What Risebrough had said was good to hear, but it’s also where an old-school organization fell down. Risebrough’s willingness to go just on his gut about my character isn’t his belief in infallibility or anything like that—it’s just a resistance to any idea that clinical help might have helped me to “be all right.”
I’m not suggesting that a sports psychologist or any other professional would have helped me—no one will ever know. But it might have helped me, or it might help someone else who comes into the game after surviving trauma. The old-school thinking is that players look after themselves and that teammates look after each other. At best, the old school is just unaware of the help that might be out there. At worst, the old school is indifferent to it—the we-don’t-do-social-work approach. It’s hard to imagine that any outfit would be indifferent to the mental and emotional health of employees who have issues and have endured trauma, but it’s even harder to imagine that any organization that invests millions in those employees wouldn’t do everything it could to maximize the return on its investments, including trying to get help for those who might need it.
I don’t know if most organizations in the NHL or other pro sports operate the way that the Wild did with me—Risebrough, Lemaire and the other old-school guys in Minnesota are almost all gone, and management there might look at things differently now. Still, I’ll bet that there are more old-school guys still working in hockey. Generations change, but the culture of the game changes a lot more slowly.
* * *
Houston, Texas, April 2006
The call that I had expected, the call from Minnesota, never came. I had struggled at the start of the season, scoring only six goals by late December. Then I took off. I scored 41 goals in the next 38 games. I had five hat tricks, won all kinds of awards as the league’s rookie of the month and player of the month. Half that number of goals would have been a ticket to Minnesota the next season, but scoring more than a goal a game for a stretch of months should have guaranteed a call-up. Whenever the phone rang, I thought it was going to be Minnesota telling me to pack my bags, my plane was leaving in the morning. That call never came. It came for five or six of my teammates, other forwards who’d get a few games in with the big club, a chance to show their stuff. Every time there was an injury or trade that seemed to open things up for me, it was someone else who got his ticket to the big club. I was going to have to wait—47 goals would have tested management’s resolve to keep me in the minors.
But the morning after our season ended in Houston, I did get a call. It was USA Hockey, phoning to invite me to play for the national team at the world championships in Latvia. I wasn’t ready to play for the Wild, in the opinion of management, but I was ready to skate with an all-star team of NHLers in international competition.
32
CROW
Columbus, Ohio, March 7, 2007
I felt a shoe dig into my ass. I wasn’t looking over my shoulder, but I knew who it was. I couldn’t believe that he did it. He had come up to the line before that but stopped short. Here, in the middle of a game, with me sitting beside my teammates, he’d crossed it.
I turned around and said, “Do that again and I’m going to fuckin’ drive you.”
You know at some point you’re going to have to take a hit coming out on the ice. If everybody’s doing his job, someone is going to take a shot at you. You come to the bench, catch your breath and get back out there. With the Kings, I knew there would always be a shot waiting for me on the bench. This time it was an actual physical shot, which was hard to believe. All the other times it had been a verbal dig.
Marc Crawford was coaching Los Angeles, and in my rookie season he gave me more grief on the bench than I had to go through on the ice. It was that way from day one. I could do nothing right, and he dumped more shit on me than on the rest of the team combined.
The Kings had traded Pavol Demitra for me in the off-season and L.A. should have been the best situation I could have landed in. The Kings had a bunch of young players ready to break through. They had veteran leadership in guys like Rob Blake, who would end up in the Hockey Hall of Fame. They had young guns like Anže Kopitar, who within three or four years would be on anyone’s list of the top ten players in the game. They had a great room—everyone got along, everyone had fun and everyone had each other’s back. And it was a team year-round off the ice too. Everyone on the Kings considered L.A. home.
I had all kinds of reasons to love L.A., and just one reason to hate coming to the arena: Crow.
Looking back, Marc Crawford, more than anybody else I met in the game, reminds me of my father. He made it farther than my father did: he played in the NHL for a brief stretch. And he landed coaching jobs in the game after his playing days: he won a Cup with Colorado in his second year with the team, which is something you can dine out on for a long career. A couple of years later he was behind the bench of the Canadian Olympic team—that Canada finished out of the medals didn’t land in his lap, though he’ll always be the guy who kept Wayne Gretzky on the bench during a shoot-out with an Olympic medal on the line.
Any fan who knows Crawford could easily guess what he had in common with my father. It was what he would be best known for, at least after the Cup win and the crash at the Olympics: anger. Crawford would go completely irrational. Supposedly it runs in his family. I once read a story about Crawford and his father, who put in a thousand games in the minors. Crawford said his father, Lloyd, had a “mutant Irish gene” and, given half a reason, would just blow up. His old man didn’t deny it. “I don’t know where all that fanatical stuff comes from but it’s inside me,” Lloyd Crawford said. “Marc has some of it too.”
As much as Marc Crawford will be remembered for coaching a team with four first-ballot Hall of Famers to a Stanley Cup, he’ll always be remembered for two uglier incidents. One was harmless: back in the ’97 playoffs, when he was with the defending Stanley Cup champions in Colorado, he went apeshit in a game against Detroit, eyes bugging out, screaming and looking like he was ready to go over the Plexiglas to strangle Detroit coach Scotty Bowman, who just watched him with a poker face. The other was anything but harmless: Crawford was coaching Vancouver when Todd Bertuzzi ended up breaking a bone in Steve Moore’s neck, ending his career and basically wrecking his life. Crawford distanced himself from the incident—said Bertuzzi was operating on his own and against coach’s orders—but then a lawyer told him to clam up and he never spoke about it again. Bertuzzi filed a claim against Crawford but dropped it in 2012 and a couple of years later Moore’s lawsuit against Bertuzzi was settled out of court. Some would find it hard to believe that Crow sent Bertuzzi, with a three-inch and forty-pound advantage, over the boards to jump Moore, but then some people would find it hard to believe that a father would send a nine-year-old out to punch his friend and teammate. Hockey does some weird things and has some warped values.
The public perception of Crawford as a hothead has stuck since then, and it isn’t wrong. It’s just not complete. It’s more complicated from the perspective of a player. And from my perspective, being son of one and a rookie player for the other, it was spooky how similar my father and Crow were in some ways.
Like my father, Crow had no time for positive reinforcement. Like my father, he believed in the complete opposite: he emphasized the negative. He was the bad cop.
Unlike my father, he coached an entire team in L.A.’s practices, but like my father, he singled me out for special attention. I was the guy he ran. I was the guy he made of an example of. It might have been the way he had coached at other stops. It might have been the way his father coached. And, yeah, it was the way that my father coached.
When Crow signed on with the Kings, he claimed that he had calmed down—a couple of stories even said that he had “reformed.” He claimed that he picked his spots. I was his spot. I was coming off my season in Houston, looking to break into the NHL. Crow put the emphasis on “break.”
At one point that season, he made
all my teammates stand to one side on the ice while he bag-skated me, had me skating lines for twenty minutes straight. It was supposed to be punishment for screwing up a drill, a misdemeanor that would usually just get a bark out of a coach and nothing more. Instead I was singled out and humiliated in front of all my teammates. It was a power trip—he had the most power of anyone on the ice, and he singled out me, a rookie, the guy with the least amount of influence. The Kings’ other rookie, Anže Kopitar, my roommate, was a first-round draft pick—an important asset, according to the organization—and he was a couple of years younger, so Crawford cut him slack that he wouldn’t give to me. “It was hard to watch that bag skate,” Anže said. “It really wasn’t fair. It would be hard for anyone to see a friend and a teammate go through that type of thing.”
The bag skate was an extreme example, a one-off. The most painful one came in Colorado when I took a slapshot in the mouth. I lost three teeth at the root and had my jaw broken. I didn’t even go to the hospital for X-rays that night. I just got stitched up at the rink, about forty stitches all through my mouth and face, and went to hospital when we got back to L.A., to get my jaw wired. I showed up at the arena for practice—I thought if I missed a practice, Crow was going to send me down. Even with my face purple and stitched up like a baseball, Crow rode me, said I was soft for wearing a face shield screwed onto my helmet and told the trainers to take it off. Thankfully, they told him they wouldn’t. Team doctors told them I had to wear the mask.
More typical was the bench minor—whenever the team was handed a too-many-men penalty or a referee hit him with a minor, Crow would send me over to serve the penalty. It got so predictable that I’d have one leg over the boards whenever I thought they were calling a bench minor before Crow even told me to go. And when I’d be skating over, he’d heckle me, the way a fan dumps on the visiting team. While you’re sitting over there, think about your trip down to the minors.
I did get hurt that season, and Crow did send me down. Even when I was called up, Crow gave me no reprieve. My teammates talked to me about it, and the veterans told me that Crow’s running me was the worst they had ever seen. They would have told me different or wouldn’t have bothered if they’d thought I brought it on myself. They also said they didn’t know how I could take it. And I did. I didn’t laugh at it, but I did always brush it off.
“My standard for bad stuff is different than yours,” I told them.
My standard for bad stuff changed when it became physical. Crow kicked me in the ass in Columbus, but it hit close to home. It wasn’t the worst, but it did cross the line. Bag-skate me, rip me, do whatever you’re going to do, but you’re not going to be physical with me. I’ve lived that already.
Crow blinked. He didn’t change that season, but he never kicked me in the ass again.
* * *
I can’t know exactly why Crow treated me the way he did, any more than I can get inside my father’s mind.
Maybe he thought focusing his anger on one player got his point across to the team, and I was the one easiest to sacrifice. I wasn’t struggling and didn’t deserve all the shit he put me through, but I was a rookie. He could make an example of me. His message: shape up, get with the program or this can be you. That could have been the case, though it wasn’t a message that needed to be sent to a team that bought into the program, a team that worked hard almost every night. And it’s a message that a coach in his first year in the league might feel like he has to send, not a guy with a Stanley Cup ring and fifteen years of NHL experience.
Maybe it was strictly personal. Maybe he just didn’t like me. I could tell that I provoked him by my reaction, or at least my lack of reaction. He’d shout at me and I would just take it when a lot of guys would shout back. He’d center me out and I wouldn’t even change my expression. My teammates asked me how I could take it. “My standards for bad are different than yours,” I said. Those who knew my story understood. My threshold was a lot higher than almost anybody’s.
Eventually, though, Crow crossed the line in Columbus. That was just too much like my father. If he could have made it over the glass in Ottawa that night back in 2002, that would have been my father’s shoe kicking me in the ass. It didn’t matter if Crow knew my story or not, if he had a message for me or for the team—I wasn’t taking his shit.
Maybe the saddest thing is that by the end of my rookie season, I was playing really well, so well, in fact, that Crawford would have lost credibility with my teammates and the confidence of management if he didn’t play me. In the end I won a spot on the first line. I put up a point a game through the last twenty games.
* * *
Los Angeles, California, September 2007
Going into training camp in my second season, I thought I was in for more of the same from Crow. I thought that all I could do was cross days off the calendar until he was fired—like all coaches in the league, management would eventually cash him in. A strange thing happened, though. Crow was different to me.
He treated me no different from the rest of the guys. I wasn’t one of his favorites—I’m not sure he had any. Still, he gave me a fair shake
No young player took my place as Crow’s personal punching bag. We added a couple of European players, Ladislav Nagy and Michal Handzuš, and they had bad years, but Crow didn’t target them. He gave shit to Alexander Frolov, a Russian guy who once fell asleep in the dressing room in uniform after the warm-up, five minutes before we stepped on the ice, but it wasn’t a season-long deal like mine had been.
All I could take away from my experience with Crow was that he could turn his act on and off, again like my father. For appearances, for effect, whatever the case, he could put the anger away, no matter if the “mutant Irish gene” was lurking underneath.
Even in Crow’s good graces I couldn’t trust him at all, no more than I could trust my father. I find it hard at the best of times to trust people, but I can usually work past it. With Crow there was no working past it, just like there was no working past it with my father. Crow had kicked my ass all season, but actually kicking me in the ass, he crossed the line. My father had crossed it a thousand times and Crow just once, but once was enough. Once was too much.
* * *
Los Angeles, California, March 3, 2009
Crow was gone the next year, and I thought I would get a fresh start with a clean slate when Terry Murray was hired to replace him. I thought my career was ready to take off and I could see that the Kings were putting together a lot of talented young players. But the team traded me that spring to Edmonton.
It had started with something small: my agent had kept me out of L.A.’s training camp, fighting over a pay raise. It boiled down to be a hundred grand, as it turned out. That seemed to poison the well with the Kings—I don’t know if he held it against me, my agents and all of us, but Dean Lombardi, L.A.’s general manager, traded me—it was a three-team deal that sent the Kings Justin Williams and Carolina Erik Cole. I understand the trade—Justin is a heck of an asset and would be a huge part of two teams that would win the Cup in L.A., the most valuable player on the second championship team. Still, Lombardi might have been able to get Justin for another player than me.
I knew Edmonton was a franchise in the middle of a rebuilding plan—but then again, the Oilers had been saying that for years and, though they made a run to the Cup final in 2006, there was no breakthrough in sight. When I checked in with the team at a morning skate, management gave me all kinds of mixed messages about my role. The GM told me that he wanted me to do X. The coach told me he’d like me to do Y. Five-on-three penalty kill? I hadn’t played a shift in that situation since I’d turned pro. It’s not my game. Five minutes after leaving their offices, I wished I had asked them if they had ever watched me play or if they had mistaken me for another player.
I had landed in the worst organization in the league, the most dysfunctional on just about every count. The Oilers had acquired me when they had maybe six NHLers exactly like me bef
ore the trade—smaller, skilled forwards who didn’t offer much of a physical presence up front. And not surprisingly, they all struggled in Edmonton.
33
WEDDING INVITATIONS AND CHRISTMAS GIFTS UNOPENED AND RETURNED
Edmonton, Alberta, October 2009
After I called 911 that night in ’02, after the restraining order was in place, after the divorce was final, my break from my father was, with the exception of occasional sightings at junior games and pro games, for all intents and purposes complete. You might presume that his court-ordered absence from our lives would bring my mother, my sisters and me closer—we had been through an awful time and we had survived it. Free of him, we could move forward and find a positive direction.
It didn’t work out that way, though. A long way from it.
Yes, my father was the obvious villain in the story, but there was a lot of dysfunction to go around, by no means limited to him. It wasn’t like we were a close-knit family. My father had effectively separated me from my mother and my sisters. We shared a roof but really not much else. My mother was at some level relieved when my father was out of the house with me for days and nights at a time. She didn’t have to put up with his foul mouth and his rages like I did. She made half-hearted attempts to get between my father and me when he went after me right in front of her, but eventually walked away. Though a lot of the physical abuse was out of her sight, she knew the hell that he put me through. She could pretend that what she didn’t witness didn’t happen. She didn’t have to worry about the impact that it would have on my sisters. So long as it was the men in the family on one side, the women on the other, she seemed prepared to live with it.
The most time that he spent around my mother or my sisters came when we were in Michigan—my father was trying to groom my older sister, Kelley, as a tennis player. He imagined that he could take the formula he used for turning me into a hockey player and work his magic with her. I’m sure that my hockey still meant more to him—that turning Kelley into a pro was probably a longer shot given a later start than other top players. Still, she advanced all the way to the top ten in her age group in Michigan and was probably on track to land an athletic scholarship if she stuck with it. In fact, the reason he wanted to stay on in Ann Arbor after I landed with Mississauga was that he thought Kelley could get more court time and better coaching there.
Breaking Away Page 17