Grant Fuhr

by Grant Fuhr

  But if the Oilers thought they were home and cooled out against a defeated Islanders team, Game 2 brought a sharp comeuppance.

  Grant:

  We go to Game 2 on Long Island. We’re feeling pretty good. I’m feeling pretty good. We’re told that we’re supposed to leave [Islander forward] Clark Gillies alone. We didn’t want to wake him up. So what do we do? We run him in the first shift. We lose 6–1, Gillies scores three goals, Bryan Trottier gets two. And right then we figured out that for as hard as we worked the first night in Game 1, we didn’t work half as hard the second night. And that they’re still a really good hockey team. Losing 6–1 was probably the best thing that could have happened to us, because we realized we had to be that much better, that much more focused.

  Back before the home fans in Game 3 at a delirious Northlands Coliseum, the results of that realization were not immediately apparent. Clark Gillies gave New York the first goal, beating Grant just 1:32 into the contest. Gillies’ second goal of the game on the power play gave New York a 2–1 lead early in the second period. That lasted until 8:28 of the second, when a signature Mark Messier goal—his brilliant deke on Isles defenceman Gord Dineen sent him in alone on Smith for the score—tied the game.

  A 40-shot barrage from the Oilers forced Arbour to pull Billy Smith for the first of two straight games. Meanwhile, Grant was riding high with 23 saves on 25 shots late in the third—until his giddiness was cut short as he wandered along the boards to the right of his net.

  Grant:

  Game 3, we get the nice lead, and then I decided I should handle the puck in the corner to my right. I was going out to play the puck, and Patty LaFontaine was coming to check me, and I forgot where the defenceman was. He ended up drilling me. I hit dead on the boards with the point at my shoulder. I jammed the joint so badly that I couldn’t lift my arm up for about two weeks. That injury would hurt for a long time.

  Moog took over again with seven minutes left in Game 3, which Edmonton won 7–2. Then he backstopped another 7–2 win, and finally the 5–2 victory that clinched the first Stanley Cup for the Oilers over an exhausted Islanders squad playing its fifth straight Cup final. Though Moog closed out the series, and Messier’s turnaround goal in Game 3 propelled “Moose” toward a Conn Smythe Trophy, no one forgot that Grant’s first Stanley Cup final game—and first playoff shutout—was an early sign that the Oilers could play stingy and also had a big-name goalie of their own.

  The Oilers became the first former WHA team to win the Cup, and the first team west of Chicago to win the Stanley Cup since the WCHL’s Victoria Cougars in 1925. For the city of Edmonton, which was already in the midst of five consecutive Grey Cup wins by the CFL’s Eskimos, a Stanley Cup was an even greater celebration. It was a great time to be a hero in the city.

  Grant:

  Edmonton’s a special sports city. People care. It’s 365 days a year. Just because you’ve left the rink doesn’t mean it’s ended. You go to the grocery store, people still care. You go to a bar, people still care. Everybody cares and they care 24/7. It’s also a great atmosphere to play in. There are expectations after what we did and the Eskimos did. Some of the kids that are playing there now are having a hard time with that.

  No one partied harder or longer with the fans of Edmonton than the young men who made up the remarkable Edmonton Oilers.

  Grant:

  We probably ran for half a dozen, maybe seven days. I was actually pretty good about functioning on two or three hours of sleep by then. Everywhere you went you took the Cup and everywhere was a party. Everywhere you went in the city you couldn’t pay for anything, and it ran like that for a long time. It ran like that for probably a month. Barry T’s was the big place in Edmonton at that time. The American Bar over in the West End. There was a certain place to go every night. You could show up there thinking you wouldn’t run into anybody and there were always six or seven guys there you knew. Usually teammates.

  [Before the Stanley Cup] you’re getting extra hours in practice to try and figure it out, so you really don’t have time to be out socializing, because you know the work the next day is going to be hard. More and more people are coming around, though, trying to get close to you. But for the most part life was pretty quiet before the Cup in ’84. I was running around like a normal teenager would, but nothing outrageous. Then, in 1984 you started to see the new people arrive on the scene, the girls got prettier, all that fun stuff.

  The Cup win also brought out more than the usual fans. Amidst the legions coming to say hello to the conquering hero was a character who emerged one late evening from the dim lights of the nightclub. The black man, in his late 30s, was introduced to Grant as the netminder relaxed with friends in the club. For Grant, whose present was so promising, the introduction brought him face to face with his past. The stranger intimated that he was the natural father Grant had never known.

  Grant:

  We just happened to be sitting there. It was a normal place where we’d gone lots. Most people knew we were there. Somebody else brought him up and had introduced him as my natural father.… In that kind of situation, you never know for sure whether it is or it isn’t the real person, and I didn’t really worry about it that much at that time. So, we spent about 10 minutes talking to him, same as you would with anybody that walks up and meets you at the bar.

  My mom had explained years before about what had happened with my parents. They were young. I think he was 17, and my natural mom would have been 15. It wasn’t going to work anyway at their ages. I mean, if it was my natural father, great. If it’s not then that’s fine too. My mom and dad were still my parents, always had been. Always would be. I have never heard or seen the guy since, so I have no idea what happened to him. As a father myself, I know how hard it would be to stay away. That would be tough. But at the same time, you don’t know if it would have changed anything or not. I never really worried about it. I’d managed to complicate life enough by that point.

  Grant being on his own created challenges stemming from having a lot of money at such a young age. “He decided he was going to paint his house out in Spruce Grove with his buddies,” recalls Marty McSorley. “They got it half done, and they just left it. I was over at the house one day and I teased him because I looked out the window to the back yard and the grass was so long it looked like a zoo. There must be lions and tigers out there.”

  There was also a story that Grant once tried to sell a car he had been leasing. Ominously, Sather also began hearing about outstanding bills at local bars, to the tune of $3,500.

  In a scathing interview with Sports Illustrated years later, Sather would recall the kid who couldn’t say no. “He was running a tab, and everybody in town was using it. He didn’t know what he was getting into,” Sather told the magazine. “Grant’s not exactly a wizard when it comes to finances.” In 1984, Sather became Fuhr’s unofficial financial manager. When he learned Grant was paying some $1,200 a month in rent, he suggested that the Oilers buy the house for him and arrange mortgaging so Grant could both build equity and lower his monthly payments.

  In December of that same year, the Oilers reportedly advanced Grant $91,890 toward the purchase and held a lien against the house. They also directly handled Fuhr’s monthly mortgage and utility payments for him. “He’s had his utilities shut off, because he never pays them,” Sather told SI. “So what I have done is watch his money. I tell him what he can and cannot do. I also charge him $100 a month for accounting. And interest [on the house loan]. Why do we manage his money? Why do we have to have a lien against him? Because he can’t take care of his money. The problems Grant’s got come from a kid that is dumb.”

  Sather’s comments stung Grant. He didn’t help matters by telling the magazine how he’d run up a huge debt at a video store: “When my clothes were dirty, I just threw them in the closet and went out and bought something else, Some of the (rented videos) ended up in the closet under the dirty clothes.”

  Grant:

 
I wasn’t a dumb kid. I was a kid having fun and doing dumb things. We do things when we’re younger, that’s how we learn. I just had a little more money than most kids my age. And people knew who I was from the Oilers. I couldn’t spend it all. I used to go out with a lot of the guys from the Eskimos. Both teams liked each other. So that was a good thing too. Slats might not have seen it that way some days. At the time I didn’t care what anyone said. I was having fun. But I don’t regret those days: I wouldn’t take them back for anything.

  In the years ahead, Grant would learn just how much more complicated his life could be.

  GAME 4

  APRIL 9, 1986

  EDMONTON 7 VANCOUVER 3

  Grant Fuhr sat beside his father’s bed, talking hockey as the two men had done since Grant was a boy. Bob might not have been Grant’s natural father, but the pair had bonded at a deep level through their mutual interest in sports. They talked late into the night, hours after Grant had backstopped the Oilers to a 7–3 win over the Vancouver Canucks in Game 1 of the 1986 playoffs. As always, Bob Fuhr had been watching on TV. This time was different, however; Bob watched from his bed at the Misericordia Community Hospital in Edmonton. While the Oilers had been prohibitive favourites to beat Vancouver in the contest, the Canucks had narrowed the Edmonton lead to 3–2 heading into the final period. Grant allowed just one more goal on 13 Canuck shots, and the vaunted Edmonton offence stretched its lead against Richard Brodeur in the Vancouver net. Had it not been for Brodeur’s heroics, the Oilers might have reached double figures in goals.

  Seeing Grant and his team pull away in the third was a pleasure for the former teacher-turned-insurance salesman. Having Grant come straight from the victory at Northlands to see him afterwards was even more pleasing. Sports were how father and son had communicated almost from the day Grant could carry on a conversation. Whether in the car on the way to a practice or at the family dinner table, talking sports, going over the details of another win for one of Grant’s teams, had kept the two in touch. It had been the perfect formula for a father looking to connect with his adoptive son.

  Grant:

  He used to play all kind of sports when he was younger, and he kept on playing when I was growing up. He never had to force it on me. When I saw him play hockey, I wanted to play hockey. When he took me out golfing, I wanted to play golf. We would talk about it as we watched on TV. It just came naturally to do it.

  Suddenly, that close bond was threatened by Bob’s illness. At 51 years old, the elder Fuhr had rarely been sick in his life prior to the spring of 1986. Now he was stuck in a hospital bed watching his son, arguably the best goalie in the world, start the Oilers on the path to what everyone hoped would be their third straight Stanley Cup. Grant knew the prognosis was not good, but there was no sense of crisis in the room that night.

  Grant:

  What happened was my father ran over his toes with the lawnmower. And he ran over his toes because he was mowing the lawn in his slippers. For the life of me I don’t know why he did that, but he always did. We asked him not to, but he didn’t listen. So he went to get his toes sewn back on, and they did some blood work. That’s when they discovered the cancer. He went into the hospital—that would have been one of the first times mowing the lawn that year—so in April, give or take. He went in two weeks before we played the Canucks in the first round.

  He actually watched the game that night. So that was good. We talked about how the game went and our chances at getting another Cup. He was pretty sure we were going to win another. We sat up chatting all night till four in the morning. We all thought he’d be around for awhile yet.

  Then he passed away when I was at practice the next morning. I think that might have been the hardest shock—that he went so quickly. Got things off on the wrong foot for the playoffs. That summer was probably the turning point where things got a little out of hand in my life. That month kind of turned everything bad. For about two-and-a-half months after that everything ran amuck.

  The poet Diana Der-Hovanessian wrote, “When you father dies, say the Indians, he comes back as the thunder.” For a grieving Grant, thunder and storms would run roughshod through his life in the wake of his father’s sudden passing.

  Following the Oilers’ first Stanley Cup triumph in 1984, the hockey world had been expecting the dawn of a new era of sustained excellence from Gretzky and Co. The Islanders and Canadiens had owned the Stanley Cup for the previous eight years, creating dynasties as they each won four consecutive Cups. Now it was expected that Wayne Gretzky’s prodigious Oilers would follow suit with four (or more) in a row of their own. And why not? Like 22-year-old Grant, the Oilers’ core was just entering its prime. Gretzky, Messier, Kurri, Coffey and Fuhr were the envy of hockey. There was the possibility of as many as a decade of championship runs if everyone stayed healthy—and if distressed owner Peter Pocklington could afford to pay the splendid squad in the face of a declining Canadian dollar and his own fiscal nightmares. Still, the team needed to stay focused.

  As his players emerged from the haze of that inaugural summer of Cup celebration, general manager Glen Sather had a message for his team, a dazzling assembly of skill and speed that some predicted would be the “Greatest Team Ever.”

  Grant:

  We ran hard for awhile that summer, soaking it in, getting all the congratulations, taking the Cup all over the place. Then Slats reeled us all in. He reminded us that winning one was great. But it’s even harder to repeat. We thought we knew what he meant. But we discovered over the next couple of years that it was a lot harder than we thought. We got everyone’s best game every night. And there were no excuses in Edmonton for anything but the best.

  For Grant, who’d been forced to watch the 1984 Cup clincher against the Islanders from the bench with a bad shoulder, repeating as Cup champion was about more than another ring. It was also about regaining his role as No. 1 goalie for the key games that would define the Oilers legacy. He had proven his mettle in the Game 1 shutout of the Islanders, but having been denied the chance to start in net for the deciding game, Grant was determined to use 1984–85 as a springboard to perfection.

  Grant:

  It was great watching us win the Cup against the Islanders. But it also felt like I should have been the one out there. Andy played great; you were happy for him. But you grow up as a kid dreaming of being the guy on the ice with the Stanley Cup—not the guy watching from the press box. Anytime I needed a boost that season I just had to remember that feeling.

  The 1984–85 season proved a fitting one in which to remember. In April, the Oilers finished atop the Campbell Conference with 109 points. But every one of them was hard-won.

  Grant:

  Winning the first year was hard. Winning the second year was harder. You played 82 playoff games, because everybody wants to beat the defending Stanley Cup champion. Then you get appreciation for what the Islanders had gone through. Now, there’s no easy games. It doesn’t matter how many points you are ahead of the team behind you; every game’s hard, the whole year. But we enjoyed the games like that. Everybody tried to play the hardest. It’s fun to repeat: you enjoy it more.

  Coming back strong from his shoulder issue, No. 31 posted a 26–8–7 mark with one shutout on the season. Grant’s numbers were actually better than the season before (a 3.87 GAA and .884 save percentage), and although he incurred yet another separated shoulder injury in February, he still managed to start a career-high 46 games in tandem with Andy Moog.

  Grant:

  We never knew who was starting until the morning of the game. You could play four in a row, you could play eight in a row—but at the end of the day, over the course of 80 games, you’d be starting 39, 41 games. It would always work out to be close, but there was no set schedule to it, so you had to prepare like you were going to play every day. Actually, it was great, because it made you ready to play. Even if a guy got pulled, you were still ready because you had prepared. Sometimes [Sather] wouldn’t tell you until after
the morning skate. So you worked just as hard.

  Later, I went from Andy as partner to Bill Ranford—the same thing. Competition.

  Despite the challenges of the regular season, however, the 1985 post-season proved less of a struggle than the previous year’s conquest. Edmonton went a sparkling 15–3 with Grant getting credit for every win (the first round was still a best-of-five). He performed steadily with a 3.10 GAA and .895 save percentage in the playoffs as the Oilers rolled through Los Angeles, Winnipeg and Chicago. But his best play was saved for the Cup finals, where he outshone the Vezina/Jennings Trophy tandem of Pelle Lindbergh and Bob Froese from Philadelphia, allowing 13 goals in 5 games compared to 21 allowed by the Flyers goalies. Grant also became the first goalie to stop two penalty shots in one series, turning back efforts in Games 3 and 4. While many goalies hated the pressure of that moment, Grant relished the one-on-one challenge of a penalty shot.

  Grant:

  It’s a battle of patience: the longer you can wait the harder it is for the forward. I always think that I have the advantage because I can move last, if I want. You can also force them to where you want them to go if you can be patient enough. The player has a split second usually to see what space he wants to shoot at. So you just make sure that he sees the space that you want him to see. That’s what makes your glove hand best. If I can get you to look at my glove hand and shoot there—I’ve got an advantage. You go into my strength. The harder shot to stop is the one right at you. It’s hard to stand there and wait. It’s why the five hole is such a hard save: you want to move. I would have liked the shoot-out. It would have been fun for me.