I don’t get upstaged very often, but it happened the year I played for the Kings and I appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Just as my interview with Craig started, comedian Chris Rock unexpectedly popped onto the set to surprise Craig. For one of the few times in my life, I was speechless. I had long admired Rock’s brand of humour, and I didn’t know what to say. I was starstruck. The only issue was that there was no time left for my interview. Wearing my “Money Never Sleeps” T-shirt, I can be heard muttering, “That son of a bitch just ruined my spot.”
It was during my season with the Kings that I met actor Vince Vaughn for the first time. I’ve always loved the fact that he mentioned my name in director Doug Liman’s 1996 movie Swingers, which stars Vaughn, Heather Graham and Jon Favreau. That movie seemed to launch Vaughn nationally. In it, Vaughn’s character, Trent, uses the Roenick player against his buddy’s Wayne Gretzky and the Los Angeles Kings in the NHL ’94 Sega Genesis game. “I’m gonna make Gretzky’s head bleed for Superfan 99 over here,” Trent says. Even people who didn’t know anything about me know me because of Vaughn’s reference to me in the movie. He made me into a pop icon.
For years, I’ve been told that I was virtually unstoppable in both the NHLPA Hockey ’93 and NHL ’94 games. I could shoot from anywhere, and I was always running over opponents and no one could take the puck away from me. I’ve had guys come up to me and say that they got through college by winning money on videogame bets simply by choosing the Blackhawks because I was on the team. When gamers were savvy, they would ban anyone from using the Blackhawks because I was so dominant.
I’ve been told by many that I was the greatest video player of all time, and IGN Sports ranked the NHLPA Hockey ’93 version of me as the fourth-greatest video athlete of all time. As Trent said in Swingers to explain his gaming prowess: “It’s not so much me as Roenick. He’s good.”
So, when I saw Vaughn standing along a wall with his buddies at a Los Angeles bar, I wanted to personally thank him for giving me a shout out in the movie. Much to my surprise, Vaughn seemed as excited to meet me as I was to meet him.
I told him I thought it was the “coolest thing ever” that he mentioned me in that movie.
“Shit, J.R.,” he said, “I spent a lot of years watching you play in Chicago. You were the man. I put you in that movie out of respect. You’re the best hockey player I ever saw.”
Vaughn grew up in Illinois, graduating from Lake Forest High School in 1988, when I was first starting with the Blackhawks.
We’ve been friends ever since that meeting. In the movie Wedding Crashers, Vaughn made sure his character was named Jeremy as a salute to me.
Another night, I was at the Sky Bar and I challenged Justin Timberlake to a dance contest. I was hanging out there with teammates Cammalleri, Sean Avery and a couple of others when I spotted Timberlake with his then-girlfriend Cameron Diaz. We were all well lubricated when I went up to Timberlake and issued the challenge, then demonstrated my best couple of moves.
Timberlake laughed. “J.R., stick to hockey,” he said. “The one thing you cannot do is dance.”
He then did a step move and a spin and offered: “That’s all I got for you. You’re done. Get out of here.”
We were both laughing. Diaz wasn’t as amused as Timberlake was. She looked at me as if I were an annoyance, an idiot or a lunatic, or maybe a combination of the three.
That wasn’t the only time I hung out with Avery. I found that I liked Avery. I was amused by his caustic attitude, although he could be irritating at times, even if you liked him.
Avery is always his own worst enemy. He wants to be in the limelight, which doesn’t make him unique among athletes, but he has a publicist helping him get there. And he gets so caught up in the pursuit of fame that he makes people forget, or not see, that he is a talented hockey player. This kid can skate, shoot, pass and hit. All that gets in the way of Avery being a successful player is Avery. He wants to think of himself as a bad boy, so he plays the role of a bad boy.
Once, in the L.A. dressing room, Avery entered and walked past all of us as if we were mannequins.
“Hey, no hello?” Cammalleri asked.
“Why would I say hello to you?” Avery shot back. “I don’t even like you.”
It would have been funny, if not for the fact that Avery was being serious.
I have no tolerance for teammates who don’t have the decency to be cordial in the dressing room. We spend more time with our teammates than our families. In my opinion, it’s disrespectful not to say “good morning” to your teammates when you walk into a room. After players retire, they often say that what they miss most is hanging out with the guys. I’ve always counselled younger players to show respect when you enter the dressing room.
* * *
The Kings fired Andy Murray in March, and I felt horrible about that. The only issue I ever had with Murray was his ban on wearing hats in the dressing room. Throughout my career, I wore a hat in the dressing room. Call it my superstition. His ban was the most ridiculous team rule I had ever encountered. But I liked Andy as a person and a coach. When players talk with coaches, the coaches usually do most of the talking. That’s not how Andy was with me. The first time we met, I had to keep talking just to keep the conversation rolling.
The more I got to know Andy, the more I liked him. He never made you guess what he was thinking. He told you. If he liked what you were doing, he told you. If he didn’t like what you were doing, he told you. He was always straight-up with me. As badly as my season was going, he always treated me with unwavering respect. I felt as if Andy knew that I was always giving my best effort, even though the results were not there. He even tried to be tolerant of my horseplay.
Andy always made it a point that he didn’t want any quotes from his players that would inspire the opponents.
“No bulletin-board material,” he would say before the media came in. And as he was walking out, I would shout, “The Anaheim Ducks were brutal tonight.”
Everyone would laugh, and I believe even Murray would snicker.
On the road, he would slide an information sheet under your door, and then he would quiz you the next day to see if you had read it. He never yelled. He never swore. He would say, “Gosh, darn it, guys.” Since most of my NHL coaches had been screamers, Andy’s style was unusual. I used to swear all the time around Andy just to get him worked up a bit.
But Murray did coach me the way I wanted to be coached. He coached me honestly. We had 79 points in 70 games when Murray was fired, and we won five of our last 12 games under interim coach John Torchetti. It was certainly not Andy’s fault that we missed the playoffs by five points, finishing 10th in the Western Conference. Certainly, I shared the blame for Murray’s departure, because it’s a team game and therefore all players are at fault. But we had several issues, with our defensive play being chief among them. We gave up 270 goals that season, and no NHL team gave up that many goals and made the playoffs that season.
When the season was over, general manager Dave Taylor also was fired.
As badly as my season in L.A. went, I wanted to return the following season. I had too much pride in my game to want to leave under those circumstances. I wanted to come back and be the player that I should be.
When the Kings hired Dean Lombardi as the team’s general manager on April 21, 2006, I thought I had a chance to return. We had known each other for many years. Lombardi was a Boston guy. I believed he might give me a chance to redeem myself. But when I had my meeting with him, it was clear that he wasn’t the ally I was hoping he would be.
Lombardi told me that he had been one of my biggest fans, and because of that he was “embarrassed” by my performance level. Even though he hadn’t been there during the 2005–06 schedule, he tore apart my season and criticized my attitude and the way I had conducted myself in my one year in Los Angeles. The one moment that seemed to bother him the most was my dance in Las Vegas. He told me I had “disgraced” the ga
me.
I took my beating without complaint because I wanted to come back. I wasn’t confrontational. I told Lombardi that if he re-signed me, he was going to be signing the player Dave Taylor thought he was getting when he traded for me. Usually, I don’t go down without a battle. But I said nothing because I wanted to stay in Los Angeles. I wanted to prove I could still play. I wanted to win the fans over.
After my meeting with Lombardi, I was scheduled for a meeting with his newly hired coach, Marc Crawford. My interview with Crawford went worse than my meeting with Lombardi. As I sat across from Crawford, I remember thinking that he was among the most arrogant men I had ever met. He seemed to be taking pleasure in reviewing how poorly he thought I had played the previous season.
“Why should we re-sign you?” he asked.
I tried to be as honest as I could be, admitting that I had gone through what I called “an embarrassing season.”
“But I want to come back and make amends for that,” I said. “I plan to be in the best shape of my life.”
“What makes you think you can do that?” Crawford asked.
“Because when I commit to something 100 percent, then it gets done,” I said.
Crawford looked across the desk at me and said, “I don’t think you can do it.”
At that moment, I fully understood how Schoenfeld felt when he wanted to fight me in Phoenix. My thought was to reach across the table and punch Crawford. Until that moment, I thought there was still a chance I could play again for Los Angeles. Crawford made it crystal clear what the new administration felt about me. Crawford was also saying I was mentally weak. When I walked out that door, I was fully committed to spending the summer moulding my body into the best shape it had ever been in.
19. Wayne’s World
If it is blasphemy to be mad at Wayne Gretzky, then I was a sinner when I played for Phoenix during the 2006–07 season.
The Great One and I both probably felt like we were in hell for the first couple of months that he coached me. I’m guessing he was as miffed at me as I was at him, but he did a better job of hiding it.
It seemed as though Gretzky and I would be the perfect match when Gretzky called to offer me a contract in the summer of 2006. I was five minutes away from signing with Calgary when my cell phone rang and Gretzky and general manager Mike Barnett offered me a chance to return to Phoenix.
Actually, Barnett told me he would give me a contract if I could get down to “your Chicago playing weight.”
“I was 185 pounds when I left,” I said. “That’s crazy. I can’t do that, but I can get in great shape.”
There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to have an exceptional season. I was motivated. I was fucking fired up to get myself in awesome shape after Los Angeles’ GM, Dean Lombardi, said he did not believe I had the same focus on my hockey career as I did in my younger days. But I was even more fired up when Tracy said she agreed with Lombardi. Nobody knows me like Tracy. If she believed I needed to get my ass in gear, then I did for sure. I spent the summer in California training with T.R. Goodman, who trained many top NHL players, including my buddy Chris Chelios. Goodman worked my fucking tail off. I had accomplished what I had told Crawford I was going to do in my exit interview in Los Angeles. I had worked myself into the best shape of my career. I weighed 198 pounds, 22 pounds less than when I arrived in L.A. the year before. My body was fucking ripped that summer.
When I signed with the Coyotes for $1.2 million, I believed Barnett and Gretzky were going to give me an opportunity to show that I could still be a prominent NHL player. I remember Gretzky talked about how he valued my leadership and energy.
Today, I can see the Coyotes signed me primarily to sell tickets. I had been a popular player in Phoenix for five years, and they were hoping that some of the fans who had stopped coming would return if I was in the lineup.
It was clear to me early that Gretzky never had me in his coaching plans. At some points, I wasn’t even a regular on the fourth line. On the coaching board in the dressing room, Gretzky would list his four lines, and I would be the guy written on the side. It was almost embarrassing for me to even be in the dressing room. Because of the way Gretzky handled it, I felt disrespected.
Gretzky knew I was angry because I didn’t hide it. Sometimes I would go out for practice and just stand by the side boards, near Gretzky as he coordinated the drills. The four lines would be rolling through the drills, and Gretzky would ask, “J.R, are you going to take any reps with the line?”
“Are you going to put me on a line?” I would answer. When Gretzky didn’t respond, I would add: “Then, nope, I’m staying right here. I’m not on any line. Let the guys who are on lines go.”
I was like a child who’d had his lollipop taken away. I pouted. Clearly, that wasn’t the best way to handle the situation, but my anger sometimes seizes command of my brain. Respect is an important issue with me. As a veteran player nearing 500 NHL goals, I felt as if I deserved more respect than I was receiving from Gretzky. My belief was that, as a nine-time All-Star, I had earned the right to always know where I stood with regard to playing time. If I wasn’t playing, I wanted to know before I started my game preparation ritual at the morning skate. Right or wrong, that’s how I felt. If coaches have already made up their minds that I’m not playing that night, then tell me before I start getting mentally ready to play. All that I ask is that my coach communicates with me. I don’t like surprises when it comes to these situations. If you told me before the morning skate I wasn’t playing, I was fine. If you told me later than that, then I felt disrespected.
At one point in the season, my anger reached the point where I started hatching my own conspiracy theories about Gretzky’s decisions regarding my playing time. I didn’t believe that Gretzky was anti-American, but I started to wonder how he would have treated me if I had been a Canadian star trying to reach his 500th goal. Gretzky is a very proud Canadian. If I had played for his gold medal–winning Olympic team, instead of the silver medal–winning Americans, at Salt Lake in 2002, would he have taken the same approach in dealing with me?
At the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Gretzky was the executive director of the Canadian hockey team, and he went on a rant against the American media, European hockey officials and everyone who wasn’t supporting Canada. The Canadians were struggling at the time, and he was clearly trying to take the pressure off his team by saying everyone in the world hated Canada.
My response was to say that Gretzky should get an endorsement deal with Kleenex because of all of the crying he was doing. I did regret that remark as soon as I said it, because Gretzky had spent his entire career trying to do the right thing. That was probably disrespectful on my part. He deserved his right to stand up for his team. As it turned out, Gretzky’s rant was the right fix for the Canadian team. As the media took shots at Gretzky’s bizarre speech, his players rallied. They came together and beat us in the gold-medal game.
Even as I wondered whether Gretzky would treat me differently if I was a Canadian, I’m not sure I ever supported my own thought process. I was just looking to lay blame for my situation. I was trying to make myself feel better. I wanted to believe I was being discriminated against because it’s easier to accept than the idea that my coach didn’t believe I was good enough to play. But an athlete has to be emotional to play this sport well. Hockey players boil over when their playing time is slashed or when they feel they have no opportunity to redeem themselves. Today, when I look back objectively at what happened that season, I see there was a 13-game span from late October to late November where Gretzky gave me my opportunity. I played 17 minutes or more in 10 of those games. I didn’t score a single goal. That’s when Gretzky gave up on me. At that point, my ice time began to dwindle and I started to feel like the 13th forward.
From November 25 until January 31, I never had 15 minutes of playing time in a game. That’s the period when I felt disrespected, the time when I wondered whether Gretzky could have pi
cked me up rather than keeping me down.
Gretzky would probably argue that I was my own worst enemy at that point. He would be right. My boiling anger scalded Phoenix assistant coach Barry Smith one day when he didn’t deserve it.
Once, at a morning skate, I was leaving the ice when Smith yelled at me to come back on the ice.
“Where are you going? You need to skate,” Smith said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you aren’t playing tonight,” he said.
This was the first I had heard about that decision. Gretzky hadn’t said anything to me about it. My anger was boiling over at this point.
“I’m not skating,” I said, adding expletives for emphasis.
“You are skating,” Smith said, “because you need to do some extra work.”
What it all boiled down to is that I didn’t feel I was playing poorly enough to warrant the disrespect I was feeling. As mad as I was, I did skate over to the goal line, although not with any degree of urgency. When Smith blew the whistle, I did skate, but it was at a leisurely, holding-hands-with-your-girlfriend pace and not a professional athlete’s pace. I took my time skating down the ice and then meandered back.
Smith asked me what the heck I was doing. I told him I was skating, and then we both turned up the volume on the yelling.
“I’ve been around a long time and I don’t deserve this treatment,” I said.
He said something to the effect that he had been around a long time as well and didn’t deserve to take grief from me.
“I’ve won a Stanley Cup,” Smith added.
“Yeah, as an assistant coach,” I said, making it sound like an insult.
I can’t remember every word that was uttered after that, but I can tell you that I said some unkind remarks to a man I respected quite a bit. He said some hurtful words, and then I added more. It was ugly.
“Get off the ice,” Smith finally screamed at me.
“That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do,” I said.
J.R.: My Life as the Most Outspoken, Fearless, and Hard-Hitting Man in Hockey Page 19