Grant Fuhr

by Grant Fuhr

  Still, John Muckler could see which Sabre goalie had a bit less wear (Hasek was 30 to Grant’s 32) and the better numbers. It made for an uncomfortable dilemma. “Dominik was the best goalkeeper in the NHL last season,” explained Muckler as the Sabres assembled following the lockout. “Grant Fuhr’s history tells you he’s a Hall of Famer, and the way he’s played in camp shows he can still be a No. 1 goalie.”

  Grant:

  You knew he was younger than I was. He was going to play most of the games. You knew the transition’s going to happen at some point. He had signed a long-term deal (at three years/$8 million) so he wasn’t about to sit on the bench. Neither was I. When you head to the bench as No. 2 goalie, you’ve kind of surrendered. I wasn’t ready to surrender just yet.

  Even so, Grant saw the future clearly. “If I’m a betting person, I’d bet I’m not here by training camp,” Fuhr told the Buffalo News. “That’s just my assessment of the situation. Economics say I won’t be here next year. That’s a goaltender for you. Always aware of where players stand, whether on the ice or amid the salary structure. They’ve got to sign 17 guys or so over the next year and a half, two years. That doesn’t bode well for somebody that’s 32 and making $2 million a year. So reality says I’ll be moving.”

  Reporters asked him if he might be ready to give up hockey if he got his pro golf card that summer. “I’d look at it,” Fuhr said. “I don’t know if I’d do it, but I’d look at it. Aw, I know I’d put in one more year [of hockey]. I may be a goalie, but I’m not dumb.”

  In his own defence, Grant noted for the press that while Buffalo seemed a little rich in goal, the Sabres were not actually a deep team at the position. A second dependable goalie was not an extravagance—as his time in Edmonton had demonstrated more than once. Muckler could see the value, and wanted to keep Grant, but it would have to be at a lower price.

  Grant:

  My contract was coming up, and Muck called me in and said, “I can sign a deal with you as a backup, and you can have as long-term a deal as you’d like.” I probably could have gotten a four- or five-year term as a backup. Or I could decide to maybe go somewhere else and play. They gave me the option. I wasn’t ready to be a backup, so I said, “Well, if you can move me somewhere to play, I’ll try that.”

  When Grant stumbled out of the gate in the lockout-shortened 1994–95 season, playing just three games and allowing 12 goals, the decision to send him elsewhere in search of a starting job became academic. On February 14, Buffalo sent him to play with his old pal Wayne Gretzky in Los Angeles. The deal was Grant for Alexei Zhitnik, Robb Stauber and Grant’s former Edmonton teammate Charlie Huddy. Once again it was an overpayment by a team hoping to catch some of the old Oilers magic from Grant. It was also a reflection of the respect his name commanded despite a bumpy few years.

  The trade did give the Kings two of the more easy-going goalies in the league, with Grant and Kelly Hrudey. Kings defenceman Sean O’Donnell said that no team in the history of the league ever had two more outwardly mellow netminders.

  Grant:

  They shipped me to L.A., and Kelly Hrudey was having a career year there. The rest I wasn’t quite sure about, other than Gretz and a lot of former Oilers were there. I said, “Let’s go down there and see what happens.” I didn’t play very much the first little while. The first couple of games that I did play, I was horrible. Probably a little disinterested, knowing that you’d gone from somewhere where you’re not going to play to somewhere else where you’re not going to play. I sat with [Kings coach] Barry Melrose, and he said, “Your job’s to help the young guys develop.” Okay, fine. I didn’t play much for a while, but my golf swing got a lot better.

  “When we made the trade, he was in Buffalo and he hadn’t been playing a lot,” Kings general manager Sam McMaster told the L.A. Times after Grant had settled in. “When he got here, I don’t think he was game-sharp and that just compounded the situation. If he had played the way he’s playing [now], it would have been a different situation …”

  For Hrudey, having Grant as his competition was uncomfortable. “It was almost unfair for us to compete. In retrospect, you could see he was having a crisis of confidence. It was obvious to us things hadn’t gone well in Buffalo. His game wasn’t great; we weren’t great. I was concerned if he could get back to that level.”

  Grant:

  By the last 10 or 12 games, they had fired Melrose, and Rogie Vachon gave me an opportunity to play, because we were pretty much out of the playoff picture at that point. I started to play better, better and better. I got my confidence back. So I knew I could still do it. The question was what role was there with the Kings? They said they wanted me—but for what?

  I decided not to re-sign in L.A. I definitely had already decided that L.A. wasn’t going to be a good fit. They were going in a different direction. Kelly had had a great year, so it was going to be another one of those situations where you don’t know if you’re going to play or not. After that, I was sitting at home, trying to figure out where we were going.

  That was the lowest ebb of Grant’s career. In the summer of 1995 he was back at home in Edmonton, without a team, without a fitting conclusion to a great career. Few, including the man himself, could have foreseen the dramatic turnaround that lay ahead.

  GAME 9

  APRIL 8, 1996

  ST. LOUIS 4 TORONTO 5 OT

  Grant Fuhr had seen an oncoming forward bent on mayhem hundreds of times in his 15 NHL seasons. It came with the territory of the blue paint. But the outcome of the scrum in front of the St. Louis net in Game 2 of the 1996 Western Conference semi-final would be anything but routine. With a possible sixth Stanley Cup ring in sight that spring, Grant had staked the Blues to a 1–0 games lead in their playoff series against Toronto. Eight minutes into the second contest, however, agitator Nick Kypreos of the Maple Leafs crashed Grant’s net in search of the puck. The Blues defenceman, six-foot-five Chris Pronger, quickly moved to clear Kypreos from the crease, using his bruising physical style to shove the Maple Leafs forward.

  Grant:

  It was actually just a routine shot from the side that kind of got knocked into the front of the net. There was a little bit of a scramble. I got down to cover up the puck. There was the usual push-and-shove, push-and-shove with Kypreos and Prongs that you get all the time in the playoffs. Next thing you know, Kypreos kind of turned and leaned over and fell on my leg, which just happened to be in a vulnerable spot. I had somebody’s stick or leg caught under my leg, so it couldn’t get flat. I knew as soon as he landed on it something was wrong, but I had no idea what. I’d had Timmy Kerr fall on me before that, a lot bigger than Nick was. But this was different. We weren’t very happy for a couple of months afterwards.

  That would be an understatment. St. Louis coach Mike Keenan outright accused Kypreos, a journeyman tough guy, of attempting to injure his star goalie, who now had a torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), a torn medial collateral ligament (MCL) and a torn meniscus as a result of the play. “[Kypreos] deliberately tried to make contact with [Fuhr],” Keenan claimed after the game. “He wasn’t pushed into him as everybody thought he had been. In fact, our defenceman tried to push him away from the goaltender. But he made direct contact, and it resulted in a season-ending injury to a very key player on our team. It’s unfortunate that he decided … maybe his coach did, I don’t know … to take out a premier player on our team. There’s no excuse for it.” Years later, Keenan was no less certain. “Absolutely he fell on him,” he recalls. “Every time I see the tape of the play I come to the same conclusion.”

  “He didn’t fall on him. He jumped on him,” says Blues teammate Geoff Courtnall. “On purpose. Grant had the puck in the crease and he tore out his knee. Of course, I can’t say I haven’t ever hit a goalie, either.”

  Grant was no less steamed when he finally talked to reporters after the game about the slo-mo Kypreos tumble. “If a guy drives the net I have no problem with that. It’s a good, honest play.
But if there’s a pileup and a guy jumps on a goalie, that’s a joke. The job is tough enough trying to dodge those linebackers bumping into you left and right. There’s no mystery what Kypreos was thinking … If I get run into again I’m taking someone with me. I lost one knee. I’ll take a head if it happens again.”

  The loss of Fuhr for the rest of the playoffs (and who knew how long into the next season) was a major blow for both Grant and the Blues. With his old Oilers teammate Wayne Gretzky now on board to join Brett Hull and the defensive duo of Pronger and Al MacInnis, there had been hope—and a considerable economic stake—in a sustained run at a first Cup in St. Louis. “Here’s the thing,” recalls Courtnall. “That year we had a great team. Wayne was there. Hully was there. Pronger was great. We were deep. Mike had put together a really good team. We had a chance. Without Grant we took Detroit to overtime in the seventh game, and I think if he’s healthy it would have made the difference, we win that series and maybe go the whole way.”

  Considering the acrobatic, flexible nature of Grant’s goaltending style and his age (34), a surgically reconstructed knee raised major doubts about his ability to continue what he’d built in 1995–96. The Fuhr/Kypreos crash became the biggest story in the early rounds of the 1996 NHL playoffs.

  The fact that Grant was in a position to be a major storyline in an NHL playoff season might have come as a surprise to many hockey observers just a year earlier. After reaching rock bottom in Los Angeles the previous summer, when Grant had resolved not to sign again with the Kings, it had seemed that the injury-plagued goalie was now a scrap-heap option, washed-up and nothing more than backup material. But he and his agent Mike Barnett believed there was still a place where Grant could carry the load as a No. 1 starter. “It was a matter of finding the right place for him,” says Barnett. “There was still plenty left in the tank as far as I was concerned.”

  Grant:

  I wanted to go home to Edmonton that summer, just sit and weigh my options. Mike Barnett thought he could get me an offer to be a No. 1 guy somewhere. I just told him I wanted to see what offers there are, if any. At that time, Mike Keenan was trading everybody in St. Louis. He had decided to trade Curtis Joseph to Edmonton. Keenan was in Edmonton for the 1995 draft, and I remember him calling me, saying, “If I gave you a million dollars, would you come to St. Louis and play?” “Yeah.” That’s a no-brainer of an idea. He says, “Do you have a fax?” I’m like, “Yeah.” “I’m going to fax you a contract.” “Okay.” Sat and waited. Sure enough, he faxed me a contract for a million bucks a year. That’s how I ended up going to St. Louis.

  With Keenan heading into the second season of a three-year tenure in the Gateway City, the Blues’ roster was changing rapidly. He wanted to win, and he wanted to win now. The former Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers coach had overhauled the look of the Blues by signing free-agent veterans such as Shayne Corson, Dale Hawerchuk, Brian Noonan and Geoff Courtnall. Keenan had also traded the Blues’ beloved power forward Brendan Shanahan to Hartford for a still-green defenceman named Chris Pronger. He then planned to shuttle Joseph (who was a contract holdout) to Grant’s former team in Edmonton for two first-round picks.

  With Cujo gone, the door would suddenly be open for Grant to grab the job as Keenan’s No. 1 starter. The two men were hardly strangers: Keenan had not only coached Fuhr in the 1987 Canada Cup but, as an opposing coach, had seen what Grant was capable of when his Flyers had been beaten in two Cup final meetings with the Oilers. “At the top of his game he was the best goalie in the world,” says Keenan. “I’d seen it first-hand.” The only question remaining was what was left in that body and mind. Could Grant do it again?

  The answer came when Keenan, visiting in New York City in the summer of 1995, had a chance encounter with Wayne Gretzky and his wife, Janet. “I was sitting having as drink at an outside patio when, all of a sudden, a taxi pulls up to a stop and out jumps Wayne,” recalls Keenan. “I asked him if he could stop for a drink. He says, I’ll be back in an hour. Sure enough, he and Janet show up an hour later.” Over a glass of wine, a curious Keenan asked the Gretzkys whether there was anything left in Fuhr. Absolutely, Wayne and Janet chimed in. He just needs a little confidence right now, said No. 99. He’s just waiting for another chance. In the mercurial Keenan, Fuhr had found the believer he needed to jump-start his illustrious career.

  Back in St. Louis, Keenan’s long-simmering contract squabble with Curtis Joseph had led to the seemingly locked-in goalie holding out. While Keenan was not afraid to spend his owner’s money, he dug in on Joseph. Rather than acquiesce to his star goalie, Keenan cobbled together a replacement plan in the form of a couple of once highly regarded netminders. Grant and Jon Casey would take Cujo’s place while Joseph was dealt to Edmonton in August of ’95 (where he continued to hold out until he got a deal he liked in 1996). To justify the trade, Keenan explained to reporters that Joseph was out of shape, but when the decision was announced, most thought it was more impulsive “Mad Mike” than Iron Mike. The hockey world scoffed at the idea that a washed-up Grant Fuhr was the answer to anything—let alone a substitute for Joseph. But after the endorsement from Gretzky, Keenan was defiant as usual. Fuhr was going to be his man and lead the Blues into the playoffs.

  Grant soon discovered that he was walking into a hornet’s nest.

  Grant:

  I didn’t realize that Curtis had just come off being the most popular player in St. Louis. I had missed that news somewhere along the way. I got to St. Louis, and we’re already behind the eight ball. The most popular guy on the team had gotten shipped out, because Mike said he wasn’t in good enough shape. Turns out Curtis was in better shape than I was.

  I got to training camp there in what I thought was okay shape for me. I was about 212. I thought I could do what I always did: play myself into shape. Mike wanted to see it a little bit differently. Mike had played with the scale a little bit, so the numbers he reported were a little different.

  “The truth is Grant showed up maybe 20 pounds overweight, marked his weight down on the sheet and then went up to his room,” says Geoff Courtnall. “Keenan looked at the weight he’d marked down and said, ‘Go get Fuhrsie.’ I was right there. They went and got him out of his hotel room and weighed him again. And Keenan sent him home and told him when he gets in shape he can come back. But you know, it probably revitalized his career from that point.”

  Keenan reported that Fuhr had come in at 219 pounds and had failed to finish the VO2 bike-riding segment of the pre-season physical exam. Grant offered reasons for the failure: his left knee had bone spurs that prevented him from taking the bike test, and the pins inserted surgically in both his shoulders ruled out the military-style bench press. Keenan was unmoved and suspended his newly acquired saviour. People around the Blues who’d been counting on a chiselled Grant Fuhr to lead their team took a big gulp. “Anyone who tells you they weren’t in a panic at that point is a lying sack of s—,” Blues forward Brett Hull told SI.

  Grant:

  I got shipped home after a week and decided I was just going to go play golf. When I flew home to Edmonton, a friend picked me up. We went over to the university hospital to get weighed. I mysteriously lost seven pounds on the flight home. There was something a little amok. Which was fine; it was Mike’s way of saying hello.

  While I was suspended I went to Boston to play in a golf tournament. Meanwhile, the rest of the guys just happened to be playing an exhibition game in Boston, and Mike found out about it. My fault for being out golfing instead of being back at camp. I got told that I should get back to St. Louis and be ready to play. I got back and we had a conversation. “I won’t say anything bad about you, if you don’t say anything bad about me.” It was little late: I’d already been getting roasted in the paper for a week. There wasn’t much more bad that could be said about me.

  Mike says, “Here’s how it’s going to work. Play, and I’ll tell you when to stop.” I’m like, “Okay.” At Christmas it was, “You tired
?” I’m like, “Nope.” “Good. Just play.” I’m like, “Okay.” February: “Are you tired?” “Nope.” “Fine. Just play.”

  Rather than risking Keenan’s ire again, Grant decided he might try to be more vigilant about his physical conditioning. Blues trainer Ray Barile hooked him up with famed St. Louis–based track and field trainer Bobby Kersee, whose wife Jackie Joyner-Kersee was the world record holder in the heptathlon at the time. Kersee, who had a reputation as a taskmaster, took one look at the tires around Grant’s waist and designed a stretching and conditioning program for him. He also issued a fatwa on Grant’s diet of junk food, urging him to eat healthier.

  Grant:

  I was in the habit of eating munchies late at night in front of the TV. All that had to go. I wasn’t a fanatic about it: we still put cream in my coffee in the morning. I still ate a burger once in awhile. But the rest of the time it was good stuff. I became good friends with Bobby, because he would push, and push, and push—which some days you needed. Some days it just hurt, and it wasn’t very much fun, and it was pretty easy to lose the focus on what you’re trying to do. He made it fun. Or as fun as that kind of stuff can be.