The Crazy Game

by Clint Malarchuk

  The Nordiques kept me as benchwarmer for a little while after that shellacking, before eventually sending me back to Fredericton when both their regular goalies were healthy.

  Getting called up for those two games made me work even harder. I wouldn’t be diagnosed with OCD for another decade—so at the time, I thought my obsession with working out was just what they call “drive.” My teammates thought I was crazy. Back then, goalies hardly ever lifted weights. But I didn’t go a day without hitting the gym. I worked harder than any of the guys on that team, in the gym and in practice. I was first one on the ice, last one off. I think that’s why our coach, Jacques Demers, liked me. I was a workhorse. In that first year, I played fifty-one games. In the AHL, we would play three games in three nights, and the travel was horrendous. Sometimes we’d play Friday and Saturday on the road and take the bus back to Fredericton to play a home game on the Sunday. Somehow, we just got through those games—I really don’t know how.

  Our team was terrible. We had a hard time getting players that year. We’d bring up guys from the Fredericton Capitals, guys with day jobs, out of an intermediate league. That’s how bad we were. Danny Grant, who played in the NHL in the 1960s and ‘70s, mostly with Minnesota and Detroit, was the president of the team—he’s from Fredericton. He even played nineteen games with us.

  I was facing fifty shots a night. It was great for me, though. All the action got me a lot of attention. I was named rookie of the year and MVP of the team.

  On a personal level, Jacques Demers helped me out a lot. He was a kind guy. He knew we were young and unsure. Just a few months before, we had been living with billets as boys in junior hockey and now we were young men, out there on our own. He encouraged us.

  Jodi Bauer broke up with me by mail from Portland. I’d figured that might happen. The letter said something about how we’d grown apart. Shit, we were coast to coast apart—it wasn’t going to work. But it hurt. I let it hurt.

  Demers saw that I had something spinning through my head at the time. He could tell I was struggling. He pulled me aside one day and asked what was wrong. I’d never had a coach do that before. The locker room is no place to explore hurt feelings and broken hearts. I was embarrassed. “I got a ‘Dear John,’” I said, trying to shrug it off. He took me aside and we talked it out. I still can’t believe how kind he was. I considered him a father figure. His wife at the time was also really nice. They’d have us over for dinner. I’d have gone through a brick wall for that man.

  I also liked that he had a good sense of humour. I was always a clown in the dressing room, so that worked out well for me. Before one of our practices, there was a men’s recreational-league game going on. I stripped down to my jockstrap, put on some skates, put a paper bag with holes cut out on my head—like the unknown comic on The Gong Show, which was big back then—grabbed a stick, went onto the ice and starting stick-handling around them. All the guys were watching. They were just dying. When I got off the ice, one of the Express trainers warned me that Demers was looking for me and he was pissed. But when I saw him, he just started cracking up. He thought it was hilarious—but warned me that it probably was best not to do stuff like that when the brass was down from Quebec. “If you want to make that team, don’t let them catch you doing stuff like that!” he said. “You can do that to me, but not to them!”

  Fredericton was a lot of fun, especially because I had a bit of money, was on my own for the first time and was part of the biggest show in town. I was twenty, twenty-one years old, a kid, but a lot of the guys were in their late twenties and early thirties. There was a bar we used to go to called the Cosmopolitan. We called it the “Cos.” It was a college town. Lots of fun.

  My first couple years as a pro, we had some … well, unique fans. There was one couple that liked to go to the bar after games. Afterwards, they’d always invite a player or two back to the house for a hot tub. The wife was pretty hot. And the husband liked to watch. At first, I didn’t believe it. But then, after a week, another guy would come to the rink and say, “Holy shit, I yadda, yadda, yadda …” It was crazy. One of the guys went back for a dip. He felt awful about it after.

  “I screwed his wife in front of him. He’s telling me to give it to her.” He was so broken up about it. His guilt was overwhelming.

  “You learn from your mistakes. Don’t beat yourself up,” I said. “You have to move on.”

  One morning, I walked into our training room at the rink in Fredericton, and there was big guy with bushy black hair lying belly down on the trainer’s table. In front of him was a stationary bike, which he was pedalling with his arms. He’d basically just invented the upper-body training machine. I’d never seen anything like it. I thought, Who the hell is this guy? I mean, I was always the first person at the rink.

  He got off the table just sweating like a pig. He was built like a house. His arms were the size of my legs. He introduced himself. “Hey, how are ya kid? Rick Dudley.”

  “Hey, how are you?”

  “Yeah, I’m all right. My knees were busted, so I had to get cardio in.”

  Dudley was a journeyman who had made his way through the NHL and WHA for more than a decade with the Buffalo Sabres, Cincinnati Stingers and Winnipeg Jets. After a season with the Jets, he wound up in Fredericton.

  Dudley really liked me because I was one of the few guys who actually bothered to work out. He was always on vitamin pills. Dudley was probably the fittest man I’d ever met. He was stronger than Dale Hunter, for sure, and he was so committed. Even I didn’t work as hard as Dudley did, and in terms of his career he had nothing left to prove. It was pretty much over for him. He intrigued me.

  We’d climb on the bus for road trips and he’d wear this hilarious Marty Robbins cowboy hat—black with a flat rim all the way around. And he hauled his friggin’ guitar on the bus. He’d play and sing for us as we bused through the minors.

  In the end, Dudley only played seven games with the Express before he called it quits for good. In one game, Dudley got into a fight and was tossed out. On his way off the ice, he stopped in front of the other team’s bench and challenged them all to a fight. There were no takers. They knew his reputation. That was the last game he ever played.

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but Dudley and I had a lot more in common than I thought. And even though we only spent a handful of games together, he would become one of the closest friends in my life—right until I pulled that trigger.

  10

  Hitched

  OUTSIDE OF HOCKEY, BASEBALL WAS MY LIFE. DAD COACHED Garth and later coached me. It was our summer sport, aside from boxing in the backyard. Dad was a hell of a ball player and he made sure I was, too. For a brief period, I was almost considering making a go at it instead of hockey. I played in an intermediate city league each summer. I could pound it and I had a great glove. I was scouted to play baseball in a minor pro league out west the same year I signed with the Nordiques. They were only offering about $50 a week compared to my $80,000 pro hockey salary, so it was an easy choice. But I’ve always loved baseball and wondered what it would have been like to have gone and played. I was a shortstop and second baseman. I went to a tryout in Edmonton, and they said, “You’re pretty good, you know.” I moved on to a second tryout in Calgary, and they liked what they saw. They asked me to come to the rookie camp. I asked about the contract and told them I’d just signed with an NHL team. The scout told me to stick with hockey. I’m pretty sure he was right—but then, you always wonder what might have happened in life if you had travelled down a different road.

  I seemed to fall in love with every girl that paid attention to me. I met my first wife at a baseball tournament the summer after my first year in Fredericton. She was from Medicine Hat but was living in Calgary, and I was staying there during the off-season at my mother’s place. She was a dirty blonde. I was twenty-one at the time. She was about a year younger. We hooked up and started dating. Six months later, she was pregnant. I was going to break up w
ith her before she told me, but when I found out, I figured that marrying her was the only thing to do. It was the honourable thing. But everyone was against it—my family, friends, everyone. They all said the same thing: “You were about to break up, and then she got pregnant—isn’t that suspicious? She wasn’t on the pill? Well, why not? You guys are having trouble and you’re about to be in the NHL.” The thought did cross my mind, but I didn’t want to go there. I never confronted her about it.

  The wedding was held in Medicine Hat, Alberta, where her parents lived. She was five months pregnant at the time. Everyone at the wedding was mad. It was so intense. It turned into a gong show. My brother, Garth, was my best man. Even as we drove to the church, he tried to get me to reconsider.

  “Clint, let’s just get on a plane and fly to Vegas right now,” Garth said.

  “Holy shit, you’re nuts,” I said. “I don’t have a choice.”

  We made it to the church and I got married. Afterwards, there were pictures and all that other wedding stuff. But my brother took the groomsmen and went bar-hopping. They lost track of time, apparently.

  I used the phone at the reception hall to call all the bars in town.

  “Is there a group of guys there in tuxedos and cowboy hats?”

  “They just left.”

  So I phoned another one. “They just left.”

  And another. “They just left.”

  I hung up the phone, and in walked my brother and the rest of the groomsmen. They’d had a few. Garth knew I was mad but tried to talk his way out of it.

  “Hey, Clint! How’s it going?”

  “Where the hell have you guys been?” Everyone at the reception was waiting for them. We still had the first dance and all that other shit to do.

  “Ah, fucking relax,” Garth said.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Fuck you!” We got right up in each other’s face. My mom saw us shoving and came over.

  “You two sons of bitches. There’s no way you’re going to have a fight in here.” She got between us and tried to push us apart. I swung over Mom’s head—just, boom—and smoked Garth in the face. The fight was on. We went fist to fist.

  I ended up on the floor with blood all over my tuxedo. Garth broke my nose, but I put a good gash in his forehead. Ten minutes later, I walked over to Garth with a tall glass of whiskey.

  “What the hell, you pouting?”

  “No.”

  I had two pieces of Kleenex up my nose. He had a bloody bar napkin stuck to his head.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  “No, shit, sit down.”

  I sat down. “Good fight, eh? There was a time you’d whoop my ass, Garth. But I got you pretty good.”

  He took a sip of whiskey and handed it to me.

  “Yeah. Shit, you caught me here and here.”

  “I think you broke my nose.”

  “It’s been broken, what, eight times? Shit, don’t worry about it. You’re ugly anyway.”

  I took a sip. “You’re ugly too,” I said.

  My new bride and her family were devastated because of the fight. Her family was over at their table, all upset. I think her mom was crying. “The wedding is ruined!”

  Garth got up and sauntered over to my wife and in-laws. “Why the long faces?” he said. “We’ve all made up! Let’s let ‘er go and enjoy the party!”

  Her dad was angry and incredulous. “What?! You guys are covered in blood!”

  “Yeah, and now we’re over there drinking and having a great time.” As shocking as that was for her family, for Garth and me it was just another fight. No big deal.

  Later that year, I had surgery on my nose because it had been broken so many times. After the surgery, I was in a baseball tournament in British Columbia, and our team went into a bar for maybe five minutes before I got hooked by a right. I was so pissed off. I’d just had it fixed and it looked kind of pretty. The bouncers jumped in right away. That’s why I don’t like fighting in bars—they always get broken up. If you’re a real man, I’ll meet you outside. I got thrown out one door and the fucker who sucker-punched me went out another door. I went after him and he ran like a jackrabbit.

  So I had to go back to the hospital for a second round of reconstructive surgery. It was supposed to last forty-five minutes, but it took three hours. They cut my skin and pulled it back onto my forehead. The doctor told me the bone had splintered. He said if I broke it one more time, I’d likely do some permanent damage. I already had trouble breathing because of it. I didn’t bother getting it fixed up after that. There was no point. I’d just keep breaking it.

  You could probably guess that I didn’t have a very pleasant marriage with my first wife. But the nuptials did bring something wonderful to my life. A few months later, I was in the shower at the Colisée after a Nordiques practice. The trainer told me my wife had called the arena. She was in labour. “You better get down to the hospital.”

  I rushed out of there still wet, fumbled my keys into the ignition of my old beater truck and sped over to the hospital. My heart was pounding. I was there when she was born. Everything was great. She was beautiful. Everything was beautiful. My first kid, you know. It was so emotional. We called her Kelli Jean Louise Malarchuk. I have to admit that the name came from Kelly Hrudey. I always liked that name, so we just switched it up a bit. We agreed to give her our mothers’ names as well.

  It was an overwhelming time. I was only twenty-two and so close to fully realizing my dream. And now I had a gorgeous baby girl. The problem was that Wife Number One and I never really saw eye to eye. I wasn’t exactly in the NHL yet. I played only fifteen games with the Nordiques in my second year as a pro. I was going up and down between the NHL and the minors, and I worried about her spending. We had a baby to take care of.

  If I’m honest, my relationship with my first wife failed for reasons beyond money. I was able to understand this a lot more later on. At the time, I was blind to it. Things were going good, I was doing well, and I’d start feeling anxious and wouldn’t know why. I was doing great in hockey, so I wasn’t sure why I felt so uneasy. Subconsciously, I’d search for something to worry about. The second most important thing to me was my relationship. So I directed all of my anxiety towards my wife. Struggling with relationships would become a painful and destructive pattern in my life.

  11

  A Fighting Chance

  EVEN BACK IN THE MINORS, I HAD A PROCLIVITY FOR BRAWLING. I had a temper. In practice, I’d always get angry when guys would come in and wire the puck at my head. Once, in practice, one of our forwards, Grant Martin, tried to pick a corner and hit me high in the shoulder. I threw my stick like a tomahawk and hit him in the head. Then I skated over and jumped on him. Grant was actually a really nice guy; I just lost my shit. The next day, Jacques Demers made us roommates on the road.

  I did the same thing during a skate at a conditioning camp back home in Edmonton one summer. There were all kinds of different players from junior, college and various stages of pro hockey. I’d played in the NHL and deserved a little respect—you know, shoot low to start. When you warm up a goalie you shoot from far out, you don’t just wire a shot from in close—it can cause an injury. The second shooter I faced was this call-up. I think he played junior or something. He skated up past the hash marks in the slot and wound up. The puck came right at my head. I managed to jump and take it in the shoulder, but I fell over and my whole arm went numb. The kid just skated into the corner like it was no big deal.

  I grabbed my stick by the knob and chucked it at him. It spun like a helicopter blade and hit him square in the nose. Smashed it—completely broken. He was bleeding all over the place. I skated up to him and pushed my pad against his head. “You little shit,” I said. “I hope you bleed to death.” All the pros were laughing at him. I didn’t feel bad. It was probably bad karma.

  The Nordiques called me up during the 1984 playoffs after our season in Fredericton was done. We mad
e it to the second round and faced our provincial rivals, the Montreal Canadiens, at the Forum. The last game of that series became known as the Good Friday Massacre because of a series of line brawls that happened just as the Easter weekend kicked off. It was my first NHL fight. I was dressed for that game, so when there was a bench-clearing brawl near the end of the second period, I was right in the mix. When the teams got back on the ice for the third period, we started brawling again before the puck even dropped. It was bloody. Peter Stastny’s nose was busted by Montreal’s Mario Tremblay. Our Louis Sleigher drilled Jean Hamel when the linesman was trying to break them up. Louie went in there and clocked him over the linesman’s head—knocked him out cold. He lay there for quite a while, and then they just dragged him off the ice. I guess they didn’t have stretchers back then. The punch broke Hamel’s orbital bone, and the damage to his vision led to the end of his career. I tangled with Habs goalie Richard Sevigny and then pretty much grabbed anyone I could find. When the brawl started, we were up 1–0, but half our team was booted out of the game. We all sat in the locker room and watched as the other half tried to hang on for the win. The Habs scored five goals in the third period and knocked us out of the playoffs.

  Thanks to my dad’s boxing lessons, fighting was my special talent. Down in the American League, I fought Tiger Williams. We were playing the Adirondack Red Wings during the 1984–85 season, and Tiger was down from their parent club in Detroit. He was in my crease, so I gave him a whack with my stick. He turned around and swore at me, so I asked him if he wanted to go. The play went down to the other end, and when the whistle blew, he came skating back to me. “What did you say to me?” he said.

  “I said, ‘Do you want to go?’”

  “All right.”

  “Give me a second,” I said. I took off my mask and gloves and placed them on top of the net. “Let’s go.”