I made plenty of impulsive, frivolous purchases during my career, like the time I gave Chris Chelios $10,000 for his black 1965 Mustang convertible.
As it turned out, the sweet Mustang was one of the few investments that actually paid off for me. I needed work done on my home, and I gave that Mustang to a contractor who knocked $12,000 off my bill.
But did I need that Mustang? Of course not. I didn’t need most of the shit I bought during my career. I spent money mostly because I had money.
During my NHL career, I probably drove every style of SUV that was being manufactured.
When I attended charity auctions, I’d spend $5,000 on items just because I could. At a Detroit Country Day School auction, I once spent $5,000 on a golf cart. I used that golf cart to drive my kids around the neighborhood.
I paid for my sister to go to college. I allowed my wife and mother to buy what they needed. I liked sharing my wealth. I’m only half-joking when I say that other people spent more of my money than I did.
When I filed for bankruptcy in 2006, people assumed that it was tied to a gambling or drug addiction. People actually have said to me, “Did you put your money up your nose?”
People just assume I had a cocaine problem, and that is not what happened.
If you review the court documents of my bankruptcy, my money woes are explained in verifiable detail.
There were four reasons why I owed more money than I had. First, the 2004–05 NHL season was canceled because of a lockout, and I lost about $2 million in wages.
Plus, I lost money in an ill-advised land deal, made bad loans to friends totaling $490,000, and got divorced from Cheryl.
When the Red Wings bought out my contract in 2006, I was scheduled to make $1.7 million, but they only had to give me two-thirds, and the government got its share for taxes. Then 75 percent of that payout had to go to my wife because of our divorce settlement.
The accounting of my bankruptcy shows that I owed $6.2 million in 2006 and I had assets totaling $1.9 million. But my asset total was misleading because one of my listed assets was my Farmington Hills house that was worth less than I owed on it. And my assets included the non-secured loans I had made to friends that were never going to be repaid.
My gambling debt totaled $185,000: I owed $100,000 to the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas, $60,000 to the Palms Casino in Las Vegas, and $25,000 to the MotorCity Casino in Detroit.
What I owed to casinos may seem outrageous to you, but it could have been far worse. At the height of my playing career, my lines of credit at Las Vegas casinos probably totaled about $800,000. That’s how much money they would have given me to gamble just by me signing my name.
I had lines of credit between $100,000 and $200,000 at most of the casinos. My worst problem was not my own gambling, but my willingness to allow my friends to use my lines of credit. As previously mentioned, I wasn’t as wild in my gambling as I was in my substance abuse. I never gambled all that I had, and I usually knew when to quit. The same can’t be said about my drinking and drug use.
But when I would go to Las Vegas I would usually be with others—particularly one man who I viewed as a trusted business partner. I would often let him use my line, and he would gamble heavily.
He had the craziest run of gambling success I ever saw one night at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas. He tapped into one of my credit lines, sat down at a craps table, and won $428,000. He paid back the credit line, and gave me $25,000 for my troubles. As I recall, he gave the casino employee a $35,000 tip.
The general idea of craps is simple: a shooter rolls the dice and if he gets a seven or 11 on his first roll he wins. If he throws a two, three, or 12, then he craps out, meaning he loses his bet. If the shooter throws any other number, he or she must then roll that number again before throwing a seven. If the seven comes up before the point is made, the bets are lost.
That night my so-called partner made 15 successful passes to earn almost half a million dollars.
The funny part of the story is that he was slamming down two Captain Morgan and Cokes for every pass he made. You can do the math. By the end of his run of luck, he was barely standing.
He had to hold on to the table just to stay upright.
Just before his last roll, I yelled, “Bring it home, big guy!”
“Hell,” he said, “I can’t even see the end of the table.”
Some of us moved in to steady him as he made his final successful throw.
When he was done with that roll, it was clearly time for him to retire. As the muscle in the group, I had to be the one to take charge of carrying him out of there. This was also a time when I was not drinking, meaning I was in the best position to complete the mission. It was a formidable task because he probably weighed 260 pounds at the time.
But I threw him over my shoulder and started marching him to his room, which seemed like it was located half a mile away. It was on the opposite end of the casino.
Some of our other buddies helped me throw him onto his bed. We just threw his chip winnings in the bed with him. When he woke, he found all of these $25,000 chips and had no idea how he’d managed to accumulate so many.
Looking back, I was fortunate that my association with this guy didn’t get me into even more trouble than it did. Sometimes he would use my lines of credit as a short-term business loan because you have 30 interest-free days. We would use the credit line, do some gambling for appearance sake, and then cash in a few chips here and there so he could make a payment he needed to make.
It was not a smart move by me, but he always managed to pay the loans back…until the very end.
However, this is the same guy who convinced me to enter into a business deal that was at the heart of my financial collapse. More than $650,000 of my debt was for a land-purchase deal in Hartland, Michigan, that went sour. I was a partner in the purchase of 28 acres of land near M-59. The idea was that my partner was going to develop the land and we were going to make a killing. But the land was never developed.
As in most of my business relationships, I was too trusting. I always took people at their word. If you told me that you were going to pay me back, I believed you.
As part of the land deal, we owned a gas station on the property. We were supposed to use the profit from that to pay down our debt on the land.
When my land deal wasn’t working the way my partner said it would, I did question the lack of progress in developing the property. He assured me that it was all going according to plan. I accepted his word, even though other friends warned me not to trust him.
My loss on that property was about $250,000 in cash, a large sum of money, considering that my earning ability had started to decline by then.
Since that land deal went bankrupt, I have only seen my former partner one time. I was at the Chris Chelios–owned restaurant near Comerica Park on the opening day of the baseball season a few years ago, and he was coming up the stairs as I was going down.
He fled out the back door before we had a chance to “talk.”
Of all of my issues, gambling probably caused the least amount of trouble for me because I didn’t take it lightly when I lost money.
One of my favorite gambling stories is a fun tale involving Kris Draper. It’s fun for me because Draper is one of the least likely people to be anywhere near a casino. The story begins at Draper’s bachelor’s party, which started in Michigan and ended up in Las Vegas.
It was the summer of 1999, and I was Draper’s best man. It was a great day of golf and drinking, and we ended up at Chris Osgood’s home in Birmingham, where the party raged until 4:30 am, when I had to gather up Drapes for a planned morning flight to Los Angeles. He and I had to film a PlayStation commercial out there and filming began around 10:00 am, Pacific time.
At that point in my life I wasn’t drinking, so it was my job to look after those who were. As you would ex
pect when dealing with a bachelor party, Drapes was in rough shape. But I folded him into the car, tucked him into his first-class seat, got him an orange, and he was good to go. Of course, flight attendants had to wake us when we landed in L.A.
Filming went smoothly and we were finished at 3:30 in the afternoon, but our return flight to Detroit wasn’t until 7:00 pm the next day. Drapes wanted to go to bed. I wanted to go to Vegas. Guess who won that argument? Draper had never been to Las Vegas, and his best man couldn’t allow him to get married without having been to Sin City.
I called a buddy at the Desert Inn Casino and he had us hooked up with plane tickets and a suite within minutes. We were in Las Vegas by 6:00 pm. Of course, Draper was sound asleep, face-first in his bed, by 6:15. I went to the casino by myself, lost a couple of grand, and had an early night by my standards.
The next morning, Draper was fully functional again and both of us were starving. I don’t think Draper had eaten anything the day before. We essentially ordered every item on the left side of the room service breakfast menu. We had several trays of food. Our room looked like an all-you-can-eat buffet.
By 10:00 am I was ready to gamble again. The problem is that Drapes doesn’t like to gamble. He likes to hide his money in his mattress. But I convinced him to come and play with my money. At that point in my life, baccarat was my game of choice. I got a $5,000 marker, sat Draper down at the game, explained the rules, showed him how to roll the cards, and several hours later we got up with stacks and stacks of chips.
When we started, Drapes had no idea how to play the game, but when our day was done we cashed in more than $90,000 in chips. At one point, Draper won 17 consecutive hands. I gave him $10,000 for his work, and walked around the airport with more than $80,000 in cash.
Coincidentally, the table at the Desert Inn was the same table where former teammate Kevin Hodson had sat 12 hours with me while I played during the 1999 All-Star break. Hodson was one of the funniest teammates I ever had, and he had everyone cracking up with his cheering and dancing during my baccarat session.
My biggest loss at a casino was $175,000 in about 12 hours of playing blackjack. That includes losing $40,000 on one hand. At one point, I was actually leaving to go to the airport with $64,000 in my possession, but I decided to stop and play a few more hands before I left.
I placed a bet of $8,000 and drew two eights. I split eights, and drew a two and another eight. So I split that eight. And then I drew the fourth eight. Now I had five bets of $8,000 in from of me. I had some good hands, including a 20, two 18s, and a 17. The dealer had a six showing, and then turned over a face card. Then he caught a five and my $40,000 became the casino’s $40,000. That night in 2003 was the last time I ever played high-stakes blackjack.
Since then, I’ve confined my gambling to the occasional slot machines. To be honest, I like to see numbers spin because it stimulates my ADHD. But now I take $100 and play with that for three or four hours. I’m no longer trying to break the bank.
In my sports-betting heyday, I would bet between $1,000 and $5,000 on a game. The last time I bet on sports I lost $60,000 on my collection of bets. I quit sports betting that night.
In about 2003, I started playing poker seriously, mostly at the old MotorCity Casino. I was in some big games. I played in some games with pro players such as Scotty Nguyen and Erik Seidel. Probably because of my ADD, my brain seems to function a bit differently than a normal brain and I have a good success rate at reading hands on the board.
I never went real crazy in my poker playing, but I always enjoyed playing the game. The biggest pot I ever won was $47,000, and that came in an Omaha game at the Bellagio against World Series of Poker–champion Josh Arieh and pro Terry Fleischer.
Holding a five, six, seven, eight, and being two suited, I went all in for $17,000.
The flop was a three, four, and a King. The pro players weren’t concerned about me. They went after each other and their side pot was worth more than $100,000.
I won the hand with the straight, but Arieh won his match with a pair of aces against a pair of queens.
It didn’t always go that well for me. I remember being in a game against World Series of Poker–champion Antonio “the Magician” Esfandiari and going all in with a pair of fours in the hole and a four on the flop and getting beat by three nines.
The bankruptcy was an embarrassing situation because my financial mess became public record. Newspapers even wrote about 300 people showing up to buy my personal shit. One of the auction managers told reporters that usually 50 to 100 people show up for a bankruptcy action, but the lure of buying an athlete’s belongings tripled the crowd.
I was already in Calgary playing for the Flames when the auction took place, but I was told one dude showed up wearing a McCarty No. 25 Red Wings jersey.
Somebody paid $175 for my bath mats and coffee maker. I don’t believe I paid that much for those items when I bought them new. It didn’t seem like anyone got any bargains. A collection of my pots, pans, toaster, mixer, and towels went for $240. My Buddha statue went for $450.
I’d never really been a heavy memorabilia collector, so I didn’t lose too many items of sentimental value. I did lose my collection of South Park memorabilia, most of it autographed by creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
In terms of sentimental value, the big losses were two motorcycles, including my chrome-plated Harley-Davidson. That was the bike I rode when I was cruising with Bob Probert and Vinnie Johnson and the boys. Many fine hours were logged on that Harley.
One bike was sold as a package with my leather jacket and helmet. That helmet had a sticker on it that read: “Ass, grass, or gas—no one rides for free.”
Kind of sums up my life, doesn’t it?
My favorite bike and gear sold for $9,300. The footnote of that story is that a few years later the man who bought the jacket met me and gave it back to me as a gift. That was after my retirement, meaning I’m a bit hazy on the details. It was a random act of kindness. But I was thankful to get the jacket back because I wore that jacket during my glory years with the Red Wings.
The items I’m glad didn’t end up in the hands of strangers were my Stanley Cup championship rings from 1997, 1998, and 2002. My ex-wife, Cheryl, made a deal with the creditors to buy the rings so my children could have them. They are tucked safely away in a safe deposit box.
The only championship ring I still own is the 2008 ring, which obviously came after my bankruptcy.
When I look back now, I see that I never had as much money as I thought I did. Even when you are making a million per year, the tendency is to try to live better than you should be. When I made a million dollars, the taxes ate up about 37 percent and my agent took 3 percent. I bought more house than I needed, and spent more on vehicles than I should have. When I started to earn that much, I was also paying off the debt I occurred before I was making that much.
It didn’t help that, as I mentioned earlier, I spent well over $400,000 out of my own pocket to keep Grinder on stage through the years. When we did have paid gigs, some of the profit went to the charitable foundation that bears my father’s name.
Everyone believes that if they came into money they would be smart about how they spend it. But all you have to do as look at the history of lottery winners to know that earning big money doesn’t mean you will automatically be smart about spending money.
If you are earning $100,000 per paycheck, it can go just as quickly as if you are earning hundreds of dollars.
Never did I have a chance to recover financially after my bankruptcy. I was 33 when I filed, and I was upfront with the Flames about my financial difficulties when I signed with them in 2006.
In my two seasons in Calgary, I earned $800,000 per season. But under the terms of the Settlement Agreement for my divorce, I agreed to give my ex-wife 75 percent of all of my income starting at the time of the divorce (in February 200
5) until I retired from the NHL in 2009. I agreed to give her all the money in every bank account that we had before the bankruptcy was filed, plus the house, which we purchased at over $1.3 million. When you subtract the amount of money I paid in taxes and then paid to my ex-wife, there wasn’t much left to live on, let alone to plan for the future.
I don’t remember exactly how much money I had in the bank right after I retired, but I’m guessing it was around $5,000. When you count some insurance policies I had, my net worth was probably roughly $50,000. But I still had family obligations and I needed to live, and that money evaporated quickly.
I was an analyst for Versus for about 18 months, and television paid reasonably well and kept me afloat, but when NBC took over Versus, my boss lost his job. That meant that the people he hired were also gone. Since then, I’ve worked briefly in radio and at a pawn shop. But neither job paid all that well.
As I write this book, I have no income I can count on except my pension and my wife’s RN income, but amazingly I am happier now than I ever was as a millionaire.
That’s the story of my financial demise. If you were expecting to hear a tale of me losing millions of dollars at the blackjack table or having huge debts with a drug dealer, you are probably disappointed.
I liked to gamble, but I was never a runaway train when it came to losing money. If I lost too much, I could walk away. I never bet on hockey. It was mostly on football games.
When it came to drugs, my drug of choice was weed, and that’s an affordable habit. Plus, I had friends everywhere who gave me weed for free. I didn’t need to carry a stash with me because I always had friends who would have it on them. I never even would’ve considered trying to cross the border with pot on me. I’m an addict, but I’ve maintained enough control to be smart about my addiction.
My financial rise and fall has given me a different perspective than I had at the height of my career. When I was in the prime of my career with the Red Wings, I had a home in West Bloomfield, Michigan, that had about 5,000 square feet, plus a finished basement that covered 2,500 square feet.
My Last Fight Page 14