My Last Fight

by Darren McCarty

  As I was pulling guys off, an opposing player would yell at me, “How can you stick up for these guys? Maltby and Draper are assholes.”

  “They are assholes,” I agreed, “but they’re my assholes.”

  Even the guys I was beating on would laugh.

  The NHL lifestyle breaks down to working out, playing games, and killing time between working out and playing games.

  Most fans would guess that players fill the hours with drinking and carousing, and I certainly did my share of that. But do you really want to know the No. 1 leisure activity for the Red Wings on those 1997 and 1998 Stanley Cup teams?

  It was solving the USA Today crossword puzzles. I’m not making this shit up.

  I remember Stu Grimson used to do crosswords in the mid–1990s. But the crossword phase started when the Red Wings signed Joey Kocur as a free agent a couple days after Christmas in 1996. Kocur had started his career with the Red Wings in 1984–85, and had then been dealt to the New York Rangers in 1991. They dealt him to Vancouver the previous March.

  Kocur was brought in for his toughness and leadership, and the leadership was evident from the moment he walked in the room. Everyone in the league knew that Kocur was close with Steve Yzerman, and no opponent wanted to see first-hand what that friendship meant to Kocur. Yzerman always got plenty of room on the ice because no one wanted to have a meeting scheduled with Kocur.

  All of a sudden Kocur’s interest in crosswords became the Red Wings’ interest in crosswords. We called Kocur “Papa” because he was the head of our house.

  He was the best I ever saw at crosswords. He could head to the toilet stall to take a dump before practice, and have the USA Today crossword completed when he was done doing his business.

  Kocur could also complete the New York Times crossword puzzles during the week. He was amazing.

  Kocur was also in charge of all gaming, meaning he ran all of our Super Bowl and NCAA tournament pools and all other games of chance.

  When you entered these pools, you accepted the fact that you were actually competing for second place. That was because the No. 1 rule when Joey was involved with a competition was simple: Joey wins.

  It didn’t matter what you were playing. If Joey was playing, Joey was going to win.

  One of my fondest memories of playoff hockey, by the way, involves the Chinese poker games that Mathieu Dandenault, Tim Taylor, Kocur, and I would play when we stayed in downtown hotels during the playoffs.

  Leadership takes on many forms. And Joey got us all to use our brains more than we had. There were always crossword puzzles in our dressing room. Brent Gilchrist, Brendan Shanahan, Kris Draper, even the trainers were usually involved.

  You would get stumped on a question and you would ask a teammate, and then suddenly you would have five players working on one crossword puzzle.

  When Brett Hull joined the team in 2001, he was the king of the crossword.

  Shanahan and I were roommates for a while, and crosswords fit well into our relationship. When we weren’t doing that we spent a fair amount of our leisure time in some form of trivia contest, usually Jeopardy! or movie trivia.

  We got along great, other than the fact that Shanny always did his stretching routine in the buff.

  “Dude,” I would say, “I don’t want to see your junk.”

  He’d just laugh and carry on with his exercises. That’s about as big of a disagreement as we ever had.

  Part of our daily routine was watching Jeopardy! together. We kept track of our success on a piece of paper. The Red Wings have an employee named Leslie Baker who serves food to the players and their families, and she would play along after the morning skate.

  I’ll confess that Shanahan won more times than not because he was better at the metrosexual categories, such as literature and fashion. Sorry, but I’m just not going to know the fucking sisters names in Little Women. But I’m solid in the sports, history, current events, and entertainment categories.

  Shanahan was a clever dude, and you are not often going to win a war of words with him. Sean Avery discovered that when he tried to trash-talk Shanahan after the Red Wings traded Avery and Maxim Kuznetsov to Los Angeles to get Mathieu Schneider.

  You have to remember that Avery lived with Brett Hull when he first arrived in the NHL, meaning he studied from the master when it came to saying what was on his mind.

  I liked Avery and I thought he had a good heart, but his mouth got him into too much trouble. He just never understood that Hullie could get away with saying anything just because he was Hullie. Avery didn’t have the same license that Hullie had.

  When we played L.A. for the first time, Avery was doing all that he could to get under Shanahan’s skin. From the bench, Avery was motherfucking Shanny at every opportunity. He was giving Shanny some serious shit.

  Finally, Shanny had had enough. He turned around and said, “Hey, Sean, shut the fuck up.”

  Shanahan was far from done. “Why are acting like this?” Shanny asked him. “Because before the game you were in our room telling us how much you hated the coach and how much you hated your teammates. What’d you call them? A bunch of fags? You’ve been calling me every night bitching about how bad it is in Los Angeles. So shut the fuck up.”

  Guys on our bench were laughing their asses off.

  The dressing room can produce laughs like a comedy club. Draper liked to deliver pies to your face on your birthday. And Chris Osgood was the king of practical jokes. He liked to cut out pictures and then paste the heads of his teammates on them to create hilarious images. I think the best way to describe his work is just to say that Ozzie believes that none of us own the correct bodies for our heads. There is some of Osgood’s artwork back in the Detroit weight room that still makes me laugh.

  The best prank Osgood pulled on me came when I happened to doze off at the Post Bar during a night of revelry. Osgood and Draper roomed together in the Riverfront Apartments, and they brought me back to their place to sleep off the booze.

  What I didn’t know is that while I was sleeping, Osgood had taken out a marker and drawn all over my face. I had arching eyebrows and a Rollie Fingers moustache. I looked like a seven-year-old playing dress up.

  Of course, when I woke up, it was late, and I had to hit the ground running, and I never looked in any mirror. I showed up in the dressing room with Osgood’s artistry still visible on face. Osgood was the magic marker king.

  Guys seemed to think it was the funniest thing they had ever seen.

  Osgood had a baby face and he always looks like the model for innocence, but whenever there was a prank pulled, he was always the No. 1 suspect. The man is an evil genius in a very fun way.

  On the team plane, Osgood and Maltby would always sit next to each other, giving them ample opportunity to conspire on shenanigans to keep us laughing. They were a formidable duo when it came to pranks. They were conniving SOBs.

  One of my favorite Osgood jokes was one he pulled on one of his buddies from Medicine Hat, Alberta. We were all at Osgood’s bachelor party weekend, and Osgood’s partner in crime this time was former pro goalie Neil Little, who was one of Ozzie’s buddies.

  When one of their buddies had too much to drink and was sleeping it off, Ozzie and Little go to work writing on the back of his calves with a permanent marker. On one leg, they wrote, in big block letters, the words: I AM A. On the other leg they wrote: BOOZER.

  It was like a scene out of The Hangover. We were all golfing the next day, and this shorts-clad buddy had no idea that the back of his legs were carrying a personal message.

  During the course of the day, random people were calling him “Boozer” and he was totally perplexed. It was a four-hour laugh fest for the bachelor-party group because no one revealed what Osgood and Little had done.

  Finally, on the 17th hole, one of the cart girls said, “Hey, Boozer, do you need anoth
er beer?”

  “Why are you calling me that?”

  “Because it’s written on the back of your legs,” she said.

  After a night of partying, that moment was quite hilarious. Until that point, the dude had no idea he was a marked man.

  Osgood is a talented man outside the net. To help celebrate one of his friend’s birthdays, Osgood did a video in which he did a Hockey Night in Canada–style broadcast of his friend’s beer-league game. Osgood’s rendition even included Labatt’s commercials.

  Ozzie could get away with more because he was Ozzie. He and I probably could have pulled off the exact same devilish prank and received exact opposite reactions. If I did it, the reaction might have been, “What an asshole.” But if Ozzie did the same thing he was viewed as the funniest man this side of Dane Cook.

  If a prank went bad, no one ever thought it could be Ozzie. How could it be Ozzie? Look at his innocent face.

  Ozzie and I played together for so long we even developed our own pregame ritual. People know that most athletes have superstitions, or as I like to call them, “routines.” Some of these routines include the way players put on their equipment, or how they tape their sticks, or the order that they enter and exit the ice or arena. Drapes and Malts were always the first two on the ice before warm-ups and the game. Nick and I were the last two. As die-hard Red Wings fans know, my routine was always to be the last one off the ice. I felt that I needed to see all of my guys in front of me. I was always the last one at the net with the goalie prior to the opening faceoff.

  I obviously did this to protect my guys, but I also did it so that I could utter my ritualistic words to Ozzie in net before each game. I can’t remember if Ozzie and I started this in Adirondack or in our first year in Detroit, but people always asked me what I would say to Ozzie in that brief moment as I waited with him after everyone else tapped his pads. I would line up between the hash marks and stop in a squat-like position with my stick across my knees, Ozzie and I would be face to face and in homage to the classic Canadian movie Strange Brew, following the adventures of Bob and Doug McKensie, I would tap one of Ozzie’s pads and say, “Keep you stick on the ice.” Then I’d tap the other pad and say, “Watch your short side.” Then I’d slap both pads and finish with “Stop ‘em all.” Then I’d skate by and tap his right post and circle or peel into the corner and the game would begin.

  This happened every single game that we played together. Even after we both left Detroit and came back after six or seven years of not playing together, we picked it right back up like we hadn’t missed a beat.

  Maltby was old school when it came to his pranks. If you took a swig on your water bottle and the cap came off and you found yourself drenched in liquid, you were reasonably sure Maltby was involved.

  If you found your stick, or any personal item, missing or in a strange place, it was usually Maltby’s doing.

  I would have a crossword puzzle almost completed, and then it would go missing. Maltby did some of his best work fucking up my crossword endeavors.

  I would leave half-finished crosswords in my dressing room stalls. When I started working on them again later, I would get stuck when my thought-to-be-correct answers wouldn’t fit. Then I would look closer and I would see someone had written the word “dickhead” into my puzzle in some random place.

  “Fucking Malts,” I would say, chuckling to myself.

  Malts also wasn’t to be trusted around my Sudoku puzzles. He would find one I had already started and then scribble in a bunch of random numbers making it look like my handwriting.

  I would spend five confusing minutes trying to figure out what the fuck I had been thinking before I realized that Malts had punked me again.

  Before Chris Chelios came to Detroit in 1999, I had spent a good chunk of time trying to hurt him. Chelios always seemed like he was trying to maim Steve Yzerman and Sergei Fedorov, and I was forever trying to make him pay for those sins.

  The problem was that Chelios could be as funny and charming as he was ruthless. He could make you laugh at the very moment you were about to fuck him up. He has the verbal skills to talk you off the ledge when your anger boils over.

  I hated Chelios when I played against him, but I certainly respected him.

  What I learned when Chelios arrived in Detroit was that he is the most loyal team guy you could ever meet. He looks after everyone on the team, in particular the young guys. That’s why they call him “The Godfather.”

  He always invites the younger players to hang out with him, and he acts like he’s the concierge desk for all of the veterans. Whenever you need anything, whether it be tickets, a new car, or travel reservations, Cheli knows someone who can give you a good deal.

  Chelios knows everyone in every industry. When he threw a Stanley Cup celebration party at his summer mansion on Malibu Beach in California, Tom Hanks, Sylvester Stallone, Jeremy Piven, and John Cusack were among the people who showed up.

  I once introduced Chelios to Kid Rock, and now Kid Rock and Chelios are the best of friends.

  On top of being a great teammate, Chelios might be the hardest-working athlete I ever met. This is a guy who rides a stationary bike in a sauna.

  When Chelios showed up, he stuck me with the nickname “Diesel.” It didn’t quite stick like “Mac” or “D-Mac,” but I kind of liked it.

  Osgood was king when it came to nicknames. Any of the nicknames that we threw around in private usually came from Osgood. For example, Maltby was officially “Malts” to everyone around the rink. But to Osgood, “Malts” made him think of a milk shake, so “Malts” became “Shaker.”

  My favorite nickname story involves Draper being called “Nailzz.”

  Draper was called that only because he wanted to be called that. He always admired the hustle and drive that Lenny Dykstra showed when he played for the Philadelphia Phillies in the 1990s. Dykstra’s nickname was “Nails.”

  One day in the dressing room, Drapes pulls me aside and asks me to start using that name around the dressing room and with the media. I always had a strong rapport with the media and he knew I would have plenty of opportunities to drop in that nickname.

  “You got to run with it,” Draper said.

  So I did, and Drapes became “Nailzz” for a while.

  We were all very serious about winning, but we had fun when we played the game. Because coach Scotty Bowman liked to change his line combinations frequently, our changes could be a clusterfuck.

  It was always stressful for assistant coach Barry Smith because Scotty would tell him which players he wanted on the ice and it was Smith’s job to make sure we got the right people on the ice.

  Smith’s job was complicated because sometimes Scotty would have players on three different lines in three different shifts.

  That’s why the area around our bench often looked like the streets of Tokyo at rush hour. You could have 10 guys standing up believing they were going on the ice next.

  Smith had the toughest job in hockey trying to keep it straight. Knowing all of that, Steve Yzerman and I would have some fun if we had a big lead in a game.

  When we were bored at the end of the bench, Steve or I would yell, “Who the fuck is up?” just to see Barry get tomato-faced and flustered.

  I loved doing that.

  As players, we would complain about how tough Bowman was on us. But I always felt he was fair with me. I felt as if he respected what I brought to the team. He always treated me like I was a key member of the team.

  One of my favorite Bowman stories involves the Sunday afternoon he invited my then four-year-old son, Griffin, into his office to watch an NHL game on TV.

  Scotty was watching a St. Louis vs. Boston game in his office and I was in the training room receiving treatment for an injury. Scotty had his door open and Griffin wandered in and started watching the game.

  I could hear Gri
ffin asking him all kinds of questions, and Scotty answered them all the way a grandfather would talk to his grandson. It reminded me of my own conversations with my late grandfather when we had watched golf together years before.

  They had been talking for about 20 minutes when Smith came down the hallway after taking a shower. He was wrapped in a towel and ready to head into the coaching room.

  As he was about to go in, Scotty jumped up and grabbed the door and yelled, “Fuck off, Barry, I’m finally in here talking with someone who knows the game.”

  Then Scotty slammed the door.

  Lying on the table in the trainer’s room, I had a good angle to watch Barry. His head dropped, his shoulders sagged, and he turned around and headed back to the shower area to get dressed. Scotty and Barry were the best of friends, but Scotty was probably tougher on Barry than he was on the players.

  As a team, the Red Wings also had great fun at Tomas Holmstrom’s expense before he became fluent in English.

  Holmstrom was always one of Scotty Bowman’s whipping boys. He was always in Scotty’s doghouse. But Homer couldn’t remember that idiom, so he would say, “I’m back in Scotty’s dog yard again.”

  We used to tease him about being Nick Lidstrom’s chauffeur because they always drove to the rink together.

  If Homer got angry, he would start talking in a combination of English and Swedish. We called it Swenglish. To hear him carry on without realizing that he wasn’t making sense was hilarious. Of course, we tried to make him mad as often as possible.

  As soon as Holmstrom was finished with one of his Swenglish speeches, either Draper or I would turn to Lidstrom and say, “Can you translate that please?”

  Goalie Kevin Hodson only played 35 games for Detroit from 1995–96 until 1998–99, but I would still say he was among my all-time favorite teammates. I think other Red Wings would say the same thing. I know Yzerman was particularly fond of him.

  One of his best skills is that he could replicate the style of most of the top goalies in the league. So when we were playing Colorado in the playoffs, Hodson would play in practice in Roy’s style. It was like being a scout team quarterback in football. In practice, Hodson would adjust his style to emulate the goalie we would face in the next game. It was a very helpful skill.