J.R.: My Life as the Most Outspoken, Fearless, and Hard-Hitting Man in Hockey

by Jeremy Roenick

  Initially, I was feeling optimistic about my recovery. I called my wife from the Garden to assure her I would be fine. Through a wired jaw, I talked to teammates and told them I was being treated well in the New York hospital. I even did a newspaper interview and joked that I would take the reporter “out for soup” when I was discharged from the hospital.

  The surgery went fine, but then I started to experience nausea and severe headaches. Suddenly, I had lightheadedness and dizziness. It was clear to me that I had suffered a concussion. Within days, I was wondering whether my career was over. Was this a depression brought on by the concussion? Maybe I just didn’t like the frighteningly ugly man I saw when I looked in the mirror and saw the aftermath of Mironov’s bomb in the face. I had a four-inch scar on my jawline. My cheeks were sunken.

  I didn’t know why I was feeling this way, because no injury had ever made me feel this worried before. I just felt like this was a bad injury, and I didn’t know why. My agent, Neil Abbott, immediately secured an appointment for me with Montreal’s noted neurologist Karen Johnston.

  Ken Hitchcock was quoted in the newspapers as saying he believed I was “riding an emotional wave” and simply needed time to rest and come to grips with my injury. He said he expected me to return, and he was right. The symptoms never went away, but I was able to come back. With five games left in the regular season, I returned to the lineup wearing a shield. By the playoffs, I had removed the shield because I’m not the kind of player who wears one.

  In the first period of the first playoff game, the New Jersey Devils decided to find out if I was still the same player. Sean Brown challenged me, and instantly we were throwing punches to the head.

  I probably should have sent a fucking thank-you note to the Devils, because that scrap helped me realize I could still be the same player, even if I still didn’t feel perfect. It freed my mind.

  Although I was never 100 percent healthy in the 2004 playoffs, I will always remember that time as one of the most memorable playoff runs of my career. The postseason began with me playing right wing on a line with my buddy Tony Amonte and centre Alexei Zhamnov, whom we had acquired to help us win in the playoffs. How ironic that I should end up playing with a guy who was supposed to replace me in Chicago. That line had good chemistry, and I had points in six of the first seven games of the postseason.

  In 2003–04, Hitchcock had given me great responsibility, putting me against the other teams’ top stars. I was killing penalties as well.

  “He’s always been a good friend to everyone,” said Hitchcock. “Now he is being a good teammate.”

  In the second-round series against Toronto, I probably scored the most meaningful goal of my career. It was an overtime game-winner to beat the Leafs 3–2 in game six. It was meaningful primarily because it pushed us into the Eastern Conference final to face the Tampa Bay Lightning. But it was also memorable because Amonte had set me up with a perfect two-on-one pass.

  Believe it or not, I had visualized how that goal was going to happen.

  Shortly before the winning goal was scored, the Flyers’ Sami Kapanen had been levelled on a vicious check by Darcy Tucker. It was one of the hardest hits I ever saw delivered. The Air Canada Centre crowd just erupted with delight.

  This hit should have destroyed Kapanen, who is about five foot eight, 170 pounds. But he pulled himself up and made his way off the ice. The fortitude and guts Kapanen showed by staggering to the bench is one of the more impressive athletic feats I’ve ever seen. Keith Primeau stuck his stick out to pull Kapanen the final few feet. After Kapanen fell into the bench, I jumped on the ice, picked up a loose puck and found myself on a two-on-one break with Amonte. Bryan McCabe was the only Toronto defender between us and the net.

  What made the situation so eerie was that between periods I had a vision of myself being in that position and burying the puck top shelf against Ed Belfour. Now, just over seven minutes into overtime, my premonition was about to become reality. Belfour knew I liked to shoot over the right pad on the far side. That’s my go-to shot. I knew Eddie knew that. So, in my mind, between periods, I had made the decision to shoot high over Belfour’s glove. When I was picturing this situation between periods, I kept repeating the two-on-one sequence many times. Each time, I shot the puck high over the glove and Belfour couldn’t stop it.

  When I had that opportunity in overtime, I shot the puck exactly as I had pictured it. Belfour was both surprised and beaten. My 15-footer zipped under the crossbar, popping Belfour’s water bottle into the air. The building that had been a joyous madhouse after Tucker’s wallop of Kapanen was now as quiet as a tomb.

  Visualization works.

  The Lightning was the number-one team in the Eastern Conference in the regular season, and they were 4–0 against us in the regular season. They had rolled over Montreal in the previous round, but we had learned much about ourselves, and about winning, in the first two rounds.

  In game four, Fredrik Modin checked me against the boards, and my head slammed against the Plexiglas. The next day, I felt nauseous and I had a splitting headache. It was clear that I had had another concussion.

  Under today’s NHL concussion protocol, I would have been out of the lineup. But in 2004, I never considered not playing. The series was tied 2–2. I wasn’t going to miss game five. We lost the fifth game by a score of 4–2, but in game six my linemate Simon Gagné scored in overtime to force a seventh game. After Gagné scored, my legs surrendered. I collapsed to the ice. I felt as if I couldn’t move. It was as if my body was overrun by exhaustion. Concussion-related? I have no idea. But I can tell you that I had some scary moments as Primeau and Gagné helped me off the ice. Only after I had a shower and a massage did I feel well enough to exit the dressing room. Those playoffs took more out of me than any other period of my career.

  As we prepared for game seven, it seemed like we were readying for a Stanley Cup final game. No one would have said it, but all of us probably believed that if we won our next game in the St. Petersburg Times Forum, we were going to win the Stanley Cup. The Calgary Flames had been an upset winner in the Western Conference, and we felt we could handle them. We were definitely a better offensive team than the Flames.

  For the older players, this game almost seemed like a last chance. I was 34, and so was Amonte. John LeClair and Mark Recchi were older than us. Primeau was 32. We were all closer to the end of our careers than the beginning. Plus, the collective bargaining agreement was expiring the following September, and Bob Goodenow, the executive director of the NHL Players’ Association, was warning us that the 2004–05 season might be lost because of a lockout. Would I be able to come back after a year off?

  Those concerns added to the view that game seven was a last chance for us to make a run at the Stanley Cup. My experience in Chicago had taught me that this is the only sensible way to approach these kinds of big games.

  We believed we were ready to win that game seven. We thought we wanted it more than the Lightning. It felt like we were a team of destiny. But in hindsight, we were too beat up to be successful against a healthier, quicker Tampa Bay team. Plus, our power play had not been sharp in that series.

  The Lightning claimed a 2–0 lead in the game, and we could only get one back. The 2–1 loss left me crying at my stall for 20 minutes after the game.

  When you think of athletic competition, you visualize winning. You think of celebrations. Jubilant players. Equipment fired into the air like bottle rockets. Tears of joy. Grown men hugging each other. But for every one of those celebrations, there is a losing dressing room where every player is suffering from an ache that pain medicine can’t relieve.

  This loss hit me harder than any I ever suffered. It was even worse than losing game one of the Stanley Cup final in 1992.

  The season had been a roller-coaster ride, and it had drained me emotionally and physically. My body was wrecked. My head throbbed. My stomach churned. I felt like throwing up. As I sat at my stall, I felt incapacitated, para
lyzed by my emotions.

  You feel betrayed. As an athlete, you learn to believe that if you sacrifice and commit fully to your quest, you will be rewarded. All of us had given all that we had, only to discover it wasn’t enough. It felt as if this playoff run had been conducted with our troops at half-strength. Most of the guys were beat up, and yet every day a new hero would rise from our ranks. Concussed Primeau had carried us on many nights, scoring some big goals. He had 9 goals and 7 assists. Kapanen played his heart out. Gagné was great. Alexei Zhamnov, once traded for me, had come over from the Chicago Blackhawks and played terrifically for us in the playoffs. He had 14 points in 18 playoff games. Playing at about half-strength, I had 13 points in those 18 games.

  After we came up short in game seven, Hitchcock went from a grizzly bear to Mr. Complimentary. “I don’t think anything less of them,” he said about us after the game. “They’ve already gone to the well far too many times than they should have had to.” He knew we were out of gas. We had desire but no fuel to carry us the rest of the way to our destination.

  “We emptied the tank in game six,” Hitchcock was quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer as saying. “The board battles we won in game six and at the tail end of game five, we weren’t able to win in game seven. They won them in their zone, and they came at us.”

  After the game, I sat at my stall, half-dressed, for a very long time. I was overwhelmed by sadness and despair. Maybe it was my concussion. Maybe it was my feeling that my career might be over. Maybe it was the realization that my last chance to win a Stanley Cup had fallen one goal short. But I couldn’t stop crying that night.

  16. All in My Head

  Anyone who wants to know what life as an NHL player is like should simply review my medical records. I’ve received 600 stitches in my face, broken all of my fingers, had my shoulder rebuilt, suffered two knee injuries, broken my jaw once in four places and another time in 21 places. Then there is the matter of 13 documented concussions and probably 10 to 20 others that were not diagnosed.

  The concussion I suffered when Boris Mironov hit me with his shot in 2004 was probably the scariest, because the symptoms seemed to alter my personality and they persisted for many months. That summer, it was as if someone else was inhabiting my mind. I never felt right. It was the worst summer of my life.

  When Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby was still having symptoms in the summer of 2011, seven months after suffering a concussion, I could relate to what he was going through. There was a day during the summer of 2004 when I slept roughly 23 hours.

  As a general rule, I’m an upbeat person. That summer, I was a hater. I was irritable, moody and grumpy. I slept a lot more than usual because I was tired all the time. It was a struggle to get out of bed. I treated my wife, Tracy, poorly. I treated my kids poorly. I sat around the house and moped. I couldn’t work out. I tried to golf, but it was a struggle to play 18 holes because of the constant headaches. I usually play golf four times a week in the summer, and I averaged one poor round of golf per week in the summer of 2004. How can you golf when sunlight bothers you? Lights bothered me. My son was eight then, and my daughter was 10, and the regular household noise that my children would make would drive me up the wall. People all around me, including family, friends and even members of the media, were telling me I wasn’t acting like myself.

  In the eight years since, the NHL has come a long way in terms of how it handles concussions. Given the way that doctors, teams and players now look at concussions, I probably would not have been allowed to play after game four in the 2004 Eastern Conference finals. I had severe headaches the day before I played game five.

  This is what I told Philadelphia reporter Tim Panaccio in September of that year: “I was throwing up between periods of that game and didn’t play in the third period. I played the next game. Why? Because I’m a hockey player, and I wanted to win a Stanley Cup. Probably a stupid move on my part, but I wanted to win.”

  To be clear, it didn’t matter what the Philadelphia doctors thought about my medical situation after Game 4. It was my decision to play. The doctor would have had to break my leg to prevent me from playing. I was going to do whatever I had to do to win a Stanley Cup, including ignoring health risks. That’s just who I was as a player.

  My health was a political issue in the fall of 2004 because the NHL locked out players that season, and the only players who would be paid were those who were injured. Since my salary was $7.5 million in the 2004–05 season, the Flyers weren’t going to be handing me paycheques without some proof of my concussion.

  When the issue was first raised, general manager Bob Clarke’s initial response was to point out that I had passed the team’s exit physical. Keith Primeau, who eventually retired because of concussion issues, also passed his exit physical. The Flyers knew I was having problems, because I’d told them before I had my physical. I wasn’t feeling right, and the headaches hadn’t gone away. Clarke and coach Ken Hitchcock both told me that they didn’t believe I should try to play in the World Cup of Hockey that was scheduled for August 24. Clarke had told the media in May that he didn’t want me, or Primeau, to play in the World Cup. The Flyers were keenly aware that I was injured.

  I was still hoping to feel better. It wasn’t until July that I officially notified USA Hockey that I wouldn’t be able to play in the 2004 World Cup. The Barrow Neurological Institute in Arizona was treating me, and doctors there figured out that my brain stem had been shifted by the force of Mironov’s shot. I received treatment, such as deep massages, to help move it back into alignment. Had there been a 2004–05 season, I would not have been ready to play in October.

  Although the media accounts made it seem that I was in a heated battle with the Flyers over my money, the organization was quite professional in its dealings with me. I went to see Dr. Karen Johnston in Montreal in October; she was the expert who treated Eric Lindros. A few weeks later, I had an appointment with a doctor in Philadelphia. Once the Flyers read the two doctors’ reports, we were able to agree on payment of $1.5 million. The Flyers are a first-class organization, and my take was that the NHL was making sure each team followed a specific protocol when it came to dealing with injured players.

  It was probably January before I began to feel better. And when the fog lifted from my brain, I didn’t like what I saw in the battle between the NHL and the players over the new collective bargaining agreement. I didn’t believe the leadership of the NHL Players’ Association was taking us in the right direction. I believe I was one of the first players, if not the first player, to say we should accept a salary cap. I just didn’t believe a salary cap was going to blow up our earning potential, and I thought the game needed a way for every team to compete. In my last season in Phoenix, I saw what happened when teams had to dump players for financial reasons. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  Whether my moods were being impacted by my concussion or not, I can’t say, but I was enraged over the loss of the season and the stubbornness of NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow. Right from the beginning, I felt as if we were a house cat fighting against a mountain lion.

  I started making calls to players, and I ended up talking to about 40 of them, and every one of them was at least willing to discuss accepting a salary cap. My next call was to Ian Pulver, who was one of Goodenow’s lieutenants at the NHLPA. I informed him that I had been talking to players who were willing to accept a cap, and this is my recollection of how our conversation went:

  “That’s not true,” he said. “We don’t find that at all. We don’t find that guys will accept a cap.”

  I repeated that I had talked to 40 guys, which I considered a reasonable sample of players.

  “Don’t tell me that guys don’t want to do it,” I said, my anger starting to show. “I’m telling you the guys would do it.”

  “We just don’t feel that way,” Pulver said.

  At that point in the conversation, I started to wonder who worked for whom.

  There wa
s a players’ meeting scheduled for Toronto shortly after my telephone joust with Pulver. And 200 of us showed up to voice our opinions about what was going on. When it was my turn to speak, I stood up, and my first comment was directed at Ian Pulver. I told him never to disrespect me. “I wanted to come through that phone and knock your teeth out,” I said.

  Pulver said he was sorry I felt that way. I wanted to punch him again. Instead, I said what I had to say about our negotiation stance.

  “What are we doing here, guys?” I asked. “The game is changing. Why can’t we look at a salary cap, but on our terms?”

  I took some heat. Tough guy Tie Domi was adamantly against the salary cap, and he gave me an earful. But there were plenty who agreed with me, including Jarome Iginla.

  It was at that time that my relationship with Goodenow broke down. I respected him for what he had done for the NHLPA. Certainly, I benefited from the work Goodenow had done to raise salaries early in my career. When salaries became public under his watch, they escalated dramatically. But somewhere along the line, he seemed to lose track of the reality that he was working for us and not the other way around. He never yelled at me, but I didn’t like being around him because of his arrogance. When he answered a question, it always seemed that he was telling you what your opinion should be. He was condescending and made you feel that his word was final. I had the feeling he didn’t respect the opinion of any player who didn’t agree with him.

  It sure seemed to me that there was too much at stake for Goodenow to be as obstinate as he was being. In my mind, the players were risking too much for a war they didn’t need to fight. Although agents had negotiated some contracts to reduce the damage of a lost season, every player was losing significantly. Some of the losses were in the millions.