by Grant Fuhr
Grant:
It went by really slowly. You’re waiting. You’ve got to get through the national anthems—that’s the hardest part. It’s the waiting, waiting, waiting. You go through the morning skate, then you try to get your afternoon nap. Now you’ve got to wait, wait, wait. Once the game starts, you’re comfortable. Because it’s the one place that you’re always comfortable: on the ice. You’re not really sure about how it’s going to go or what’s going to happen, and you don’t know if you’ve lost it because you haven’t played an NHL game in months.
Once the game got going it felt like I’d never missed a beat. Until then, however, it’d felt like I was waiting forever.
For someone who’d been playing hockey since the age of four, going so long without stopping a puck was a jarring experience. Most athletes only face this kind of anxiety when coming back from injury. But Grant’s anxiety stemmed from a different place. His lengthy hiatus was not due to his balky shoulders or a wonky knee. This time, the layoff came courtesy of a league suspension for substance abuse. Everyone in the arena and watching on TV knew about his five Stanley Cups, his Canada Cup, the All-Star berths and the legendary Oilers. But now a darker part of his past had been exposed to the public. His secret life had caught up to him.
Stories of wild times with the Edmonton Oilers were nothing new. An infamous 1986 Sports Illustrated article had dissected the Oilers’ playoff demise against the Calgary Flames and levelled serious allegations about rampant drug use by five or six nameless Oilers. Predictably, the Oilers defended themselves from the accusations, blasting SI for having little proof and relying on unnamed sources. At the time, Sather commented, “This entire article has been taken out of context with no reasonable backup.… If someone on this club was convicted of using drugs, he wouldn’t be here any longer.” In the same 1986 article, Fuhr firmly denied any drug use.
These were the same denials he’d given Sather ever since the Oilers’ GM and coach first heard rumours from the Edmonton community about Grant’s lifestyle. Sather still had his suspicions, but he couldn’t uncover proof or get Grant to confess. In public, Sather defended Grant and his team, saying no athlete could possibly have a raging drug habit and perform at the level the Oilers did. During the 1987 documentary The Boys on the Bus, Sather can be seen saying he was “absolutely positive that there can’t be a guy that plays professional hockey and has a serious drug problem. I think that guys have been exposed to drugs in this league, as in any walk of life.… In the NHL, there can’t be one guy who could be hooked on any kind of drugs and play on a regular basis. You’d have to notice it—the trainers, the doctors, I mean everyone.”
Still, the rumours and innuendoes would not go away. The uneasy standoff between the facts and denials continued through the glory years of the ’80s as Grant tried to keep his private and public lives from intersecting.
But that ended when his now ex-wife Corrine decided to tell her story to the Edmonton Journal in the summer of 1990. It was a sensational tale of unpaid utility bills, of angry phone calls from suppliers—and of how the Oilers management had learned of his issues in the later years of the Oilers Cup runs. Before publication, the Journal asked Grant to respond to the piece. Faced with the inevitability of the exposé, and wanting to lighten the weight of the secret he carried, he unburdened himself. Grant explained that he had been using a “substance” since 1983 or 1984, and had used it on binges every three to four weeks. He also revealed that he had repeatedly lied to Edmonton general manager Glen Sather when questioned about possible drug use. Now the time had come to tell the truth.
Grant:
I probably could have sat there and said nothing, and there’s probably no way they could have ever proven anything. Deny, deny, deny. And then it would have hung there forever. It was easier to get it out and move on. I didn’t have a problem getting it out. I mean, it was part of my life—it had happened. I wasn’t proud of it, but it was also done by then. So I thought, “Okay, yeah, I made that mistake. Maybe I should seek some help.”
Life needed to be straightened out a little bit. There was no question about that, so I went down to a program called the Straight Program in St. Petersburg, Florida, which was for adolescents. And it wasn’t so much the program that was an eye-opener for me as the kids in there with me. That was probably a bigger influence than anything. Hearing their stories, seeing them: I mean, they were having a hard time. And it was a drug culture that I’d never seen before: Florida has a way more serious problem than Edmonton. There was a lot more that I never knew existed, which was another big eye-opener. Made what we were doing seem kind of inconsequential at the time. But at the same time you also didn’t want to be in that boat, because it didn’t look like it was very much fun for them.
Coming after so many years of rumours, the acknowledgement of substance problems wasn’t a complete surprise to people in the Edmonton community or the NHL at large. They were used to tales of Grant’s unique behaviour. But the tales of a loveable flake couldn’t remove the shock of hearing how one of the NHL’s greatest stars had battled a substance problem while performing brilliantly at the top of the sport. “What surprises me the most is that he carried us,” Wayne Gretzky recalled later. “To be able to play at the level he played at for all those years [while on drugs] is a surprise.”
Later, SI would expand on the story. In March 1991 it was written that when Grant was the premier goalie in the game, he “could not say no to cocaine. He spoke in monosyllables and wore a what-me-worry facade that hid his insecurities. ‘You could talk to him,’ [said] teammate Ken Linseman, ‘but you couldn’t really talk to him.’ ”
The revelations provoked a media firestorm that rapidly engulfed Grant.
Grant:
I’d just come back from L.A., and they had a bunch of reporters sitting in the airport when we landed. So we’re driving home and I got the phone call from Slats that we should probably have a meeting. It was suggested I go to another facility in Palm Springs called the Betty Ford Center. I’d gone to Florida before that, because you could sneak in and sneak out. I spent two weeks there, and got released after two weeks. But I agreed to come down to the Betty Ford for a 10-day assessment. That was my first time in Palm Springs. What’s ironic is that I live five minutes from there now.
After 10 days I got told that I didn’t need to be there any longer. The Oilers owners were having a golf tournament in Palm Springs at the same time. So I was released, and I joined the team for the tournament. Then I went back to Edmonton with the team.
Back in Edmonton, Grant didn’t dodge the story, telling the Edmonton Sun that his time under the influence was “the darkest period of my life. A million apologies can’t change what I’ve done. I have to live with that fact for the rest of my life. I think I can play this game again and be the best. I don’t think I’ve lost any talent, but I have to go out and regain my self-esteem and confidence as a person.”
While Grant might have thought that confessing would help him put his past behind him, the NHL had other ideas. The league reacted by scheduling a hearing on the matter, set for September 26, 1990. Grant was allowed to attend the Oilers’ training camp in the weeks prior to the hearing, but he was banned from playing in pre-season games. At the time, the NHL under president John Ziegler had an ad-hoc, no-tolerance approach that insisted players who used illegal drugs would face automatic suspensions. The league, which had no official drug-penalty policy, had been tainted in the past by drug stories, with players such as Don Murdoch, Borje Salming and Bob Probert being slapped with lengthy suspensions. Still, there was a suspicion that the use of recreational and performance-enhancing drugs was growing within the league. Grant Fuhr was going to be a juicy fastball for NHL president John Ziegler to hit out of the park when the two met.
Grant:
I got the pleasure of meeting Mr. Ziegler face to face. Sat down with him. The vice-president of the league at that time, Brian O’Neill, he was there, and a league attorney.
Glen was there. It was actually all very cordial. They asked me for a couple of thoughts and opinions. Then Ziegler opened the conversation by saying he was a Diet Coke addict—that was his opening line, his idea of a joke. So I knew it was not going to be good. They said that they would take everything under advisement and think about it. Which, to this day, I still think was pre-planned before we ever went. I actually think it was a waste of time going. Needless to say, we weren’t very happy with it, but greater minds than mine decide those things.
The biggest misconception about that period of time is that the substance problem was still ongoing—but by the time it finally hit the paper it had been two years over and long stopped, over and done. So they were dredging up stuff that had happened two and three years before. I might have needed an intervention back then, but Mr. Ziegler was a little late. Things had already started to turn around at that point. So do we really need this now? No. But, at the same time, it’s all finally out. It’s not something I ever to have to worry about again.
Grant and the Oilers hoped that owning up to his past and having been clean for a year might mitigate the sentence, but they were bitterly disappointed. On September 27, 1990, the NHL announced that Fuhr would be suspended one year for what John Ziegler termed conduct “dishonorable and against the welfare of the league.” Ziegler never referred to Grant as an addict in his suspension statement, terming Grant’s occasional intense usages as not constituting addiction level (“sporadic, sometimes ‘bingeful’ but never at an addictive level”). Still, he levied the second-longest drug-related suspension in NHL history against Grant.
The NHL’s harsh approach in 1990 was at odds with emerging evidence that addiction is not a behaviour changed by dramatic punishment. Substance abuse has been called a set of self-destructive impulses that are out of control, yes, but the answer is not to stigmatize the user through public humiliation, particularly on the first instance. The current NHL policy involves a series of thresholds before the league imposes the kind of punishment Grant endured. The initial sanctions now involve fines, rehabilitation and counselling before a player can return. There is also leniency for players who seek help. The draconian sentence for Grant was a stark reminder that the league in 1990 was about punishment, not rehabilitation. In a culture with no effective drug policy, looking tough was more important than helping the players beat their addictive habits.
Grant:
We didn’t think that I was going to get slapped on the fingers that hard. I would have been better off to have been caught rather than to have admitted it and sat through that hearing. I’d have gotten less punishment. Go back and see the guys who had gotten caught: they got maybe two or three games, a fine, no long suspensions, no nothing. It made zero sense to me. So I was a little resentful for awhile. But there was nothing you could do about it at the time.
Ziegler did, however, offer an olive branch: if Grant stayed clean he might be restored to the Oilers after 60 games. In the months after the ban, Grant did act extremely contrite, and on February 4, 1991, Ziegler held another hearing and ruled that Grant could in fact return for Edmonton’s 60th game of the 1990–91 season. He was allowed to immediately rejoin Edmonton’s practices and to play for Cape Breton so that he could get himself into shape. Grant accelerated his NHL return by playing four games in six nights for the Oilers’ farm club.
Grant:
The suspension was probably the most time I had ever spent in a gym up till then. I got to go to the gym every day, twice a day. Worked out a whole bunch. Got in about three weeks of practice. I was in mid-season shape when I started playing again, better than the way I started most seasons.
Playing his prep games in Cape Breton not only sharpened Grant’s goaltending skills, it also helped him acquire a thicker skin. The hecklers in many arenas reminded him of the feedback he’d soon be getting around the NHL. In New Haven, Connecticut, for instance, Grant was taunted by a fan who held up a white substance in a plastic bag and a sign reading “PAY ME LATER.”
Grant:
You’d see things or hear things, but you tried not to pay too much attention to them. They pay their money so they can say what they want. You can’t let it get to you.
At the same time, when you’re clean, your head’s free to think about other things all of a sudden—which, as a goalie, is not always a bonus. You’re supposed to be playing hockey and just paying attention to what’s going on and just reacting. Then, all of a sudden now you have a clear head to look around and pay attention to things that you’re not supposed to be paying attention to while you’re playing. You now notice friends in the stands, you’re looking around, you’re not very focused.
The Oilers themselves certainly needed a boost from their legendary goalie as he made his return in New Jersey. They’d lost six of their previous seven contests and were sinking in the Smythe Division. To emphasize his return to sobriety, Grant took the nets wearing a blank white mask. It might also have been a statement about his tenuous position with Edmonton now that Bill Ranford had seemingly claimed the No. 1 job. With TSN’s cameras sending his every move back to Canada, Grant’s triumphant return to the Edmonton net on February 18 was truly an affair to remember. Fittingly enough, he pitched a shutout—the eighth of his career—blanking New Jersey by a 4–0 score. While the 27 saves were not the most he’d ever racked up in a shutout, Grant’s superb comeback was still sweet redemption after his months away from the NHL. After the game, head coach John Muckler agreed, proclaiming, “You couldn’t write a better script.”
Grant:
I was a little bit sloppy and a little bit overactive at first. I reverted to what I would do as a kid, just pure reflexes. At the same time, it felt good to be back in there. To just play after all we’d been through was fun. Right out of the gate, a good start.
The return led to bigger and better things at first. The old Fuhr looked to be back, his body and mind seemingly unaffected by the wear and tear he’d gone through between 1987 and 1989, when dealing with his personal matters. Suddenly, Ranford was on the bench again and Grant was riding high, reclaiming the No.1 job down the stretch with a 6–4–3 record while putting up a solid 3.01 GAA and .897 save percentage. The Oilers were going to need him to return to form; the team was now a shadow of the roster that had won five Stanley Cups, with most players battling some combination of injury and age. Their .500 record in 80 games that year, however, was a remarkable turnaround considering they’d been 2–11–2 and last in the Campbell Conference on November 10.
Still, the once-mighty Oilers had been knocked down the Smythe Division pecking order with a third-place finish—their worst placing in the division since 1980–81. But the old magic came back in the first round against the highly favoured Calgary Flames. The fifth—and still most recent—playoff edition of the Battle of Alberta is best known for Theo Fleury’s exultant goal celebration after beating Grant in overtime in Game 6 at Northlands. The goal sent the Flames into rapture and the series to another Game 7 in the fight between the provincial rivals. There the Oilers got their revenge when that match, too, ended in overtime—courtesy of Esa Tikkanen’s hat trick that sank Calgary. Grant’s performance during the series was arguably the best he had looked in three years, outplaying his counterpart Mike Vernon once more for old time’s sake. It may even have been his best hockey in a playoff series yet.
It also left his backup in awe. “I was surprised how hard he pushes in practice,” said Ranford later. “Even when they tell him to take a day off, usually he shows up. There’s a lot of talk about who is the best, but Grant doesn’t talk about it, he goes and proves it. He’s a quiet guy who really doesn’t thrive on attention at all. He doesn’t go looking for the spotlight, but he ends up stealing it anyway with his play.”
Grant kept up his hot streak in the next round against Gretzky’s Kings, backstopping another upset of his old pal in six games before a hand injury caused him to come out of the last game in favour of Ranford. Whether the injured hand l
imited him or not, Fuhr couldn’t sustain his tremendous play in the third round against Minnesota. Even Ranford could offer no refuge from the Cinderella North Stars: Minnesota brushed aside the Oilers in just five games, with Grant in net for the only Edmonton win. There would be no Stanley Cup in Edmonton in 1991, but there was a renewed sense of normalcy with Fuhr playing goal the old-fashioned way.
But not everything could return to normal: with owner Peter Pocklington hemorrhaging cash, and salaries for star players now soaring thanks to Gretzky, the surprising spring of 1991 proved a last hurrah for many in an Oiler uniform. Grant was among those stars of the Stanley Cup winners who would soon be on his way out of the City of Champions.
The man who’d once seemed to be an Oiler for life was about to embark on a remarkable journey to five other teams that would see him extend his legendary career and defy his critics.
GAME 8
APRIL 20, 1993
BUFFALO 4 BOSTON 0
John Muckler has always been a craggy, no-nonsense hockey man. He might also be one of the world’s foremost experts on Grant Fuhr—a guy who’s never been described as craggy or no-nonsense. In Edmonton, Muckler had helped transform the Oilers from a one-dimensional scoring machine to a defensively responsible team spearheaded by the best money goalie in hockey, No. 31. The bigger the game, the better Grant got. Now, as the head coach of the Buffalo Sabres in 1993, a continent away from his Edmonton roots, Muckler again made Grant his go- to guy in the post-season. And their chemistry was as potent as ever. “We’ve got the best playoff goalie in hockey,” a smiling Muckler told reporters in the bowels of decrepit Boston Garden. The usually laconic Muckler was wearing that smile because his old standby had delivered yet again. Grant’s fourth career playoff shutout, a shocking 4–0 waxing of the powerful Boston Bruins on their home ice, had put the underdog Sabres up two games to none in a series the experts claimed would be over in four straight for the Bruins.