My Last Fight

by Darren McCarty

  I always felt that Mike Vernon also never got enough credit for helping us develop into a championship team. He came to Detroit in 1994 in a trade for Steve Chiasson and he taught us all how to battle.

  The day he showed up in Detroit, we all went out and I remember thinking, This guy is going to be fucking awesome.

  He was funnier than hell, and it was clear that he was a team-first guy. What we soon discovered is that this little guy battled and battled and battled like his life depended on each save. Yet when the game was over he had that Western Canadian cowboy attitude of not letting anything bother him. He could let go of a game the minute it was over, and that trait is crucial for a goalie. He didn’t dwell on what happened yesterday.

  In addition to what he gave us in the net, Vernon was also the perfect mentor for Chris Osgood. He helped Osgood develop that hardened edge that you need to shake off bad games or bad plays. Without Vernon’s tutoring, I wonder whether Ozzie would have been the same goalie he turned out to be. By the time Vernon left, Ozzie was very similar to Vernon in terms of their mental approach to playing the position.

  We were all coming into our prime years at the same time. At the start of the 1996–97 season I was 24, Maltby was 24, Ozzie was almost 24, Draper was 25, Marty Lapointe and Holmstrom were 23, Nick Lidstrom and Sergei Fedorov were 26, and Shanahan was 27.

  You have to lose to learn how to win. We needed to have that experience against New Jersey and getting beat by Colorado in 1996. It hardened us. It gave us a better understanding of what needed to be done.

  There were multiple reasons why we didn’t beat New Jersey. If you ask Scotty Bowman, he might say we lost because New Jersey defenseman Scott Niedermayer dropped his stick and my teammate Shawn Burr picked it up for him. Niedermayer then beat Burr down the ice to score on Mike Vernon. I saw the video years ago, and it wasn’t exactly like that. And none of the players actually blamed Burr for the loss.

  I think we lost to New Jersey because the Devils were clicking on all cylinders. Plus, we simply didn’t know how to deal with the clutch-and-grab style that was more prevalent in the Eastern Conference.

  More important, we didn’t possess the “fear of failure” that you need to be a champion. We didn’t know how to deal with being a favorite.

  There was probably another event that happened before the 1996–97 season that perhaps contributed to our success. I confronted my substance abuse issues for the first time.

  By then, my problem was starting to affect my work. I never played high, and I tried to time my drinking binges to make sure I was ready to play games. But all of my teammates knew what was going on because I started to become the worst practice player in NHL history. My hangovers had become a disruption to the team.

  Yzerman, Paul Coffey, and Kris Draper had all had serious talks with me at various times, but I was only hearing their words, and not truly listening.

  Draper tried to be my guardian angel, trying to convince me on a regular basis to “slow down” or to drink only beer and not hard liquor. I would agree to that plan, but when Drapes wasn’t looking, I would sneak down to the end of the bar and line up a row of tequila or Jagermeister shots.

  Then I’d look up to see Draper watching me, just shaking his head. The truth is you can’t stop an alcoholic from drinking unless he or she wants to stop.

  Early in my career, it seemed as if I was just like every other hockey player, going out and having a good time. But guys like Draper, Osgood, Lapointe, and others all knew when it was time to go home. They weren’t continually hammered to the point that they struggled to get up in the morning.

  I hung out with my teammates, but when my night was over with them, I started to find a new group of after-hour friends. I could tell Draper was concerned with the company I was keeping.

  One day Scotty Bowman summoned me to his office after a particularly rugged practice and told me it was time for me to get my act together. I had embarrassed myself at practice that morning. At one point, we were skating in line rushes and Lapointe and Draper were at the net putting a shot on goal while I was still laboring to get across the blue line.

  Bowman told me that he liked me as a player and that I was important, but I wasn’t bigger than the team. He said I was hurting the team. Basically, he told me I had to get my shit together.

  If you think that having a coaching legend dressing me down for my lifestyle would be enough to pursue sobriety, you would be wrong.

  I knew when I was 20 that I had a drinking problem. My grandfather, Jigs, was an alcoholic, and I knew the signs of problem drinking. I knew I had the symptoms. When I received the news that my grandfather died in 1993, I had been at a charity event in Belleville, Ontario. I started drinking that day and didn’t stop.

  Angry over the loss of my grandfather, I stole a boat that belonged to the neighbor of the Bulls’ owner, Dr. Robert Vaughan. I took it across the lake to attend the party. Everyone at the party knew whose boat it was. I should have been arrested. But I wasn’t.

  The summers of 1994, 1995, and 1996 are a blur to me because I spent the off-season drinking. I had different pods of friends and bounced from one pod to the next, mostly because I didn’t want anyone to have the complete picture of how much drinking I was doing.

  I would be with my friends on the east side for one night and then my friends from the west side. In many of my pods, I was put on a pedestal because I was a Detroit Red Wings player. In those pods, no one ever questioned any of my choices. The only people who were scrutinizing my behavior were teammates and family members. I began to see them less and less.

  And when I was with family or teammates I always painted a rosy picture. I had been drinking since I was 15, and I had learned what to say to people to get them off my back. I could say the right thing, I just couldn’t do the right things. I would lie to those trying to help me, and lie to myself about my ability to quit.

  But the lying ended in the summer of 1996. I left my house one day to attend the U.S. Open at Oakland Hills. I didn’t come home for a week.

  Drapes and several of our friends were with me at Oakland Hills. We sat under a tree at the 18th with a tray of beers and enjoyed the tournament. Steve Jones won by one stroke over Tom Lehman and Davis Love III, but honestly I’m hazy about the details of that tournament, even though I was there every day.

  At that point, I was more of a binge drinker than an everyday drinker. When I found a space in my life to drink, I took it over the edge. Normal folks go out, drink some beers, and have some fun—maybe even have a blowout night—and then they resume their normal routine. But my blowout nights would last for three or four days or longer. Once I climbed on the train, it was hard for me to get off.

  Draper was the teammate who best understood that my life was starting to unravel. Even though I told Bowman that I would get my drinking under control, I had not made any lasting changes.

  Sensing that I needed immediate help, Draper kept calling from his summer residence in Toronto and Cheryl had to tell him that she had no idea where I was.

  At the time, I didn’t know where I was either. I was drinking, partying, and crashing at whatever location I happened to be at when the room stopped spinning.

  Cheryl packed up my newborn son, Griffin, and headed back to Belleville to live with her parents. When I finally emerged from my stupor, I offered her my usual babble about how I would change and get my drinking under control.

  But Cheryl had heard it all before. This time, she pulled no punches, telling me bluntly I needed to get clean for the sake of my family. Griffin had been born a week before we were knocked out by the Avalanche. I’d gone on a bender when my son was only about a month old.

  “I love you to death, and I always will, but I’m not going to let you do this to us,” Cheryl told me. “Doing this to me is one thing. I can handle it because I know what you’re like. But you are not going to do this
to Griffin.”

  I had grown up not knowing my real father, and I had always vowed that I would be there for my kids. I’ve always been someone who does what he says he’s going to do.

  I asked myself a question that day: What’s more important, booze or your family?

  The answer was easy, but the solution was not. It was the middle of the summer, and I had to tell the Red Wings I was entering the Maplegrove Center for chemical dependency outpatient program in West Bloomfield, Michigan. I was concerned about what the team might do because the Red Wings had grown weary of dealing with Bob Probert’s substance abuse issues.

  But I remember GM Jim Devellano told me that I had taken the first step toward solving the problem by admitting it.

  To be honest, I can thank Probie for the fact that my substance abuse issue didn’t cause me even greater damage.

  As I’ve said many times, I was primarily a good drunk. I never was arrested during my career, and never found myself in any serious trouble. I had witnessed what happened to Bob because of his substance abuse and I knew I did not want it to happen to me. Because of Bob’s experiences, I understood the consequences of the disease.

  I didn’t want to follow Bob’s game plan for life. I never wanted to let myself become so out-of-control that I couldn’t find my way back. Because I’d witnessed what Bob went through, I knew it was time for me to seek help.

  This period of time was trying for my family because my attempts to get sober came six months after my stepfather Craig had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare form of cancer. Life expectancy for people with that disease is two to three years. By that time in my life, I had started to view Craig as one of my true supporters. It was devastating news to hear that another male figure in my life was sick.

  But the truth is that we bonded over our illnesses. I think we drew strength from each other. We began to mend the fences and tear down the walls that separated us. We decided to fight our battles together. Our relationship strengthened during that time period.

  When I showed up at training camp that fall, my mind and body were clean and clear for the first time in years. I was focused on the mission of winning a championship.

  The one thing I noticed when I was sober was that life slowed down. When I was drinking, my life was always a blur. The days blended together, particularly the days when I had been drinking to excess. It always seemed as if my brain was partly cloudy.

  It seemed like there was more time to enjoy my life when I wasn’t getting high or scheming to get high. It is amazing how draining it can be to be involved in a non-stop party life.

  In 1996–97, when I wasn’t drinking or doing drugs, I enjoyed my best NHL season, scoring 19 goals and 30 assists for 49 points.

  There was certainly evidence to prove to me that being a clean-and-sober McCarty was in my best interest. But that didn’t mean my battle against substance abuse would be an easy fight. Probably at that time in my life I felt like I had licked my problem. But I would soon discover that my fight was far from over.

  6. Crime and Punishment

  “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, blood for blood”

  — “Bad Company”

  Five Finger Death Punch

  If you want to appreciate how much anger I was carrying when I went after Claude Lemieux on March 26, 1997, take a close look at my left fist in the famous photo where Lemieux appears to be “turtling.”

  My fist is so tightly wound that there is a stress indentation that runs down from hand to my forearm.

  Many times since then I’ve tried to ball my fist tight enough to reproduce that stress line. I’ve never been able to do it.

  Even though I fought close to 200 times during my professional hockey career, it’s fair to say that I brought more intensity and anger to the Lemieux confrontation than any bout I ever had.

  Years later, Lemieux told me that the first blow I delivered was the hardest punch he ever received. During my career, there were other times when I wanted to pound the shit out of an opponent, but I’d never wanted to hurt anyone as much as I wanted to hurt Lemieux.

  My NHL career included 758 regular season games played, but this was the contest that defined my career. Although I have a Stanley Cup–clinching goal, this game is probably the most memorable game I ever played. It’s the game that fans ask me about the most.

  Some fans don’t even remember that I also scored 39 seconds into overtime to give us a 6–5 come-from-behind win over the Avalanche. They just recall that I avenged Kris Draper’s broken jaw and other injuries by taking down Lemieux.

  The “Bloody Wednesday” game, as it has been called, was certainly the wildest game I was ever involved in. When the buzzer sounded to end that contest, the two teams had combined for 18 fighting majors.

  My memorable first-period encounter with Lemieux almost didn’t happen because Colorado defenseman Adam Foote grabbed me just as all hell was starting to break loose. He was strong as an old bear, and he had a tight grip on me. But Brendan Shanahan came over and gave Foote a double-arm chop.

  That broke me free from Foote. It was like letting a dog off the leash.

  I took a direct path toward Lemieux. It was written, and said, that Lemieux never saw me coming. But that’s untrue. I can tell you that I looked him directly in the eyes before I hit him. I wanted him to know my anger. I didn’t sucker punch him, as some have written. I coldcocked him.

  When he went down, he ended up in what hockey players call the “turtle” position. He was covering his head with his arms. Again, much later, he told me that he wasn’t turtling. He had momentarily been knocked out by the punch, and was trying to regain his senses.

  Meanwhile, I was trying to hurt him. I was throwing punches and trying to slam his head into the ice. I dragged him over to the boards so Kris Draper could have a good look.

  Undoubtedly, that moment was what Detroit fans had been anticipating. In the Detroit News that morning, a sports column had been published bearing the headline A Time for Revenge.

  Accompanying the article was a photo of Lemieux made to resemble a wanted poster. It gave information about Lemieux’s alleged crimes, such as “likes to attack from behind.”

  NHL executive Jim Gregory and security director Dennis Cunningham both attended the game with the hope of discouraging any potential trouble.

  Everyone seemed to be sure that March 26 was going to be the night that I was going to try to settle the score. The funny part of that story is that I didn’t truly know that was going to be the night.

  I was positive that at some point I was going to exact revenge on Lemieux because of what he did to Draper. But I planned on picking my spot to accomplish that objective. Shanahan had taught me that being a good teammate also meant knowing the right time to settle a score. You don’t want to put your team in a bad position because of a personal grudge.

  Draper would testify to the truth that he and I only had one conversation about me going after Lemieux and that came when I picked him up from the hospital.

  This was not the first time we had played the Colorado Avalanche in Detroit after the Draper injury. We’d already played them three times that season, and we had lost all three games. But Lemieux was injured for the first two games, and I didn’t want it to happen in Denver. If I was going to make Lemieux pay for his attack on Draper, it was going to be for our fans to see live.

  When this book was being written, my former teammate Aaron Ward was interviewed and pointed out that he had driven to the game with Draper and me and that there had been no discussion about the game turning into a brawl.

  In fact, Ward said that he had wished that I had warned him of my intentions because he would have liked to have better prepared for the gladiator-like combat that ensued that night. I didn’t warn Ward because I didn’t know for sure that would be the night. We needed to win that game and I felt like I should
n’t do anything to jeopardize our chances to win.

  But as the game progressed, it evolved into the right time to make Lemieux pay the price for his indiscretion.

  If Lemieux wants to be angry at anyone for what happened that night, he should be mad at Forsberg, because it might not have started had he not decided to tangle up with Larionov. As soon as that skirmish broke out, I was looking for Lemieux.

  This game wasn’t just about me settling up with Lemieux. It was about the Red Wings making the Avalanche understand that we were ready to do whatever it took to run them over en route to a championship.

  This was the game where we realized who we were, and what we were about.

  Bloody Wednesday was the event that brought us together as a team. Maybe some look at the game and see mayhem. What I see is the Red Wings standing up for each other. There is nothing that builds team unity more than fighting shoulder-to-shoulder.

  The fight card started with Jamie Pushor scrapping with Colorado defenseman Brent Severyn at 4:45 of the first period, and then my linemate Kirk Maltby took on Rene Corbet at 10:14.

  The funny thing about the main event brawl is that it was triggered by a minor skirmish between Colorado’s Peter Forsberg and Detroit’s Igor Larionov. These were two unlikely combatants. You certainly wouldn’t expect that gentlemanly Igor would light the match that caused the game to explode.

  Forberg and Larionov collided along the boards with 1:38 left in the first period, and then started wrestling. The bell sounded in my head. After Shanahan helped me break free from Foote, a linesman grabbed me by the jersey. But I pulled free, and homed in on Lemieux. Once I had dragged him over to the boards, I also drove my knee into his head. The anger I had for him was real.

  While my Lemieux ass-whipping was in progress, I had no idea that Mike Vernon and Brendan Shanahan were in the midst of their own battles.