. Columbus was organization number eight for Silly and it would be far from his last stop. And he was not afraid to make light of the fact that he was so well-travelled. He was a great guy, a great teammate, and someone I looked up to. He had made a tour of the Western and Eastern Conference teams and still kept his sense of humour. Move over, Gretzky, I had a new idol!
When I played with Tyler Wright in Pittsburgh, Coach Kevin Constantine had him anchoring the fourth line on a team that only played three. He played sixty-one games that season and finished with zero goals, zero assists while averaging about two minutes of ice time per game. The following season, with Constantine still the coach, he started in the minors. And as soon as Constantine was fired, the Big Pens recalled Tyler; he went on to have a breakout year. In the summer the Columbus Blue Jackets took him in the expansion draft. In his first season he was an instant hit and quickly became a fan favourite. His story gave guys like me reason to believe and keep the faith that a break would eventually come. Journeymen always need to know there’s still a chance and that we just need to be in the right place at the right time.
When you’re the new guy it’s always nice to have a few familiar faces around to settle the nerves. The only problem was that neither had arrived at training camp yet. As I was standing at the front of the locker room trying to figure out where to put my gear without pissing off any real veterans (looking and acting like a rookie, I might add), Lyle Odelein walked up to introduce himself. Lyle was the captain of the Blue Jackets.
“Prongs, welcome aboard. Put your equipment wherever you want, most of the guys won’t be here for a couple days. Let me know if you need anything.”
It was always an unsettling feeling walking into a locker room for the first time. And it can be even more unsettling when you’re a player who spent the past two years in the minors. I was a bit intimidated being back in an NHL room and maybe a little embarrassed that I hadn’t been in one for quite some time. So, as you can imagine, Lyle’s words were definitely comforting. The fact that he knew who I was and took the time to walk over and introduce himself meant a lot.
There’s no question that I knew who he was. Anyone who’s watched the game has seen the heavy hitters on his dance card. He was typical of many tough guys in hockey in that he was really nice and approachable. Nothing like the animal he could turn into on the ice.
Before we were to begin the on-ice portion of training camp, we had the off-ice tests to get out of the way. Off-ice tests were never one of my strong suits. It’s not that I didn’t train hard or spend a lot of time in the gym in the summer. I put in the work and then some. It’s just that I was never the fastest or the strongest guy on my team. I tested OK, but was never at the top of the list with the genetically gifted freaks. Good thing they never picked teams from the weight room.
For some teams, off-ice testing is not a big deal. However, it’s been my experience that the worse a team finishes during the previous season the more off-ice testing there will be. The fact that Columbus had been in the league only a couple years made me think we might not see the ice for a while.
At my first training camp in Columbus we had to complete a timed two-mile run for one of our off-ice fitness tests. I remember stretching with the rest of the team when an SUV rolled up and dropped off another player. A Russian. You know how I could tell this dude was Russian without knowing his name or hearing him speak? Well, he was pimping black dress socks with white jogging shoes and the old-school running shorts. He might as well have had the Russian flag draped around his shoulders. He had literally just landed from the motherland and taken a ride to the track.
When the whistle blew, our new Russian friend bolted out of the blocks and proceeded to crush everyone in attendance. It wasn’t even close.
I found out from a reliable source that Columbus management discovered this guy in Russia and they thought he would take the league by storm.
The only thing that held me back from suckering the guy was that Slava Blacksocks was a defenceman. The one thing I didn’t need was more competition at forward. It’s tough enough to win a job at camp. It’s even tougher when management has its heart (and sometimes reputation) set on a guy.
Slava’s story was that he played in the Russian League for a couple of years, although looking at him, it could have been a couple of decades. I always found it tough gauging the age of some of my Russian teammates. They could look forty but only be twenty-five. Or they could look twenty-two and actually be thirty-five with a doctored passport that said they were twenty-eight.
Turns out the Blue Jackets’ brain trust decided it would be a good idea to shell out a hundred grand just to lure Mr. Blacksocks to training camp. I mean, are you kidding me? One hundred thousand dollars just to attend camp? Did they have to lure him away from his ten-million-dollar deal in the Hawaiian Co-ed Nude League? He was playing in Russia, for goodness sakes. And this was way before the KHL started handing out its ridiculous contracts, so there was no way he was making much jack back home. I would have thought a plane ticket, a hotel room, a few meals, and a chance to play in the NHL would have been enough. Nope. I was back to wanting to sucker the guy.
The cherry on the sundae is that at the end of one of the on-ice training sessions that camp I overheard one of the scouts tell Tyler Wright that our secret Russian had a drop shot. Yes, you read that correctly. A drop shot. Who did they think this guy was, Nikolay Davydenko? I almost crashed into the boards when I heard that. I even clarified the scout’s statement with a laughing Tyler Wright.
Blacksocks should have had it made. Management had a vested interest, not to mention a financial interest, in him. He should have been a shoo-in for at least the seventh defenceman spot. When you think about it, he didn’t have to do anything good at camp; he just had to avoid doing anything bad. But he couldn’t. He played in every pre-season game and was awful in all of them. CBJ was forced to cut him and ship him to Siberia (literally) with his running shorts crammed full of dollars.
In hockey, like all sports, the cream rises to the top. If you’re good enough and stick with it you’ll get to the NHL. If you’re a pretender, you may fool folks for a bit, but you’ll end up getting exposed. Believe me, I know. I played for sixteen teams, after all. And I’m guessing you’d like to know Slava’s real name. It is Alexander Guskov, and he continues to put up pretty impressive numbers in the KHL to this day.
I was not unlike Slava that season. The Blue Jackets wanted me, and then the Blue Jackets didn’t want me. The only difference was that Slava only went through it once. For me, the Columbus organization basically just hit the “repeat” button.
At the conclusion of training camp I was sent to Syracuse in the American Hockey League. “Hello AHL, it’s been a couple years, did you miss me?” My disappointment at getting the tap for the fiftieth time in my career was tempered by the fact that GM Doug MacLean told me I’d be back up in no time. Of course I didn’t believe him, but at least he made the effort to try to give me some hope. As it turned out, he really wasn’t lying. He meant I’d be back and back and back.…
I was sent down (and hence recalled) seven times. Yes, you read that correctly—seven times! I don’t know if people can appreciate what happens when players are called up to the NHL. It’s a lot more than just getting your name in the transaction section of the newspaper. Sure, sometimes the timing is perfect. You’ve had a couple of days between games; you’re well rested with no bumps and bruises. But more often than not, the AHL and NHL schedules don’t mesh that well. When your phone rings and the coach says you’re getting called up, it’s go time. Management doesn’t care if you’ve just finished your third game in three nights on the farm. You have to answer the bell, because if you don’t any number of other guys will jump at the opportunity, and that’ll be the last time your phone rings. Basically, you take your chance when you get it.
For instance, I was in Syracuse (Columbus’s AHL affiliate) and we were playing at home. For some strange reason I got in the way of a slapshot and it nailed me right in the foot. I iced it after the game, but when I woke up the next day my foot was still killing me. The swelling never went down, so I was sent to the hospital for X-rays. While I was sitting in the waiting room to get the tests my phone rang. It was Gary Agnew, my head coach with the Syracuse Crunch.
“Sean, Columbus just called. They want to bring you up. I told them your foot may be broken and you were at the hospital getting an X-ray. Did you get the results yet?”
I didn’t know what to do. Basically, I had two options. One was to tell them that I hadn’t had the X-ray yet. Although going that route I ran the risk of my foot actually being broken, which would terminate the call-up. The other option was to say that everything was OK and just pray that the foot wasn’t broken.
What would you have done?
Yeah, me too. I walked out of the waiting room.
“Gary, I had my X-ray, it’s all good. What time’s my flight?”
As it turned out, my flight out of Syracuse was only a few days before my flight back to Syracuse. And no, my foot wasn’t broken.
As much as the odd call-up to the NHL can be challenging, let’s be honest—the real challenge is the re-assignment to the minors. Let’s see if I can sum it up in one long run-on sentence. You go from the Big Apple to the crab apple, from a first-class seat on a charter to one seat removed from the urinal on the Greyhound, from the Phoenician Resort to the Ramada Resort, from Morton’s to Chili’s, and—perhaps most importantly—from an NHL salary to minor league pay. Of course, there’s a big adjustment on the ice as well. Instead of playing five minutes a night, it’s suddenly twenty minutes of ice time. And with that comes the expectation that you’re going to do a little more than just warm up the backup goalie at the end of the morning skate. There is a bit of a re-entry period for players who have been in the NHL for a while and then get sent back to the minors. Many times these players are depressed because of the demotion and then go out and play without their hearts or their heads in the game. I’ve even known coaches in the AHL who have scratched a returning player in his first game back because they knew they wouldn’t get a good performance from the guy. The whole re-assignment process can definitely be a big mindbender for the player because of the culture shock of going from first class to no class. I can’t begin to tell you all of the differences between life in the NHL and life in the minors. The gap is so wide in so many areas that it’s not even funny. Well, maybe it’s a little funny.
Travel is at the top of the list. Once you experience first class in “the show,” the charter flights alone should be motivation enough to never get sent down again. In the AHL the preferred mode of transportation is what’s commonly referred to as the “iron lung.” That’s right, first class on Air Greyhound. And if you’re a rookie, well, you get to sit next to your favourite six-foot-four Western Leaguer who thinks he’s riding a Harley-Davidson. Thankfully, I was a slight six-foot-three centreman who loved to travel with his knees in his chest and listen to the sweet sound of some farm boy snoring in my ear for six short hours. What’s even more awesome when you’re a rookie? Well, at the end of each road trip guess who gets to clean the bus? I’ll let you in on a little secret: hockey players are not that neat and tidy. After a week on the ol’ bone-rattler you find discarded food, congealed pop, half-eaten candy, flat beer, well-chewed tobacco, and a whole lot of other disgusting crap. Once the bus is cleaned, the rooks get the privilege of unloading all of the wonderfully aromatic hockey gear that was seasoning under the bus for a handful of hours.
Don’t get me wrong; travelling in the NHL has its difficulties for rookies too. I mean, you have to hang up the veterans’ coats on all of the charter flights. And it’s never easy cramming yourself into a first-class seat. The real work begins when the flight lands— there’s the difficulty of carrying your designer bags down a flight of stairs before handing them off to a bus driver who makes you walk at least twelve paces to get to the bus. Then there’s the hardship of your equipment finding its way to the arena and hanging itself up.
And then there’s the issue of food. The Rangers plane was by far my favourite. Ground service (yes, they feed you before takeoff) consisted of shrimp cocktail, smoked salmon, filet mignon sliders, cheese and crackers, a selection of fruit, and countless other bits and bites. Once in the air the hot meal would be served, always with a choice of three items. You know the drill: steak, chicken, or an awesome fish dish. And dessert could be warm apple pie topped with ice cream or a warm chocolate brownie topped with ice cream or several warm chocolate chip cookies topped with ice cream. Hell, you could have ice cream topped with ice cream.
Things aren’t so “fat and happy” in the minors. Each player is given a per diem; when I played it was $38 to $40 a day. (In the NHL per diem is $85 to $90 a day. Players get an envelope with their cash in it at the start of the trip, which is highly convenient when you’re looking for gambling money on the first flight.) Because you’re not getting served a meal on a flight after the game you have to place your order with the trainers before the puck is dropped. On a table in the locker room will be a menu. Think local pizza joint or mom-and-pop diner with pub food. There’s a cup in the middle of the table where you leave your money to pay for the feast. Whatever the total of your order, it’s customary to round up and add two bucks. I can tell you that in my ten years of playing, we somehow came up short every single time. I’m pretty sure some of the Euros thought it was an ATM.
Now keep in mind that nutrition is probably even more important in the minors than it is in the NHL. If you’re on the road in the minors that often means three games in two and a half days. Throw in the lack of proper rest because of the mode of transportation used, and you can see why eating well would be so key to maintaining a high energy level. The problem is, it’s not easy to eat well on the farm so you have to eat smart. If you were a rookie, I’d bet my last dollar that a “Ray Ferraro” would be your choice. (Ferraro is synonymous with chicken parmesan, because that’s all he ate at the ESPN cafeteria when he worked at the network as an analyst. Ferraro ate the meal so many days in a row it earned him the nickname “Chicken Parm.”) Not smart. The kids forget that the order is placed five to six hours before the meal is going to be consumed. Plus, the order is being placed with a restaurant that probably has some association with the home team, so it’s probable the Iron (Lung) Chefs won’t go out of their way to make sure your food is warm. Or cooked. It’s not easy trying to eat cold chicken parm on your lap with a plastic knife and fork on a bus doing 70 mph. Here’s some advice for the rookies: order what the veterans order. A smart vet will order pizza. Simple to eat, relatively neat, and good hot or cold. Another veteran move is to order a couple of turkey subs. He’ll eat one right after the game and save the other for about the four-hour mark of the trip. And then there’s the grizzled vet who orders his turkey subs with the condiments on the side so his sandwich doesn’t get soggy. Hey, we’re not all ass and biceps in the minors. We have brains too.
Travel and food are not the only differences between the two leagues. I’m sure this comes as no surprise, but the hotel chains are at opposite ends of the Star Rating System. In the East Coast League think Super 8 and Days Inn. In the American League it’s Ramada and lower-end Marriotts. And in the NHL, you get to stay in the Ritz-Carlton or Four Seasons. My favourite hotel was the Pan Pacific in Vancouver. Not only is it a great hotel in a great location, but the pre-game meal is unbelievable. To go along with the usual chicken and steak, they offered beautifully cooked fresh salmon. It makes my mouth water just thinking about it.
I mentioned proper rest a couple of paragraphs back. That’s crucial no matter what league you’re playing in. And to be honest, you can get worn down even if you’re flying first class and staying in five-star hotels. Back-to-back games can be tough. (At least that’s what I’m told. I averaged five minutes a game in the NHL, so I probably could have played forty nights in a row and not been physically tired.) The flight to the next city leaves after the game, and depending what conference you’re in that means anywhere from a midnight to 4 a.m. arrival at the hotel. The worst cities are Edmonton and Denver, because you have to tack on a forty-five-minute bus ride to or from the airport. Yes, those two cities are in the Western Conference, and having played in both the East and the West there’s no question which conference takes more of a toll on your body.
On the second half of back-to-back games, the coach will usually make the morning skate optional, since he doesn’t want his regulars wearing themselves out. For a bubble boy like I was, there was no such thing as an optional practice. My fellow journeymen and I refer to those skates as “mandatory optional.” You’re always free to skip practice if you don’t mind being sent down.
In the minors, road trips are far more taxing. Since the owners of the teams try to maximize their gate, the majority of games are on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Which, to be honest, I kind of enjoyed when we were at home. On the road? Not so much. Let me offer a couple of examples from my time in Winnipeg.
Since Winnipeg is so far removed from all of the other minorleague cities, travel was challenging at best. During my second stint with them we had a game on a Thursday night in Cleveland. Our next game, on Friday, was in Rochester. So, after the game in Cleveland, we bussed five hours to Rochester. That had us tucked into our hotel beds sometime shortly before 4 a.m. On Friday night, we played our game in Rochester and then got back on the bus. Hello, Cleveland! Can you believe that? Another five-hour bus ride right back to where we came from. I wonder how many cocktails deep the schedule makers were when they put that weekend together. To top it all off, Cleveland was having some sort of promotion on Saturday to attract more fans, so the start time had been moved back to noon. I’m going to take a flyer here and suggest that the promotion was conjured up sometime after the powers-that-be in Cleveland’s organization saw our schedule. I remember getting to my hotel room at 3:30 a.m. and setting the alarm for 8 o’clock. There I was, trying to count on my fingers exactly how many hours of sleep I could get if I was able to fall asleep right away. Of course I couldn’t. I stared at the ceiling with images of the rink burning down during the night so we wouldn’t have to play later that day. I thought about the scene in Bull Durham where Crash Davis managed to create a rainout when the boys were having a tough time on the road. That’s what the Moose needed that Saturday. A rainout—or, better yet, a burndown. If I’d had the energy to get out of bed, take a cab to the rink, douse the barn with gas, and light a match—well, I still wouldn’t have. But I did think about it. And when I was done running though all that nonsense in my head it was sometime after 5 a.m. Perfect. Less than three hours’ sleep before the third of three games in just over two days.
Another consideration: What exactly are you supposed to eat for a noon game? Trying to shove chicken and pasta down your neck at 8:30 in the morning is not easy. The buffet that day had oatmeal, cereal, toast, eggs, bacon, hash browns, spaghetti, and chicken. It all looked disgusting, so I settled for a coffee and donut. As if it was going to matter. I was tired physically, out of it mentally, and sleep deprived. I kept thinking, “I’m too old for this crap.” As for the game: try to picture an entire team taking twenty-second shifts. I’m sure the other coach figured we were trying to get away from his line matchups. We must’ve come close to setting a record for icings and pucks in the stands. Whatever we could do to slow down the game, we did. It must have gone on for four and a half hours. That’s what they get for making us play at noon. I believe we lost the game 2–0. I call that a victory in my books. In the condition we were in they should’ve spanked us by at least a touchdown. Thankfully, only a handful of people were in the stands to witness that sorry display, and I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be coming back for another. Great marketing job, Cleveland!
One more Moose road story for you. On the schedule was a home-and-home series with Utah. Yes, that Utah. Salt Lake City is not exactly Minneapolis in its proximity to Winnipeg. But since there were only eleven teams in the league at that time, we had to travel there often—just never before for a back-to-back. Like any good rivalry, familiarity breeds contempt. So after a very physical game to start the home-and-home in Utah, we knew the game in Winnipeg was going to be really nasty. Since there were no charters in the IHL, we spent the night in Salt Lake City and headed to the airport for our commercial flight back home. Well, as you might have guessed by now, we weren’t the only team that needed to get to Winnipeg that day. And if you did guess that, you’re smarter than we were because we were very surprised to see our opponents from the night before sitting at the gate when we arrived. After slashing, hacking, battling, and fighting it out with the Grizzlies just ten hours prior, we would share the same aircraft to Manitoba. Since the Grizzlies got to the airport before we did they scooped up all the window and aisle seats when they checked in. And sure enough, all of us Moose players parked ourselves in the middle seats. Fortunately, the flight attendants didn’t have to hand out any major penalties in the air. I think everyone was too busy laughing to think about taking a swing at someone.
As a final example of just how steep the drop-off can be, let’s talk about green rooms. For those unfamiliar with a green room, it’s basically where the wives, girlfriends, and families of the players go between periods and post-game. Once the game is over the players head to the green room to meet up with everyone and have a beverage or three. At Madison Square Garden the green room was unreal—you never knew who would show up for a drink. I shared a brew and a conversation with Donald Trump following one game with the Rangers.
To go from that to the boiler room at War Memorial in Syracuse is almost comical. I remember standing with my wife in the boiler room (yes it actually was the rink’s boiler room, and we were standing because there were no seats) after one game with the Crunch and asking her, “Weren’t we having a martini with Tim Robbins at MSG a couple of years ago?”
So, let’s steer the bone-rattler back toward my first year in Columbus. Excuse me—my first year with Columbus. My contract with the Blue Jackets that season was a two-way deal. It paid me $400,000 at the NHL level and $125,000 in the minors, with a guarantee of $150,000 overall. Basically, I would make $125K while I was playing in Syracuse. If I didn’t get called up at all to Columbus, the Blue Jackets would write me a cheque for $25K to make up for the guarantee. A clause like that helps motivate the big club to at least call you up a few times to make you earn your extra twenty-five thousand prunes.
By March 2002, I had been called up and sent down six times that season. After some careful calculations with the abacus, I knew that I had already earned my $25,000 bonus, so any more time spent with the Blue Jackets would be gravy.
But while it had been a somewhat up and down season for me, I had nothing on my wife. She was eight months into a difficult and complicated pregnancy and had spent a good portion of the latter part of it confined to bed rest. I knew that if the phone rang that March I could be gone anywhere from a day to a month. Not a good situation to be in when your wife is a day to a month away from giving birth. Sure enough, one night the phone rang. And since it was midnight, I knew who was calling. This wasn’t my first rodeo. I remember it like it was yesterday, mainly because my wife was puking while the phone was ringing.
“I’m not going to answer it.”
“Sean, answer the phone.”
“No. I know who it is. I don’t want to go and leave you like this.”
“I’m fine. Just answer the phone.”
Finally, the ringing stopped. And when I checked the message, sure enough it was from my coach, Gary Agnew. Just as I thought, he said they needed me to take the first flight out of Syracuse to get to Edmonton.
I was torn. I did not want to leave my wife in a bad situation, but I also knew it would likely be my last call-up of the season. The Blue Jackets were aware of my circumstances and sympathetic to them, but they also needed a body in the lineup the next night. After some soul searching, and a little convincing from my wife that she would be all right, we decided to accept the call. We also knew that with a new member of the family on the way we could use the extra cash. Once I called Gary back at 12:30 a.m., the fun really began. I knew the routine because I had done it once before earlier in the season. It would be a 6 a.m. flight from Syracuse to Detroit. Then I’d have a two-hour layover before the flight from Detroit to Edmonton. Arrival time in Edmonton would be 3 p.m., which would give me just enough time to grab my gear and take a cab to the hotel to meet the team before the bus to the rink. Remember what I said earlier about the timing of a call-up rarely being perfect? The only decision I had to make before the AHL version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles was whether to sleep and pick up my gear on the way to the airport or go to the rink, pick up my gear, and try to catch a few winks before my departure. Believe me when I say it’s not easy falling asleep when you know you’re leaving behind an eight-months-pregnant wife. It’s even tougher when that eight-months-pregnant wife can’t see you to the door because she is in the bathroom hurling.
In the end, I made my way to Edmonton without incident. But the whole time I was sitting in the dressing room prior to the game all I could think about was whether I’d made the right decision. Add the fact that I was running on fumes because of the travel and about an hour of sleep, and it’s shocking that I actually played a pretty solid game that night. In fact, I played so well from there on in that the Blue Jackets kept me up with the big club for the remainder of the season. Baby definitely got a new pair of shoes!
It felt good to make it to the end of a season with the same organization, regardless of the circumstances. After our final game, most of the team began the annual post-season bender at a restaurant inside the arena. However, for a handful of us the season wasn’t really over. The Syracuse Crunch was just about ready to commence its playoffs in the AHL and we were being shipped in. This was the one time that season I didn’t mind getting sent down. First off, the Blue Jackets flew us back on the team jet. Second, and more importantly, I was excited to keep playing. The Crunch was a great team with a legitimate shot at a championship. And while I was a low-minute grinder in Columbus, I was captain of the Crunch, was on the ice for the power play and penalty kill, and was generally part of the flow of the game in a way I seldom was in the NHL. I enjoyed playing there and I was eager to get back playing with guys I hadn’t seen in a month. And I was excited to get back and re-unite with my wife. Because she was so far along in her pregnancy she wasn’t able to fly to Columbus to see me. She was more than seven months pregnant and had been stranded in Syracuse for the past month. What can I say except she’s a warrior and it takes a special woman to put up with the life of a journeyman.
The first round of the playoffs went according to plan. We swept the Philadelphia Phantoms in three straight games. Besides the sweep, the best part of that series was that I signed a new contract after game three. And when I say after game three I mean IN the locker room after the game before we hopped on the bus to head back to Syracuse. Another first. It was a two-year, two-way deal and I was happy to get it done before the summer and the start of round two.
In round two we were up against the Chicago Wolves, a team I was very familiar with. The year prior, when I was with the Moose, we must have played them fifteen or sixteen times. They were a good team that was very well coached. We jumped out to a 2–0 series lead after winning both of our home games. On a sour note, I injured my wrist with about five minutes to play in game two. X-rays were negative, but something was seriously wrong with it. For game three in Chicago I had the trainer tape a makeshift cast on my arm. Faceoffs were out of the question, shots were painful, and passing the puck was possible. Not ideal, but I didn’t want to be pulled from the series. Besides, we were playing with confidence and seemed to be firing on all cylinders. But as any hockey player or fan knows, things can change awfully quickly in the playoffs and unfortunately for us, they did. The Crunch dropped games three and four to the Wolves, and since the series was a 2-3-2, game five was in Chicago as well. We needed to wrestle away momentum from the Wolves in game five but we didn’t. A series we were once in control of was slipping away. And if the Crunch were to turn it around, it would have to be without my services. Game five was my last of the series. I got tripped in the third period and blew out my collarbone when I crashed into the boards. And I wasn’t the only one on the shelf. Blake Bellefeuille and Kent McDonell joined me (that’s three of our top nine forwards) in the press box for game six. The boys showed a lot of heart in game six and blew out the Wolves 6–0 to force a game seven. The tank must have been empty after that one, however, because the Wolves, led by Rob Brown, Steve Maltais, and Pasi Nurminen, would not be denied in game seven. Our season was done. If you lose in the playoffs you always want to lose to the eventual champions, and that season we can say we did.
Let’s take a moment to reflect on the last twelve months. I was claimed off waivers as I was drunk and running around the eighteenth green doing the bull dance. I signed an NHL contract with organization number six. I managed to claw my way back to the show. I was called up and sent down seven times. I was named captain of the Syracuse Crunch and helped them to a record-setting regular season, winning both our division and conference. I signed a new two-year contract before the season ended. As far as the elder Pronger boy goes, that all adds up to a highly successful season. And the year was about to get much better, as I could focus solely on the birth of our first child. Icing on the cake to say the least.
Our original due date was May 11. I’m not sure how the hell they can pin down the exact date, but then again I never went to gynecology school. Well, we passed our due date—going into overtime, so to speak. Our OB thought the baby had been in the nest long enough and recommended we get induced. We checked into the hospital on Monday, May 13. This felt kind of weird. In the movies, whenever I saw people about to have a child they were always frantically looking for their overnight bag they forgot to pack while scrambling to find the car keys so they could get to the hospital in time for the birth. This was more businesslike and definitely more surreal. As we were walking into the hospital it occurred to me that the next time I walked through those doors I would be a father. That was the plan, at least.
We had a C-section scheduled for the morning of Tuesday, May 14. Since we had to spend Monday night at the hospital, I had some time to kill. Luckily the NHL playoffs took my mind off things for a few hours. I watched Colorado force a game seven in their series with the Sharks while I waited for our lives to change. I had set up a couple chairs in the hospital room as a makeshift bed. I wasn’t planning on sleeping that much, but I wanted at least the option to catch some winks. I’m not sure what time I dozed off, but the night nurse woke me a little past midnight. She came in quietly to check the fetal heart monitor. For some reason it was showing that the baby’s heart rate was dropping. She was looking to see if maybe the monitor had slipped off my wife’s belly. She seemed so calm that I wasn’t alarmed. After she realized the monitor was in place, she made a quick phone call and instantly our hospital room was filled with people. I still wasn’t alarmed. This was my first kid, my first birth. I figured this was just how it’s done. I remember standing next to my wife when the doctor informed us that this baby was coming out now. She said the baby had dropped on the umbilical cord and we needed to get the baby out right away. Awesome! Let’s do this. I still wasn’t alarmed. Everyone seemed so calm. The doctors wheeled my wife out of the room and were running down the hall with her. Somehow, I still wasn’t worried. I remember thinking to myself, “These guys don’t mess around.” I was impressed. It wasn’t until they were about to wheel my wife into surgery that I realized something was wrong. In one of the few childbirth classes that I had been able to attend, the instructor explained to us that if there’s ever an emergency they remove the father from the room. They don’t want any distractions. As I was about to enter the emergency room, a nurse put her hand on my chest and said “You’ll have to wait out here.” My heart was in my throat. I looked at my wife and saw a tear roll down her cheek. Now I was panicked. It was 1 a.m. and there was absolutely no one around. All hands were on deck. Even the nurse at the front desk was gone. I raced back to our room to call my in-laws, who were at our house. I told them the baby’s coming now so they better find their way to the hospital in a hurry. I didn’t know what to say other than that—or perhaps I was just afraid to tell them there may be complications.
My wife was in the emergency room for sixteen minutes. Those minutes were like hours. No one was coming out. No one was telling me what the hell was going on. I was sitting out there with no idea what was happening in that emergency room. Finally, the desk nurse came out. And she walked right past me. I could barely hold it together.
“What is going on in there? Is everything all right?”
She calmly said, “Your wife is fine.”
“And…?” I shouted.
“The doctor will speak with you in a minute,” was all she said.
I was so freaked out and so pissed off I nearly grabbed her by the jacket. As I was trying to figure out what to do one of the doctors came out and pulled me aside.
“Sean, your wife is fine but your daughter—well, we did the best we could, but she was without oxygen for fifteen minutes. Again, we did the best we could.”
I couldn’t process what she was saying to me. I didn’t know if the news she was delivering was the worst possible.
“What are you saying? Is she alive?”
“Sean, she was without oxygen for too long. We have the best surgical team in the area. They got your daughter out in less than fourteen minutes. She’s still alive, but … I don’t know how to say this … it might be best if she doesn’t make it.”
“What are you saying? There’s no chance? She has a chance? Tell me there’s a chance.”
“Sean, she’s alive, but since she was without oxygen for so long I fear she will be severely brain damaged.”
“Is that for certain? Are you saying she has no chance of being a normal kid?”
In a matter of minutes, my little family had been whisked from the contented excitement of the hours before a scheduled C-section to a nightmare in which I was faced with only two possible outcomes: a dead child, or a child who would never grow to experience all the things I had hoped for her. I couldn’t believe there was no third possibility.
“I don’t know. She’s going to be taken up to the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit. They’ll monitor her there.”
As I was about to say something in reply, they wheeled out my daughter in an incubator. She looked so perfect. She looked so healthy. She looked like I had imagined. I just couldn’t believe that she might not make it. And then it occurred to me that my wife had no idea what had just happened. Since it was an emergency surgery they had to knock her out, and now she was just coming to. Try telling your wife that the child she’s been carrying around for the past ten months is more than likely going to die—and if she doesn’t die, she’s going to be brain damaged.
They put my wife in a recovery room as I watched the nurses take my daughter up to NICU. How was I going to tell her? How do I explain where our daughter is? Isn’t the baby supposed to be resting comfortably with her mother?
My wife was still pretty much out of it when I walked into her room. She looked at me and tried to lift her head and smile, but she was still too drugged and too tired. I explained to her what happened. She was in no condition to comprehend what was going on. All she kept saying was, “I don’t understand, I don’t understand.” I decided to leave it alone until she was properly rested. I was so beside myself I started to think of the weirdest things. I kept thinking about what I would tell people. All our friends and family knew we were having the baby today. Usually when you go in for a childbirth you end up with a child. That’s just the way it works. I didn’t know what I was going to tell them.
“Hi … we had a daughter but she didn’t make it.” I wasn’t going to do that to people. I couldn’t bring myself to accept that possibility.
Originally, I was going to wait to go see Kaia (that’s what we named her) with my wife, but after sitting around going out of my mind I decided to go see for myself.
Walking into an NICU is not for the faint of heart. It is a heart-wrenching place to be and even worse if your child is in there. There were kids (and parents) who had spent months in there. I found a nurse and asked where the Pronger baby was. She directed me to the area that’s for the most at-risk babies. I walked over and introduced myself to the nurse. Then I saw my beautiful daughter. She had a ventilator down her throat and both hands were strapped down so she couldn’t tug on the ventilator. It was all I could do to not break down right there. She was so tiny, so perfect, and looked so incredibly normal. After I composed myself, I looked the nurse square in the eye and asked her, “What are the chances of our baby surviving? And if she survives, is there any chance she won’t have brain damage?”
“Mr. Pronger, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We need to take this one hour at a time. We need her to get through the first twenty-four hours without having a seizure. If she has a seizure that’s an indication there is something wrong.”
“And if she doesn’t have a seizure?”
“Then we’ll try to get through the next twenty-four hours.”
“OK. I need you to be completely honest with me and tell me exactly how she’s progressing. Don’t sugarcoat anything.”
“Mr. Pronger, we can’t give any false hope up here. We’ll tell it to you exactly how it is.”
Even though nothing had changed, I felt a little better about her chances. We were just going to take it one day at a time. The old hockey cliché. My wife felt better in the morning, so I wheeled her up to see her daughter for the first time. I didn’t think I had any tears left but cried like a baby at that reunion. I was emotionally spent and it had only been twelve hours since the birth.
Over the next several days Kaia made remarkable progress. In the morning after her birth, the nurses removed one of the straps on her wrist and she immediately tried to pull out the ventilator. So they took that out. My wife had to take it easy because she’d just had major surgery, so I was back and forth from NICU to her recovery room checking on both my girls.
On day four of Kaia’s time in NICU we were informed that the doctor who had delivered her was going to do an evaluation. Since she was progressing rapidly, they told us that if she passed these tests there was a good chance we could take her home in a couple days. The doctor performed what are called “innate” tests; they measure the things that all babies should be able to do at birth. Rub her cheek and she should turn her head toward your hand, that sort of thing. My wife and I nervously watched the doctor perform a number of these tests. After she was finished, she looked at us and said, “Mr. and Mrs. Pronger, if I wasn’t the one who pulled your daughter out I would never believe this was the same kid. I think she’s going to be fine and you can take her home tomorrow.”
To go from the deepest, darkest place I’ve ever been in my life to a feeling of such utter relief and joy was almost too much to handle. All the Stanley Cup championships in the world couldn’t possibly have held a candle to that day. It was, by far, the greatest day of my life. To be that close to losing a child and then told that all is good and she’s in the clear is the most magical feeling in the world.
I sometimes think about how close we came to losing our daughter. So many things had to happen for her to be with us today. If we weren’t already in the hospital when my wife’s water broke and Kaia’s head came down on the umbilical cord (just like stepping on a garden hose), there’s no way she would have made it. If we weren’t at Crouse Hospital—a facility equipped for high-risk births—there is no way she would have made it because no surgical team would have been on site. I don’t think she would have made it. I’m happy to report that at the time of writing this chapter, Kaia is a beautiful, bright, and happy ten-year-old and we haven’t had one indication that there was or ever will be an issue with her brain activity.
Prior to Kaia’s birth, as you’ve read, I was always a stress case when it came to my hockey career. But that experience changed me. I realized what’s important and what’s not. My career was important, but it wasn’t the only thing in my life and I knew that I had something more important waiting for me at home. I had a beautiful wife and a happy, healthy daughter who didn’t care if I was scratched, benched, or waived. She was just glad to see Daddy— and man, was I glad to see her.
“The world rewards those who show up.” It’s my favourite saying, and there is no more appropriate slogan for the journeymen of hockey. If you hang in there long enough, good things will happen. Mind you, it may only be for a day or three.
Take my second camp with the Blue Jackets, for instance. I had played twenty-six games with the organization the year before, putting up a grand total of four points. It’s never a good thing when your point total with a team is three fewer than the number of times you’re sent down to its minor league affiliate.
For the first part of training camp, being away from the rink meant hanging in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. That’s right, baby—the Blue Jackets took their show on the road! Doug MacLean, our general manager and fearless leader at the time, grew up in Summerside. So he decided to bring the entire team to the Island for the week. Why? Well, call it a form of Maritime nepotism. We had a mitt full of Prince Edward Islanders in the Blue Jackets organization. The assistant GM, Jim Clark, was a childhood friend of MacLean’s. Gerard Gallant, the assistant coach, was from PEI. Ditto our PR man, Jim Rankin. And yes, our broadcast team, too. One player, David Ling, was from the Island. Another, Grant Marshall, now lives there. If I knew then what I know now, I would have moved to PEI in the summer, which would have made me a shoo-in to be named captain. But you know what? I can hardly blame MacLean. If I were a GM of a team and had the use of a private jet, every training camp for my team would take place in Dryden, Ontario.
So there we were in PEI. Might as well experience my annual disappointment in a new part of the world. I’d never been humiliated in the Maritimes before.
Now, you should realize that not all players share my view of training camp.
For instance, training camp for my brother and players of his ilk? That is, guys with roster spots long ago sewn up? That’s what I never got to experience. A decent skate in the morning followed by a relaxing off-ice workout at noon. Maybe a conversation with other millionaire teammates about how the season is shaping up. Then maybe play some golf with a few teammates before a nice steak and a bottle of grape. Go to bed. Get up and repeat. Not much stress on the body or the mind.
It’s a little different for the high draft pick or good prospect. I’m not saying they aren’t nervous or there isn’t pressure on them. In fact, I’m sure that for an eighteen-year-old kid just out of junior, going from playing against boys to suiting up against grown men, life at camp may seem hard. But I’m here to tell you it’s not. Most have a mid- to high-six-figure signing bonus burning a hole in their pocket. Most are going to get the benefit of the doubt at camp, play in almost all of the pre-season games, and have every opportunity to make the team. Sure, they sweat. Sure, they may have to read uncharitable things written about them in the papers. Sure, they may have butterflies in their guts when they hit the ice. But what they don’t see are all the doors management is quietly keeping open for them behind the scenes.
You see, the thinkers who draft these guys are the same people who decide whether they make the team. They want them to succeed. General managers want to prove that they picked the right guy. How could a GM possibly be objective in training camp about a kid he picked a couple of months ago at the draft? He already thinks the kid is great—otherwise he wouldn’t have picked him. And the moment he picked him, he staked his own reputation, with the fans and with his own boss, on the promise that the kid can deliver. So you can bet he’s going to give the kid every opportunity to deliver.
And he’d prefer if the kid were ready to play now. Remember, the worst teams pick the best players. So it only makes sense that a GM (whose butt may be on the line) wants to see his team improve as quickly as possible. He is well aware that a young star and an improving team can bring fans to the gate. In other words, he won’t just look good if the kid does well and does well soon, he’ll also make money. That’s plenty of incentive to rush young guys into action before they’re ready. Any GM will tell you that guys fresh out of junior shouldn’t be playing in the NHL. And the same guys will tell you that their eighteen-year-old is an exception. It generally does no good for the individual or the team—the minors and the European leagues are full of first-round picks who didn’t work out, many of them because they were rushed into the NHL and lost their confidence. The trainers’ rooms are full of spindly eighteen-year-olds worn out from being tossed around by bigger, stronger veterans who make a living coming out of the corner with the puck. Forcing young, high draft picks into the starting roster is just a terrible idea. But if there’s one thing you can count on every autumn, it’s a GM forcing a high draft pick into the starting roster.
It also doesn’t help the journeyman who’s being pushed aside to make room for the kid. The grinder on the two-way contract has been working his tail off all summer so that he can show up at camp in mid-season form in the slim hope there’s even a mathematical possibility of making the team. He’s ready to play. He’s ready to fight for a spot.
So to see that spot handed to an eighteen-year-old millionaire is a real kick in the groin.
Maybe I’m just bitter, but it was tough year after year to get clipped sometime during camp because a team wanted to showcase its golden boy even though Goldie wasn’t ready for prime time yet.
As camp began, I was doing my usual training camp math.
Three returning fourth-liners
+
Two free-agent signings
+
Four prospects with a chance
+
Two draft picks
=
Not great odds for me
Especially since Columbus had the number one overall draft pick that summer. You may have heard of him—a Southern Ontario kid by the name of Rick Nash. Great, I thought. The team is going to waste a roster spot on this spoiled brat.
Well, I was right about one thing. Nash was going to get a roster spot. But I was wrong to assume he wouldn’t deserve it. And wrong to think he was a brat. After watching Rick in his first practice I could tell this kid wasn’t going anywhere.
As much as I wanted to hate him and all his talent, it was impossible not to like him. He acted the way every young player should when they come to their first training camp. He was quiet, respectful, and let his game do the talking. We were doing a shootout drill at the end of one practice and it was Nash’s turn. He came down and instead of deking the goalie with a classic forehand to backhand move he added a little variation. While he had the puck on his forehand he rolled his wrists so that the puck was on the back part of the blade and dragged across his body so that now he had the puck on his backhand and then roofed it. He did it so effortlessly that the move looked easy. I looked up in the stands at GM MacLean; he looked like a proud father as he was high-fiving his scouting staff. After everyone left the ice and management were out of the stands I tried to do the “Nash” move. I will say it’s not as easy as he made it look and leave it at that.
Adding to my woes that September was the fact that MacLean brought in a big centreman from Finland by the name of Lasse Pirjeta. He looked like the real deal from the get-go. There went another spot. The odds of me starting the season in Syracuse were getting better by the minute and training camp had just begun.
Making matters worse was the fact that there wasn’t much to do in Summerside but stress over my predicament. Don’t get me wrong. The people of Prince Edward Island are great. However, you know that saying “I spent a month of my life there that week”? That’s what it felt like to me. There wasn’t much to do but drink and fish. Granted, those are two of my favourite pastimes, but I try to keep the fishing to a minimum during training camp.
The pre-season was relatively uneventful, with the exception being I got into a pretty good dust-up in Nashville with Clark Wilm. I didn’t know him personally but I’d played against him before. He was a solid role player. He was responsible defensively, good on faceoffs, a strong penalty killer, and wasn’t afraid to drop the mitts every now and then. Now, no one ever accused me of being president of the Mensa club, Columbus Chapter, but I knew the best time to attempt to beat someone up is late in camp. That way the tilt is fresh on everyone’s mind when decisions have to be made. Guess where the Nashville game was on the pre-season schedule? Yep. Final game. Before the game started I had no premeditated plans of dropping the gloves that night. If it happened, so be it. But in warm-up, as we were skating around I glanced over at Nashville’s side and happened to lock eyes with Wilm. We stared at each other a little longer than normal and then went about our warm-up. The seed must’ve been planted, because during the game, as luck would have it, we ended up battling for the puck in the corner. One thing led to another and away we went. It seemed so natural. Nothing was said but the gloves just flew off at the same time. Now that I think of it, he may have had to send the same statement to his team. As a journeyman, dropping the gloves once in a while is something you need to be willing to do. You need to bring something to the table that the coaching staff can see. Lord knows I wasn’t going to impress a coach with my offensive prowess. But I was by no means a fighter. It was hard for me. Unlike my ill-tempered brother, it just wasn’t in my nature. I wasn’t one of those guys who could just go out and fight someone for no good reason. For me to throw down, the guy had to do something nasty to a teammate or I had to have been in an ugly mood. I’m not sure why, but I got in more fights after my daughter was born. Perhaps I wasn’t as scared to get filled in. On this occasion, however, I was just trying to make a solid impression on the organization.
We had the day off after our last game. There were a few of us left that were cutting-room-floor material, so we hit a local establishment for some lunch and a few cups to take our minds off what we felt would be the inevitable “tap” the next morning. Matt Davidson, Radim Bicanek, and I sat there for most of the afternoon drinking and crunching the numbers to see if there was any way we could all make it. Deep down, we knew better. At the very most one of us would make it. More than likely, we would be seeing each other in Crunch uniforms.
Here’s the heart-wrenching thing about being a journeyman. Competing for that one (maybe) spot are all the guys you played with in the minors the year before. The guys you battled with, fought for, drank beside, and took twelve-hour bus rides with. The fellas you kept in touch with all summer long to talk about who signed where, who got hurt, and who retired. Your teammates. And unless you’re able to go out and grab that one (maybe) elusive spot, they would be your teammates again. These are your friends in the game and now you have to go out and kick the shit out of them to try to fight for a spot that probably wasn’t there. Awesome. But that’s the way it is. A guy who slew-foots me in an intra-squad game one day will be jumping someone who does that to me the next day. Think of it this way—the guy you want on your team is the last guy you want to battle for the last spot on your team.
I have to say it was a weird feeling sitting there hoping I would stick, knowing full well if that happened the two guys I was having brews with would be shot and sent down. I mean, I hoped they played well, and I hoped they made the team, just so long as they didn’t take my spot! It’s not easy dealing with the reality of the situation. I guess that’s why we needed the liquid companionship to go with the human companionship.
I realize it all sounds like a game when I talk about it this way. But understand that this was our life. The decision could mean the difference between 75 grand and 450 grand. That’s nearly half a million dollars riding on the way someone feels about the way you played in camp. That’s huge dough for anyone—it’s a fortune for guys who’ve been riding the buses. The future of your family is literally in someone else’s hands at that moment. And that guy is not thinking about what’s best for your family; he’s thinking about what’s best for the team. It’s not just stressful waiting to see whether you made the team. It’s also humbling.
And it’s not only the money. The decision you’re waiting for makes a huge impact on where you would be setting up camp with your family. Where a player’s kids go to school may not be something fans or management care about, but players are like any other parents—imagine it’s the middle of September and you can’t tell your kids what school they’re going to. Bottom line, it was a big deal. A huge deal.
We finished our lunch around 7 p.m. and decided the best decision we could make was to go back to the hotel and get some rest. After all, there were no direct flights from Columbus to Syracuse.
Cut day can be a weird day. And it’s made even more bizarre if it’s combined with a practice day. I remember wondering if I should put on the gear or just sit and wait for the news. If I put on my equipment I was running the risk of having to take it all off if I got called in to see the coach. That wouldn’t be embarrassing at all.
Before I could make my decision I noticed that one by one the “hotel boys” were getting the tap. Everyone in the room pretended not to notice the procession to and from the coach’s room. It can be very uncomfortable to catch the eye of a guy who just got his dream crushed. Believe me, I’ve gotten the sympathy look a million times after taking the bullet.
As I was wasting time wandering around the room sweating, Matt Davidson made his way out of the executioner’s room.
“How’d it go in there, Davy?”
“The usual, you had a good camp stuff, but blah blah blah.”
“Sorry buddy. Maybe I should just go in there and get it over with?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“I saw the lines for practice on the board and you’re on one.”
I’m not sure if there’s a face you can make that combines “I’m sorry” and “I’m ecstatic.” But if there is, my mug was contorted into it at that moment. I was starting the season at the NHL level. Miracles do happen.
For only the second time in my career I got to participate in all that goes on prior to the opening of the NHL season. Silly, I know, but I was jacked. All the stuff that guys took for granted I got to do. I had to get my picture taken for the program, record a video spot for the JumboTron, tape sound bites for the radio, and conduct interviews with the various television and print outlets. I felt like someone who belonged.
The on-ice preparations continued as well. Line combinations were being solidified and our power-play and penalty-killing units were being formed. The intensity level certainly picked up after training camp ended and the season drew near. The coaching staff set their expectations for the season. For C-Bus that year it was certainly not “Stanley Cup or bust.” We were still a relatively new team in the league, so our Stanley Cup dream was qualifying for the playoffs.
The beginning of the season carries a lot of hope for a lot of teams. It also carries a lot of hope for players. Some of us are trying to re-establish ourselves in the league, while others are trying to prove that they belong. For Rick Nash, it was about proving to everyone he was worthy of being a first-overall draft pick. Personally, I had given up on trying not to like him for taking up a roster spot I had pegged for myself. As I got to know him and saw how he carried himself I realized that he wasn’t taking one of my spots. It was his spot. It was always his spot. And it was going to be his spot for a long, long time. Over the course of his rookie season I got to know Rick pretty well. My wife and I would have him over for dinner at least once a week. He was only eighteen at the time; I remember what I was capable of when I was his age, and it wasn’t much. Rick and I also sat beside each other in the locker room and on the plane. I’m surprised he didn’t turn out to be an angry young man after all those hours sitting beside a jaded journeyman!
An eighteen-year-old superstar in the making is just the kind of player who every thug and pest and fourth-liner wants to take a run at. Apart from running their goalie, taking liberties with the other team’s prized wonderboy is about the easiest way to get them off their game. Plus, it may be a little more fun to drop the boom on a top draft pick than just about anyone else. If the golden boy is on your team, of course, the opposite is true. Nash was exactly the player you don’t want anyone taking advantage of. In any case, with a guy like that around, it’s easy to predict how trouble starts.
We were playing in Columbus against the Minnesota Wild. There must have been a line change, because I found myself centring Nash. He was playing left wing and was set up to receive a breakout pass just below our blue line. I was the centre cutting through the middle to pick up a pass or a chip off the boards. Nash got the puck and immediately chipped it up the boards as I was streaking down the ice. As I was looking for the puck, out of the corner of my eye I picked up a Wild player flying in Nash’s direction. I heard the distinctive dull thud of a crushing hit and then what seemed like an angry groan from the crowd. I stopped, turned around to assess the damage, and see who in their right mind thought they could get away with running our franchise player.
Jamie Allison was already on the scene and looked like he was ready to seek justice from the Wild player. The trouble was, the Minnesota player was six-foot-four and 225 pounds of Brad Brown. This wasn’t good for a couple reasons: 1) He’s a monster and is quite capable of handling himself (and well, I might add), and 2) he is best buds with Jamie Allison (not that it mattered, as I’d seen many good friends punch each other in the face, but still). I quickly made the decision to fall on the grenade and go after Brown. I’d let Ally fight one for me another time.
So there I went, lunging into the path of a bus. The trouble was, while I had devoted some thought to the question of whether to fight Brown, I forgot to consider exactly how I was going to go about it. I went flying in against a bigger and more experienced fighter without a plan. What you want to do is square off, maintain your balance, get a good grip on a handful of sweater, tuck in your chin to protect it from harm, and keep your body twisted away from your opponent in order to present the smallest possible target. Get all that right, and you stand a chance. Deviate from that, and you’re likely to get filled in.
Well, despite the fact that I was dropping my gloves with one of the toughest guys in the league, I ignored just about everything I knew, and led with my chin. I grabbed Brown with both hands, as if I were about to give him a stern talking-to rather than the beating I had in mind. I could hardly have made it easier for him. He smoked me twice in the temple and that was about it. As I stumbled to the penalty box I had to laugh at myself for being such an idiot. I sure hope Brown’s hands were OK. That’s how guys get hurt. You’re welcome, Nasher, that should send a message around the league that you’re not to be messed with.
Still, it was never my job to go out there and intimidate guys. I just had to make smart, simple plays, chip the puck out of our end, and hopefully keep it deep in the other zone. Finish my checks. Above all, avoid being scored on. And that’s what I did. Barely.
Making the team out of camp didn’t exactly mean that the season was going to be a cakewalk for me. In fact, it was more like an eighty-two-game tryout.
To me, there was only one thing worse than being scratched, and that was getting waived. Who the hell came up with the idea of a waiver wire anyway? What a great concept. Basically, it announces to the rest of the hockey world, “Can someone please take this bum’s contract off our hands? Please?” Not exactly a boost of confidence for the player in question. The team you’ve been playing your guts out for is telling you that they’ll dump you for nothing if someone will just pay your salary.
“Really, we don’t want anything back! Just don’t try to return the damaged goods we just sucked you into taking from us.”
When a team waives a player it is either hoping to send said player to its minor league affiliate, or it’s hoping that someone takes the player off its hands.
Take it from an expert—it’s a very awkward feeling to walk around the dressing room after being waived. Believe me, it’s never a secret to the other players what has happened. They know who is unwanted. They smell the stink of undesirability. Some guys get it because they’ve been there before. I liked those guys. They were sympathetic and always had their own waiver wire tales to make you feel a little more comfortable with the whole situation. It worked. Sometimes.
In the pre-season Doug MacLean pulled me aside and told me he didn’t protect me in the waiver draft, but still wasn’t sure what he was going to do with me if I didn’t get claimed. He just wanted the ability to send me to my death in the minors if no one plucked me off the wire. I’m sure glad he was able to keep his options open. I felt like I was part of a macabre game show. There were three doors in front of me, none of which led to a very desirable place, and I still didn’t get to pick which one I walked through.
“Ladies and gentlemen, within seventy-two short hours Mr. Pronger will find out his fate! Behind door number one is an NHL team that believes Sean can somehow help their cause. At least the Blue Jackets hope there is a team behind that door! Behind door number two is a trip to the AHL with an annual salary worth a quarter of what he was hoping to make this season. And door number three really leads to nowhere! It just keeps him here in purgatory with a team that clearly doesn’t believe he fits into their plans! Don’t hold your breath, Mr. Pronger!”
As tough as the situation was, I have to say that I appreciated MacLean for being upfront and honest with me. As a guy who was never a “sure thing,” I always wanted to know exactly where I stood and MacLean never tried to sugarcoat things. You’d be surprised how many GMs or coaches don’t let you know what is going on. I don’t know how many times I had players come up to me and break the news—players do love a scoop.
(On the other hand, there is such a thing as too much honesty. At one point that year I tried the same tactic I’d used with Sather in New York. I wasn’t playing much and wanted to find out what I needed to do to get more games and ice time. After a practice I skated over to Dave King, our head coach. The guy had coached— and succeeded—at every level. He was a member of the Order of Canada, for that matter. Surely he’d have some advice for a hard-working player like me.
“Kinger, can I talk to you for a second?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“I want to know what I can do to play more.”
“Well, Prongs, I think you have good hockey sense. You understand the game and what we are trying to do. But I have to say that you’re a very, very, very, very, very average skater.”
Thanks for your professional opinion, Coach King. Sometimes to keep what little confidence you have, it’s best not to speak with the coach.
As we were skating off the ice, I looked at him and said, half jokingly, “Kinger, would you mind going over that last part of our conversation with me? It was a little unclear.”
At least he was trying to be honest with me. And there’s no way I could have sued him for slander.)
I cleared waivers in the pre-season but stuck with the Blue Jackets, and that was a sign of things to come. That season was an emotional rollercoaster. Although it was great to get back in the show, it wasn’t as if I could enjoy it. I felt as though I couldn’t take a breath or let my guard down. After celebrating Halloween in the Residence Inn I finally had to ask if we could move out of our “home” in a hotel. Just so I wouldn’t get too comfortable, Doug MacLean said it was OK if I found a place to live just so long as the lease was “month to month.” Thanks, Doug, I won’t buy any green bananas either. Thinking about it could drive a person insane. You could be one bad shift from the minors—which obviously shouldn’t have been a big deal for me, but it was. When you have a wife and small child to cart around it can be downright maddening.
In spite of the mental abuse I was suffering through, I was playing pretty well. I had solidified myself on the fourth line and was killing penalties. For a player like me, to have a defined role on the team meant everything. As for the team, we were killing it on home ice but were probably the worst road team in the league. No wonder Dave King had grey hair.
I would have taken grey hair instead of a kick in the balls, but unfortunately that wasn’t my choice. And that boot came just before the roster freeze at Christmas. We were in Phoenix and I was getting off the bus when Assistant GM Jim Clark pulled me aside to inform me that they had put me on waivers again. “We’re not sure we’re going to send you down, but we want to have the option.” Awesome. Thanks Jim. I was starting to think maybe it would be better to not know. I guess that’s why they blindfold guys when they put them in front of the firing squad!
Well, luckily for me the firing squad fired blanks. As mentioned, I was placed on waivers a few times that season and each time no one picked me up. Nice to know that all twenty-nine other teams in the league felt the same way about me as my own team did. So the Blue Jackets were willing to let me go three times. And twenty-nine other teams passed on me on three separate occasions. That means that ninety times in ONE season a GM said, “Who? Sean Pronger? No, we have no use for him.”
The only good thing I can say is that all three times I cleared waivers I managed to dodge the bullet. And by dodging the bullet I mean that Doug MacLean didn’t send me down to the minors even though he had the option to. That was the best situation I could have hoped for. Sure, getting claimed by another team can feel good, because it means someone thinks you can help out. However, the good feeling usually doesn’t last long because most teams that pursue the waiver wire for players are just looking to fill a short-term need because of an injury to one of their regulars. Once that player comes back (and it was always much sooner than I would have liked), your days are numbered. I’ve seen players get picked off waivers four times in one month. Anyone remember the name Jarrod Skalde?
Doug MacLean and the Blue Jackets were the model franchise for handling my time on the waiver wire. Remember what I said about honesty? How MacLean always gave me the heads up when he was about to waive me? Seemed like a pretty common courtesy to me. It couldn’t have been fun for MacLean to break the news, but he did it because it was the right thing to do. However, by the end it was more of a wink and a nod than a spoken word. Now I know that organizations don’t have to tell you what’s going on, and yes I understand hockey is a business and we’re all big boys that play the game. But that said, it doesn’t seem like it would be that hard to warn a player (or his agent) if his career was about to be altered.
Whining aside, it’s time to brace yourself: I spent the entirety of 2002–03 in the National Hockey League. I was back, baby! I developed a role on the team that I could see lasting longer than one season. I was a fourth-line checker, strong on faceoffs, and could kill penalties. And believe it or not, I was able to mix in a goal every now and then! When you score only a couple goals a season they’re real easy to remember. My best from that season was not a bank job off my behind. This one would’ve made Jari Kurri proud. We were playing against Chicago in the United Center. I was the high man rolling off a cycle and banked it down to David Vyborny. As Vyborny was about to kick it down to our low man he spotted me all alone in the slot with my stick cocked for a one-timer. He slid it over to me and I hammered a one-timer over the glove of Jocelyn Thibault. All of my teammates had a look of shock on their faces when I returned to the bench. It was like they had never seen such a goal. Of course their shock was due to the fact that they had never seen me score such a goal. Another fine memory for me was a fight I had near the start of the season with the Coyotes’ Kelly Buchberger. To me, however, he was still Edmonton’s Kelly Buchberger. Remember, I was a huge Oilers fan as a kid, and I watched with envy when a young Buchberger skated around Northlands Coliseum with the Stanley Cup over his head. Now I was trying to take off his head. He challenged me to a fight in our rink, and although I didn’t want to get beat up I really didn’t have a choice but to accept his challenge. After circling each other for a few moments I landed a lucky haymaker on his temple, which sent him to the ground. Obviously he didn’t care that he’d been dropped, because he’d been in a hundred fights and lost a few along the way. As for me? It just didn’t feel right. I didn’t get a lot of satisfaction from my lucky one punch. But I got over it pretty quickly. Especially since the next time we played he challenged me to a rematch. And I won’t tell you how that one went.
All in all, it was a great season for me. I had no doubt that my status as a member of the Blue Jackets organization had been solidified. The summer of ’03 was going to be the new Summer of Sean. I was going to train my ass off and get my NHL strut back!