After Tancill was called up and Shuchuk was moved, we went into an offensive funk, highlighted by a stretch when we went 79 consecutive power play opportunities without scoring a goal.
At 14.69 percent efficiency, our power play ranked last in the AHL that season. But even for a team with a bad power play, Bentley University mathematics professor Richard Cleary says a slump of that magnitude would only happen once every 1,000 seasons.
For a team with an average power play, the chances of that happening would be once every 150,000 years.
Despite our power play woes, we still ended up as one of the top-scoring teams in the AHL that season. We finished with a 36–35–9 record, good enough for second in the Northern Division. The AHL was a highly competitive league in that era, evidenced by the fact that the coaches that season included names such as Barry Trotz, Robbie Ftorek, Marc Crawford, Mike O’Connell, Mike Eaves, John Van Boxmeer, and Doug Carpenter.
We expected to make some noise in the postseason. Tancill had been returned to Adirondack, and Sillinger had been sent down late in the season. He was a skilled offensive player. Kozlov, meanwhile, was improving daily.
We swept the Capital District Islanders in the first round, outscoring them 17–6.
The other good news was that Springfield had upset Northern Division–winner Providence in their first-round series. We were clearly the favorite in our second-round series. The Indians had a record of 25–41–14 during the season, and we had posted an 8–3–1 record against them in the regular season.
But the series against Springfield did not go as planned. We split two games in Glens Falls, and then split two games in Springfield. Tancill missed Game 4 because of the birth of his daughter, but he came back in Game 5 to record a hat trick, leading us to a 7–2 win. Finally, it seemed as if we were in control of the series. Again, that was not the case.
Before Game 6, Bester told coaches he couldn’t play because he was having a marital issue. Bester’s troubles were not the kind that gain you much sympathy in a professional dressing room.
Osgood stepped in and played well, but we lost a heartbreaking 2–1 game. Springfield’s No. 1 goalie, George Maneluk, was injured during that game, but Corrie D’Alessio stepped in and played well to post his first win in about five months. With six seconds to go in that game, Sillinger believed he had scored the tying goal, but the referee said the puck never crossed the line. Sillinger insisted the puck had crossed the line, and D’Alessio had slyly pulled it back. Playoff hockey can also produce strange twists.
In Game 7, Maneluk and Bester were back in the net, and Bester didn’t have a great night. We outshot Springfield 63–37 and lost 6–5 in overtime.
Kruppke scored with 1:15 left in regulation to give us a 5–4 lead, and we thought we were moving on in the playoffs. Then Springfield pulled Maneluk for a sixth attacker and Denis Chalifoux beat Bester with 51 seconds remaining.
We had outshot Springfield 17–5 in the third period. Maneluk, who never made it to the NHL, made 17 more saves in overtime. Then, Paul Cyr, a former NHL player on his way down, scored on a breakaway at 16:56 to win it for Springfield.
That series was probably one of the most frustrating stretches of my career. It didn’t help that I couldn’t buy a goal in that series.
It was not as if we didn’t have our top guys going. Our top three forwards, Tancill, Aivazoff, and Quinney, had 39 points in 11 games. Sillinger was dominant with five goals and 13 assists for 18 points in 11 games. Dollas had 11 points in 11 games. He might have been the top defenseman in minor league hockey that season. In the regular season, he had seven goals and 36 assists for 43 points in 64 games. He also boasted a plus-minus of plus-54.
Even with the loss of Shuchuk, we should have had enough jam left to make a longer run in the playoffs. It was a very disappointing finish for all involved. We just couldn’t keep the puck out of our net.
The only solace I took from the season was the fact that I had shown enough to prove that I belonged in the NHL.
I went into the next training camp believing I would make the team. The Red Wings had made significant changes after losing to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Nikolai Borschevsky’s overtime goal in a Game 7. Bryan Murray stayed as Detroit’s general manager, but he lost his place behind the bench. Scotty Bowman was brought in to get the job done.
Right away, it seemed as if Scotty liked what I could offer. In my mind, I made the team because of a fight I had at Chicago Stadium in a preseason game. It was against Cam Russell, and it’s available on YouTube for those who care to see it first-hand.
The play started with Tony Horacek and Keith Primeau mixing it up in the corner, and Russell came flying in to help. I grabbed him and hit him a couple of times and put him down on the ice.
“You fucking jumped me,” Russell bitched at me as I held him down.
“You want to go again? I’ll go again,” I said. “Let’s go to center ice.”
That’s the way we did it in junior hockey, so I thought that was the way it should be done in the NHL.
We only made it as far as the blue line and then we started throwing punches. It was a great fight. It was like Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed trading punches. He hit me, cutting me for five stitches, and then I buckled him twice with punches. He went down, and the crowd was going nuts. It was an unbelievable feeling to hear all of the fans cheering and yelling. That’s what it must have been like when gladiators fought centuries ago. It was quite an adrenaline rush.
In the old Chicago Stadium, you had to walk down stairs in your skates to get to the dressing room. As I made the descent, fans were pouring drinks on me and showering me with popcorn and empty cups. I loved it, and I remember thinking that Bowman had to know that night that I was a tough competitor.
When I entered the dressing room, Bob Probert, who wasn’t dressed for that game, was working out on the stationary bike. He looked up at me, and said, “Kid, you are fucking crazy.”
3. Probie’s Shadow
“Such a lonely day, and it’s mine, the most loneliest day of my life”
—“Lonely Day”
System of a Down
When I dreamed of playing in the National Hockey League, it wasn’t about becoming the league’s heavyweight champion. I admired Bob Probert, but I didn’t want to be him. My objective was to play like Rick Tocchet.
I wanted to be a goal scorer who could fight, not a fighter who could score.
When I was playing junior hockey, Tocchet was my guy because the Philadelphia Flyers right wing could score 30-plus goals and rack up 200 penalty minutes like he was born to do it.
Once I scored 55 goals for Belleville I believed I had a shot to have the same impact for the Red Wings that Tocchet had for the Flyers.
I didn’t want to be the Red Wings’ heavyweight. I wanted to be the light heavyweight who fought on the undercard. I didn’t want to be Batman. I wanted to be Robin, minus the tights. Although I was willing to fight anyone in the league, I had enough feelings of self-preservation to know that I didn’t want to be in the heavyweight division.
Probie could play the game and fight, but once he established himself as the toughest guy in the league it became difficult for him to find a balance between his role as an enforcer and his offensive ability. It’s easier to find that balance if you’re a light heavyweight.
When I made the Red Wings team in 1993–94, I had the perfect situation because Probie was still on the roster and he was still king. In my rookie season, I fought 23 times and Probert only logged 15 fighting majors. But there was no question, he was still Batman and I was the Boy Wonder.
Again, I was following the Brian Drumm recipe to break into a new league: I fought often enough to establish myself as a tough competitor who wouldn’t back down from anyone. By doing that, I bought myself enough room to be an offensive player.
With Probie in the lineup—an
d he played in 66 games that season—I had no pressure to fight the heavyweights. The NHL fight world is a different game when you are not obliged to fight heavyweights. If you are fighting in the heavyweight class, you are going to end up dancing with some guys who could end your career with a single punch.
I learned quickly that the tough guys I wanted to avoid were Tony Twist of the St. Louis Blues and Joey Kocur of the New York Rangers.
In my first NHL season, I ended up fighting Kocur in Joe Louis Arena and one of his punches cracked my helmet. The momentum of his fist connecting with my head sent us both crashing to the ice. We were both tangled up, and we went down head first and we landed face-to-face.
“You alright, kid?” Kocur asked.
“Thanks for not killing me, Mr. Kocur,” I said.
In a not-so-surprising twist, one of my early NHL fights was against Dean Chynoweth, my frequent sparring partner in the AHL. It would have been funny if not for the fact that Chynoweth punched me in the helmet and caused a compression cut that required 40 stitches to close.
I had no idea that I was cut until I felt blood streaming down the side of my head.
As a fighter, I was never going to go down. I could take whatever you had to throw at me. But I’m a bleeder. I have a cement head and paper-thin skin. If I got caught with a punch, I was going to bleed.
My propensity to bleed didn’t discourage me from enjoying my work. I enjoyed the physical aspects of my job. It fit my personality. I like to go balls out no matter what I’m doing, and that trait serves you well when you’re in an NHL fight.
It always felt as if hockey fights were in my blood. It was part of my heritage. When I was growing up in Leamington it was already established that Essex County, or what some might call the Windsor area, was the cradle of NHL toughness.
Probert and Tie Domi of Belle River were well-established enforcers when I was playing junior hockey. Warren Rychel was born in Tecumseh.
The late Barry Potomski was born and raised in Windsor.
Ken Daneyko was not a big-time fighter, but he was a rough-and-tumble defenseman. He grew up in Windsor. Former gritty NHL defenseman Bob Boughner is also from the area.
It’s like Essex County had its own fight club. Potomski had his first NHL fight in his second NHL game. Boughner picked up a game misconduct in his first NHL game and fought Eric Lindros in his third game.
My first NHL fight was against Bob Rouse, and it was in my fifth NHL game.
You have to fight in your first five NHL games if you want to be in the Essex County NHL Fight Club.
When people have asked me through the years why the Windsor area produced so many tough guys, I’ve said it was the water or those “meaty Leamington tomatoes.”
But there were probably two main reasons why so many tough guys came from one area. First, every young Windsor-area player growing up in the 1980s idolized Probert. He was a very popular player in Detroit.
Second, the Windsor area is very much a blue-collar community and you grow up expecting to get your hands dirty to make a living. You grow up believing you will have to work for everything you have and nothing will ever come easily.
The area around Windsor doesn’t produce finesse players. It produces old-school players with work ethics and a willingness to do whatever it takes to help their team.
In my first NHL season I fought Kelly Buchberger and Cam Russell twice, and also squared off against Kocur, Shawn Cronin, Donald Brashear, Basil McRae, Derian Hatcher, and Randy McKay, among others.
I have always believed that my fighting career was helped by the respect I had for NHL officials. My uncle Vic McMurren had been a Junior C referee, and when I was kid I spent a lot of time hanging out with referees. I knew they loved the sport as much as I did. NHL referee Dan O’Halloran was from my area, and I knew him as a family friend.
When I played in the NHL, I never lost sight of the truth that linesmen can save your ass if you are in trouble in a fight.
Do you think they don’t remember who treats them with respect? I would disagree with a call that an official made, but I never disrespected them.
“I don’t think you got that one right,” I would say, and leave it at that.
Despite all of the grief that fans heap on them, I always felt that NHL officials got it right the vast majority of the time. I always tried to remember that they had a thankless job.
It seemed like Scotty Bowman liked what I could offer the team. I contributed nine goals and 181 penalty minutes, in addition to scoring two goals and adding two assists in the playoffs.
The only person who intimidated me that season was a U.S. immigration officer at the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. I don’t know her name, but I remember her name tag read: M. Brown.
Cheryl and I were to be married the following summer, but she lived with me in Novi.
My worry over what the immigration folks would say about Cheryl prompted me to go to the Red Wings officials and ask what I should do when Cheryl and I would go back-and-forth across the border to see our parents. They supplied us with a letter that explained that I was employed by the Red Wings and that Cheryl was my fiancée.
That worked well until we pulled up one night about 10:00 pm, when M. Brown was on duty. We’d been visiting my relatives.
I pulled out the letter and she told me the letter didn’t mean anything legally. M. Brown didn’t care what I had to say. She said Cheryl was living in the U.S. illegally and she wasn’t going to be allowed back in the U.S. I turned the car around and took Cheryl to my grandma’s house, where she would have to stay until I figured out what to do.
Then I drove back to Detroit to go to practice. The only solution that we had to get Cheryl back to the U.S. was to get married. So that’s what we did on December 15, 1993, in a little chapel in Windsor.
Some people have a shotgun wedding. We had an M. Brown–inspired wedding. We kept our original plans for a big summer wedding intact. But we had already been married for several months when everyone showed up for our wedding in Belleville, Ontario.
You can’t have a wedding without a bachelor party story. My story is about how I clobbered a guy with a lot more anger than I usually had in my NHL fights.
We were celebrating in the Post Bar in Detroit, and sure enough a fight breaks out in the front of the place that has nothing to do with me or my party. It spills back to us and I’m lifting the women over the bar to give them a shot to be safe. I’m “gently” pushing the fight back up front, but it was getting out of hand. So we decided to get out of there, and we all headed out the back door.
I’m standing outside talking to one of the guys in my party and I see one of the combatants from the fight exit the bar and coldcock Adam Gabrielle, my best friend growing up. For no apparent reason, he just sucker punched Gabrielle. Guido, as we called him, went down like a sack of potatoes.
Five seconds later I had Guido’s assailant by the throat. I banged his head against a parking meter, and blood came pouring out.
I thought about hurting him more. But I made the decision that it was time for us to leave. He must have not known who I was, or he knew he was in the wrong for attacking Guido. Either way, the police were never called about the incident.
Another memory from my rookie season was scoring my first NHL goal. It took me eight games to score it, but it came on October 21, 1993, against the Winnipeg Jets. That goal was also part of my first Gordie Howe hat trick. That seems fitting.
My game-by-game history shows two fights and 18 penalty minutes in my first seven games, and then in my third career game at Joe Louis Arena I beat Bob Essensa for my first goal.
Shawn Burr went up the wall and moved the puck to Keith Primeau. That put Primeau and me on a 2-on-1 break. Primeau was coming down the left side and I was coming down the right and he sent the puck across to me at the top of the circle.
I wired a wri
st shot low glove-side to beat Essensa. At that time, I was using my vintage red-and-white Louisville stick.
There was some sadness associated with that goal because my grandfather, Jigs, had died of prostate cancer the summer before my rookie NHL season. He watched me play once in the American League, and he had seen me play an NHL exhibition game the season before. But it bothered me that he never saw me play in the NHL.
He was in terrible shape when I went to see him for the last time. He was asleep, but when I held his hand he woke up and looked at me. I don’t handle death very well. It makes me cry to even think about our last moments together. He was such an inspiration in my life. I wonder if I would have still found so much trouble in my life had he lived longer. He could get through to me in a way that others couldn’t.
A few days after I scored my first goal, I took the first-goal puck to Woodslee, Ontario, and buried it, along with my first hockey card, in my grandfather’s grave.
4. The Grind Line
“Hello out there, we’re on the air, it’s ‘Hockey Night’ tonight”
—“The Hockey Song”
Stompin’ Tom Connors
For 10 years I sat next to the grumpiest man in hockey. That’s the label I hung on my Detroit Red Wings teammate Slava Kozlov.
Every day, Kozlov would walk into the dressing room and I would say, “Good morning, Koz.”
“Fuck you, Mac,” he would reply.
That’s the NHL version of love and affection. Every retired player tells the same story: they miss the dressing room camaraderie more than they miss the on-ice competition. What I miss is being around the guys. In all the years I played, I don’t think there was a single teammate that caused me any long-term anger.
When I played with the Red Wings, we were like a band of brothers.
Many times there were scrums in the corner where Kirk Maltby and Kris Draper would be tangled up with a couple of opposing players. Naturally, I moved in to help my teammates
My Last Fight Page 4