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

by Jeremy Roenick

  5. Alexander Mogilny. Today we talk about Evgeni Malkin and Alex Ovechkin, but neither of those guys could skate with Mogilny or Fedorov or Bure. Mogilny also had a great sense of where to be in the offensive zone. It’s easy to forget that Mogilny scored 76 goals for Buffalo in 1992–93. Regardless of what era we are talking about, that is a lot of goals.

  6. Peter Forsberg. He always impressed me because he was such a complete player. He was powerful on his skates, and you couldn’t intimidate him with physical play. He once threw an elbow at the late Bob Probert because Probert had elbowed him. How many NHL stars would trade elbows with Bob Fucking Probert? Bob said after the game that he respected Forsberg for doing that.

  7. Mark Messier. Playing against Mark Messier was what it must have been like to play against Gordie Howe in the 1950s. You just always knew that Messier would do whatever he had to do to win a hockey game. He was fucking ruthless.

  8. Patrick Roy. Although I know it’s not true, it always felt as if I scored every time I played against Roy. I loved the passion he brought to the game. It always seemed like he enjoyed himself on the ice. He was a serious competitor who didn’t forget that hockey is supposed to be entertainment.

  9. Brian Leetch. One of the best puck-moving defencemen in NHL history. He’s among the top five players in American hockey history. And I was playing against him when he was a little shit playing prep school hockey in Connecticut.

  10. Teemu Selanne. He is probably the nicest player I ever competed against, and certainly one of the most intelligent athletes in NHL history. That’s why he is still playing. He understands the game at an advanced fucking level. He is also unpredictable. You have no idea what he is going to do next.

  My 10 Favourite Arenas

  1. Chicago Stadium. This is where I developed into an NHL player. I still believe that that old barn, demolished in 1995, was louder than the current United Center.

  2. Maple Leaf Gardens. I had more points against the Toronto Maple Leafs than any other team. I liked being in a rink where fans were on top of you. When I sat on the bench, I could have reached over and grabbed a handful of popcorn from fans. When I sat on the bench, my sweat poured on fans.

  3. Boston Garden. Where I grew up, it was home ice. It was where I used to watch Rick Middleton play. It was where I dreamed about becoming an NHL player. It felt like Original Six hockey in that building. Plus, the arena had rats the size of raccoons.

  4. Montreal Forum. The building had an aura to it. The minute you walked into the Forum, you immediately sensed all the history that had happened there. It was fun to realize you were skating on the same fucking rink where Rocket Richard used to dominate the league.

  5. Madison Square Garden. Muhammad Ali fought Joe Frazier at the Garden. The Rolling Stones played there. John Lennon sang there. Many famous people got to perform there, and I feel honoured to have played there.

  6. The Spectrum in Philadelphia. Loved to play there because the fans there do more name-calling than in any other NHL city. Must have been a bitch to play there when the Broad Street Bullies were roaming the ice.

  7. San Jose’s Shark Tank. This arena is the NHL’s best-kept secret. It’s just a neat atmosphere, with smart, passionate fans.

  8. L.A. Forum. It was the coolest thing to see celebrities coming out to see us play. It was just fun to see Sylvester Stallone, or the late John Candy, or Goldie Hawn with Kurt Russell sitting along the glass.

  9. Le Colisée in Quebec City. That arena tied my youth and adult careers together, because I played in the peewee tournament there and then I played against the NHL Nordiques.

  10. Joe Louis Arena. Detroit is Hockeytown, and I feel like I helped contribute to the creation of that image because I played there so often. It was always a highly competitive game when the Blackhawks went into Joe Louis. They had some tough teams when Probert and Joey Kocur played there.

  Five Goalies Who Gave Me the Most Trouble

  1. Marty Brodeur. He was the fucking king in the Eastern Conference.

  2. Dominik Hasek. Hasek’s acrobatic style was so crazy and un-fucking-predictable that I had no clue as to how to approach him with a shot. As a shooter, I had no book on him. You would shoot high, and he would throw up a glove or pad and stop you. Go low, and it seemed like he had boarded up the net.

  3. Curtis Joseph. I played against him a lot, and I never had as much success against him as I thought I should.

  4. Kirk McLean. When he was playing in Vancouver, I thought he was the most technically sound goalie I played against. To me, it seemed like he was always in position. You couldn’t get him out of position.

  5. Mike Richter. He was as competitive in the net as I was on the ice. He was a battler, and I respected him for that. He never gave up on a shot.

  My Five Toughest Teammates

  1. Bob Probert. He was a teddy bear off the ice and a fucking animal on the ice.

  2. Donald Brashear. Would not want to meet him in a dark alley. He was big, strong and ferocious.

  3. Georges Laraque. I don’t believe Georges loved being an enforcer, even though he was scary good in that role.

  4. Stu Grimson. He would pound the hell out of someone and then apologize for it later. Deeply religious, Grimson struggled to reconcile his faith with his profession.

  5. Mike Peluso. He was tough as shit, but he had a sentimental side. When he was playing for the Devils, and they were winning the Stanley Cup, the TV camera caught him crying on the bench with two minutes to go. He was so happy to win the Stanley Cup. I was so happy for him that I started crying watching him.

  My All-Time Favourite Teammates

  1. Chris Chelios (Chicago). He’s the player every coach wants on his team. He’s the ultimate competitor, a player who put his team first every day of his career. He liked to howl at the moon at night, but was always ready to play the next day. If you went to war, you’d want Chelios in your squad. He reminds me of a fucking drill sergeant.

  2. Tony Amonte (Chicago and Philadelphia). He was my linemate at Thayer Academy, and he ended up playing with me in the NHL. I view him as a brother.

  3. Keith “Walt” Tkachuk (Phoenix). Everything I said about Chelios, I can also say about Tkachuk. I admired the way he took care of everyone on the team. You won’t find too many players who didn’t like Big Walt.

  4. Rick Tocchet (Phoenix and Philadelphia). Great competitor, good friend, good guy, fun to be around. And he scored 440 NHL goals. He was a 40-goal scorer three times. You forgot about that, didn’t you?

  5. Bryan Marchment (Chicago). He was a total team guy. He blocked shots, fought for his teammates, played hard every shift, never wanted any personal accolades. He was all about the team. And he was a mean motherfucker when he hit you.

  6. Michel Goulet and Steve Larmer (Chicago). Can’t separate these two players because they were my first long-term linemates and they helped me become the player I was.

  7. Joe Thornton (San Jose). He’s just one of the NHL’s great guys, always fun to be around, always very positive. And he’s one of the best playmaking centres I’ve seen.

  8. Mark Recchi (Philadelphia). He was a small player with a big heart and plenty of grit. You don’t think of him as a Hall of Famer, and yet he netted 577 goals. He had a true love for the game.

  9. Stéphane Matteau (Chicago). I played with him in junior and in the NHL, and he always kept me laughing. One night when we were playing for Chicago, Stéphane and I were in a redneck bar where a couple of locals challenged us to a game of pool for twenty dollars. When we shot pool, we always divided the balls into “stripes” or “solids.” But our opponents that night used the terms “highs” and “lows.” After the break, Stéphane was confused and shot the 3-ball into the pocket when we actually had stripes. One of our opponents pointed out Stéphane’s error by saying simply, “You are high.” “No, I’m just a little drunk,” Stéphane replied. Thought that was hilarious two decades ago and still think it’s funny today.

  10. Travis Gre
en (Phoenix). He and I were the same guy in terms of the way we viewed life. We had similar personalities, and we had the same interests. We both liked to gamble. We both liked to enjoy ourselves away from the rink. Probably had as much fun hanging with Travis as I did hanging with any other teammate I ever had.

  Five Players I Hated During My Career

  1. Rob Ray. I didn’t like Ray as a player because he took trash-talking too far. When I was going through a difficult time in my life, he went way over the line with what he said to me in a game. Based on what he said to me, I lost all fucking respect for him as an NHL player and a person.

  2. Patrick Marleau. He had all of the skill in the world but not nearly enough desire to take advantage of that talent. I should have had his skill, and he should have had my heart.

  3. Steve Ott. The funny aspect of Ott appearing on this list is that I like him as a person and hate him as a player. He is a prick on the ice. He is always chirping at you to try to get you off your game. He’s always in your face. He’s like a gnat that you can’t seem to swat away. No one likes playing against him, and yet his teammates always like him. It’s like he’s two different people, or that he has an on-off switch. He seems like a quality person until the game starts, and then he makes you want to punch him in the face.

  4. Roman Cechmanek. He would look good in the regular season, and then the playoffs would start and suddenly he was giving up bad goals. In 2000–01, he had a 2.01 goals-against average and .920 save percentage in the regular season. Then, his playoff numbers were 3.11 and .896. The way he performed in the playoffs made me believe he had come to the NHL just for the money and not to play with world’s best players and win the Stanley Cup. To me, he seemed like a phony, a true fraud. I had no use for him.

  5. Oleg Tverdovsky. He always thought he was more skilled than he really was, and he put no effort into making himself a better player. That’s why I had to kick his ass twice in practice.

  My All-Time Favourite Games

  1. The 1991 NHL All-Star Game in Chicago. It was my first All-Star Game, it was in my home rink, and it came days after the Gulf War had been launched. When the fans sang the national anthem before the game, it was the most emotional crowd I’ve ever seen at a hockey arena. The rendition was loud and animated. There were people crying in the arena and in homes across North America.

  2. The 2002 Olympic Gold-Medal Game in Salt Lake City. Although we lost that game to Canada, I still view it fondly. I have the silver medal hanging in my home in Arizona. How many athletes can say they won an Olympic medal?

  3. Chicago Blackhawks at St. Louis Blues, Norris Division Final, Game Five, April 26, 1989. That’s the game where Glen Featherstone knocked out my teeth, and I came back to score the series-clinching goal. I was 19 at the time, and I think that’s the night I informed the hockey world what kind of player I was going to be.

  4. My First Canada Cup Game Against Canada, September 2, 1991, in Hamilton, Ontario. We lost that game 6–3, but I remember it was just a thrill to be playing against that level of competition. Four years earlier, I had watched Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky play for Canada in their dramatic win over the Soviets, and now I was on the ice against the great Canadian team.

  5. Thayer Academy vs. Avon Old Farms, 1986 Championship Game. This was the prep school championship game in which Tony Amonte and Jeremy Roenick realized we could measure up to Brian Leetch’s greatness. Amonte and I both had big games to down Leetch’s Old Farms.

  6. First Bantam Championship, 1983. My Jersey Rockets had trouble beating the Chicago Americans. We could only beat them in big tournaments, like in the 1983 national bantam championship game, which we won in the fourth overtime. Even after playing 1,363 NHL regular-season games and 154 playoff games, I still remember that bantam championship game as if it happened yesterday. You play to win championships, and I remember that one.

  7. Chicago Blackhawks at Minnesota North Stars, February 14, 1989. It felt like I was playing a scene from the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles as I was delayed by everything from a traffic accident to bad weather between Hull, Quebec, and Bloomington, Minnesota. When I arrived, I didn’t even receive a jersey with my name on it. But I did get my first NHL goal (against Kari Takko), assisted by Brian Noonan, with whom I’d played summer league hockey in Boston.

  8. Philadelphia Flyers at Toronto Maple Leafs, Eastern Conference Semifinal, Game Six, May 4, 2004. I scored the overtime game-winner against my friend Eddie Belfour to clinch the series for the Flyers. Was this the biggest goal of my career? Many of my fans believe it is.

  9. Chicago Blackhawks vs. Edmonton Oilers, Campbell Conference Final, 1990. This was game four, where Mark Messier decided his Edmonton Oilers were going to win the Stanley Cup. He cut a few Blackhawks in this game, including me. He was breathing fire that night. I couldn’t even look him in the eye. That’s generally considered the turning point in the Oilers’ run for the Stanley Cup. That’s the game where I learned what it means to carry a team.

  10. Chicago Blackhawks at Pittsburgh Penguins, Stanley Cup Final, Game One, May 26, 1992. Many of my favourite games didn’t go my way, and this was one of them. We came into this game on a roll and built a 4–1 lead against Mario Lemieux’s Pittsburgh Penguins but ended up losing 5–4.

  23. Who I Am

  The late comedian George Carlin had a famous routine in which he listed the seven words you can’t say on television. On May 8, 2011, I came up with the eighth. The word is “gutless.”

  That was the word I used on a live broadcast on the Versus network to describe the performance of Patrick Marleau of the San Jose Sharks in game five of the Western Conference final against the Detroit Red Wings. Although my job as a hockey analyst for Versus was to critique player performance, my use of the word “gutless” created a shitstorm of protests, debate and comments about what I should, or should not, say on television.

  At the time of my verbal blast, Marleau had no points in the series. My criticism came with the score tied 3–3, after he allowed Detroit’s Pavel Datsyuk to steal the puck from him along the boards in the San Jose zone. Marleau then made a feeble fucking effort to check Datsyuk, who was able to feed the puck to Nicklas Lidstrom, whose shot was tipped in by Tomas Holmstrom for the game-winner with 6:08 remaining in regulation.

  During the postgame show, I said Marleau had turned in “an unbelievable poor effort . . . a gutless, gutless performance . . . zero points in the series, and he has a game like that.”

  Later, on the Hockey Central show, fellow Versus analyst Keith Jones asked whether I believed Marleau was injured.

  “He’s hurt, all right,” I said, pointing to my heart. “Right here, he’s hurt.”

  My Twitter account was overrun by haters, as well as by others who thanked me for calling out Marleau for not doing his job in a crucial playoff game. Some Sharks fans were upset with me, saying I had turned on the team after they had supported me during my time in San Jose. The biggest shock to me about the episode was the surprise that people expressed that I would call out a player, especially a former teammate.

  When I was a player, I was more than willing to get into a teammate’s face in the name of getting him to play better. Why wouldn’t I confront a player when I’m an analyst? Isn’t that my job?

  Whether I’m an NHL player or working as an analyst in a television studio, I can’t be a perimeter player. That’s not my personality. It’s safe when you play on the outside. You don’t get hurt. But I don’t play safe. Never have. Never will. That’s not who I am. I thought everyone understood that about me. Diplomacy is not my thing.

  I often challenged teammates because I cared more about winning than any other aspect of competition. Chris Chelios and I were friends, but Chris never had an issue getting in my face if he didn’t like something I was doing. Keith Tkachuk and I had the same kind of relationship.

  When I thought a player could be giving more on the ice, I fucking told him. Nothing infuriates me more than players who act
as if they don’t give a shit. When you play for a team, it’s more than a fucking job. The vast majority of NHL players put their heart into winning. But sometimes you temporarily have a mental lapse for a few moments or a game, and you need a teammate or a coach to snap you back into focus.

  In my career, I only ran into a few teammates whom I considered lost causes. I couldn’t stand playing with goalie Roman Cechmanek in Philadelphia because I felt like he had one foot back in the Czech Republic the minute the regular season was over. He didn’t seem to be as serious about the NHL playoffs as the rest of us were. It made me wonder whether he would have preferred playing for his country in the World Championships rather than the Stanley Cup playoffs. Players only get paid in the regular season, not the playoffs. It didn’t seem like a coincidence to me that when the paycheques stopped coming, Cechmanek’s performance level went downhill. I remember telling teammates after the 2001–02 season that if he was in Philadelphia’s net the following fall, I wasn’t fucking coming back.

  Robert Reichel and I played together in Phoenix in 1998–99, and trainers told me that Reichel had asked to have his post- season physical before we played game seven of our first-round playoff series. That made me believe that Reichel mentally had his bags packed for a trip home to the Czech Republic.

  If you think that didn’t fucking irritate his teammates, you don’t understand the mentality of an NHL player. I have no respect for players who have their minds someplace else when there is a game to be played. I’ve had my share of off-ice issues, but I’m fairly confident that my former teammates would say that when it came time to play the game, I was all in. When you are fully committed, it also means you are not timid about telling a teammate he needs to amp up his effort.

  It was amusing to read people say that I wouldn’t have told Marleau to his face that I thought his performance was gutless. I played two seasons with Marleau as my captain in San Jose, and I never had a problem telling him we needed more from him. One night, I even went to his home to discuss the struggles he was going through. It was around Thanksgiving. I was with my family at home. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the team, and how dominant the Sharks could be if Marleau would realize his potential. After thinking about it all day, I couldn’t take it anymore. I left my family, climbed into my car and drove to Marleau’s house. My intention wasn’t to yell at him. I wanted to inspire him, to let him know that his teammates were behind him. I went there to tell him that I believed he could be one of league’s very best players if he just altered his game slightly. He needed to play with more of an edge. He needed to show some bigger balls when the game was on the line.