The Crazy Game

by Clint Malarchuk

  Whenever I thought about our relationship, I didn’t see how it was going to work. And everyone in my family thought we should break up. But we’d already invested several years into the marriage and we had a kid! So in the end, I couldn’t fight it. Wife Number One came to Washington. We fought throughout that first season in D.C.

  One night, later in the year, one of her friends came to visit us. They were out bar-hopping and came home the next morning. I had been home with Kelli all night and had to get up for practice. I was pissed. Really pissed. After that, I think I just thought, Fuck it.

  Despite the shit show at home, I had a great season that first year in Washington. I led the league in shutouts with four, which was a lot in the high-scoring eighties. On the ice, everything was moving in the right direction.

  I’m not exactly sure why I had more fun in Washington than I did in Quebec City, but it’s probably because I felt secure in my position on the team and in the league. For the first four years of my career, I was fighting just to prove that I could be a number one guy in the NHL. Now I had the confidence that I was that guy, and besides, I had been a valued part of a blockbuster trade. My personal life was messed up all year, with my marriage getting closer and closer to its end. I also suffered swirling bouts of anxiety that I didn’t fully understand at the time. It’d been with me ever since I was a kid, when I was hospitalized for those two months, and it never really went way. I had just learned to live with it, acting like nothing was wrong in public, but knowing it was slowly destroying my personal life.

  So I took advantage of every opportunity I had to let loose and forget the battles going on inside of me. One of the best examples will be forever remembered as “the time we took the horses.” During one of our road trips out west that year, we took a commercial flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Los Angeles, where we had a five-day break before playing the Kings. Management took us to this fancy golf course for a team-building excursion. We all piled into this little puddle-jumper from L.A. to Palm Springs.

  On the flight, Dale and I got to talking. It occurred to me that half these guys had never even seen a horse before, let alone ridden one. So we told them all we wanted to show them how. Almost everyone thought it’d be cool. But when we arrived in Palm Springs, we found out a bunch of our luggage had been left back in L.A., so we were stuck in suits and ties. A lot of the guys changed their minds. They wanted to wait for their bags and then go golfing. But Dale and I were still in. “Ah shit, you guys. Bunch of pussies.” And off we went in our suits to track down some horses to rent.

  We walked a little ways down the road outside of our hotel and found this small western-themed place, like a little saloon. They had horses for rent. Check! They also sold beer, so we asked if we could take some along. Check! They loaded up our saddlebags. So Dale and I went riding out along the trails, still wearing our dress clothes. We saw snakes and roadrunners and all sorts of shit. It was pretty cool. We started going up a canyon. It wasn’t chilly, but we said, “Ah, we’re cowboys—we need a fire and some beer.” So when we got up to the top, we made a fire, even though it was about a hundred degrees out—we had had a few beers by that point. Later, we rode a little farther up the canyon and found ourselves staring out over the hotel we were staying at. The team was out on the course, playing golf. “Those pussies!”

  We charged down the canyon towards the course, hooting and hollering. We had our suits rolled up like bedrolls behind our saddles, and our ties were wrapped around our heads. We rode up and down the fairways. The guys were all cheering. We rode onto the greens and started pulling the pins out. Neither of us are golfers, so we had no idea what we were doing. Then we started jousting, riding at each other with the flags. We rode around, taking out all the flags we could find.

  The course marshal showed up and started chasing us in his little golf cart. “The marshal’s after us!” But he couldn’t catch up. We were turning back as we galloped away, shooting at him with our hands. Pewpew … pew … pew … The guys on the golf course had had way more beer than us, but we looked like we were completely bombed because we were riding around on horses.

  When we had had enough, we just dropped the flags and went back to the stables. The cops were waiting for us. We were in big trouble, but our general manager, Dave Poile, paid for all the damage, so we didn’t get charged.

  Dale was a hillbilly redneck like me—though I prefer the term “cowboy”—and naturally, we roomed together. We’d always get to the airport and he’d say, “Shit, I have to give you my carry-on”—and he’d hand me his toothbrush. We would be on a ten-day road trip, and that shithead would just bring a toothbrush—and give it to me to carry in my bag. It was all he needed. I swear he just had the one suit and two ties. If it was a really long trip, sometimes he’d have a pair of gonchies wrapped around his toothbrush. We get to the hotel and I’d unpack my clothes and give him his toothbrush and shorts. “Thanks, chum,” he’d say. Everything was “Thanks, chum.”

  Even after our joyride with the horses, Dale and I continued our antics. It was a team-spirit thing. We did the Saran Wrap the toilet seats gag—not a very elaborate prank, but it always earned a laugh. At restaurants, Dale was notorious for standing next to you at the urinal and then just pissing on your foot. You wouldn’t realize it until there was a pool of piss on your boot. But he wouldn’t just do it to a teammate. He’d do it to any guy. “Oh my, I’m sorry,” he’d say. Everybody had jokes, but not like Dale. One time, we stole the doors off Garry Galley’s Jeep in the middle of winter. We put it all in the trunk of Dale’s car. It was damn cold out. We just wanted him to freeze his ass off as he drove home.

  Right before the playoffs, the team was on another road trip. When I came home, my first wife was gone. She had taken Kelli with her. My neighbour had driven her to the airport. He was a really nice guy; he was waiting for me when I got home so he could give me the news in person. “I know what it’s like to be a bachelor,” he said. He gave me a bag with a bunch of items in it—stuff like toilet paper.

  I was pissed off and screwed up. My head was all over the place. I didn’t tell many people what had happened, but the team seemed to know. Throughout the playoffs, I roomed with Dave Christian, who had recently been through a divorce. He was great, a huge support.

  Even with everything going on at home, I played well down the stretch. After the All-Star Game, I went on a run where I won six of seven games and allowed only ten goals. Our coach, Bryan Murray, was singing my praises. “Clint has to be discouraging teams with all those point-blank saves,” he told the press. “There just are no easy goals when he’s out there.” It was the best season of my career. I finished with twenty-four wins in fifty-four games, and my 3.16 goals-against average was sixth in the league. My counterpart, Pete Peeters, led the league with a 2.79 average.

  We finished second in the Patrick Division, behind the New York Islanders. Our first-round opponents were the Philadelphia Flyers, coached by Mike Keenan. Ron Hextall was in goal. We went down 3–1 in the series before clawing our way back to force a game seven. Murray went with Pete Peeters as the main guy in the series. I wasn’t in goal for any of our wins and played only once when Peeters was pulled. Dale Hunter scored the overtime winner on a breakaway on Hextall in the final game.

  We faced the New Jersey Devils, who had just come off an upset win over the first-place Islanders, in the second round. The Devils were led by rookie goalie Sean Burke, who joined them late in the season after playing for Canada at the Calgary Olympics. He was red-hot down the stretch, single-handedly getting the Devils into the playoffs and then pushing them past the Islanders. Burke was pretty much the story of the playoffs to that point.

  Peeters played the first two games of the series for us. We won the first and lost the second. There was concern that he was getting pushed back into his crease too much by the Philly forwards—something that would never happen to me. I got the start in game three. At that point I didn’t have a win to my name in
seven career playoff games. I needed this chance to prove I could make it happen in spring, when it mattered most.

  It didn’t work out the way I’d hoped. I allowed two goals in the first period, followed by two quick goals in just over a minute in the second period. In total, I let in seven goals on twenty-one shots before Murray put my ass on the bench. We lost 10–4—the most lopsided playoff defeat in Capitals history. It was brutal. I felt terrible. I’d let the team down and embarrassed myself right when I needed to play the best hockey of my life.

  Peeters was back in goal to start game four. But halfway through the second period, he got hit in the mask with a John MacLean wrist shot. He fell backwards into the net and hit his head on the ice. He stayed down for several minutes and they carried him off on a stretcher.

  I sat on the bench, getting ready to go. But my confidence was completely shot after getting pulled in the last game. I felt like shit. We were up 2–1, and I could just imagine the headlines if I blew this lead and let the Devils run away with the series.

  Thankfully, the nerves didn’t ruin me. I stopped the first shot, and then the second and the third, and I felt my confidence rising. In the end, I turned aside all thirteen shots I faced and we won the game 3–1. “I didn’t stop too many shots in the last game,” I told reporters. “It was a tough couple of days. I was pretty depressed.” There was no point in trying to hide the fact that I was nervous about getting back between the pipes after the shellacking I had taken.

  “I guess if at any time in my career the pressure was on, that was it,” I said. “Any time you lose like that, your confidence is down … It was a pressure situation. I’m just glad we won. It was a tough couple of days. It was the toughest moment of my entire career.”

  It took half a game to go from goat to hero. But my winless streak continued. The W went to Peeters. “I don’t care who gets the victory,” I lied. “I’ll contribute anyway I can.” It was great to save the game. But damn, I wanted that win.

  I got the start in game five, back at home in front of a sellout crowd of more than 18,000 fans. Unfortunately, my redemption tale was over. We lost 3–1. On the third goal, I gave the puck away in the corner to Pat Verbeek, who passed it out front to a wide-open Kirk Muller, who had scored on a breakaway earlier in the game.

  Peeters came back and won the next game 7–2. They gave him the start in game seven back at home, and we lost 3–2. Season over.

  I was devastated after we lost that series. And my seven-goal debacle haunted me for a lot longer than I let people know.

  I went back to Calgary that summer and spent my time working out, hitting the rodeo and having a good time. I considered each to be a full-time gig. Back then, I saved most of my drinking for the summer. That being said, if I was out late, I was always up at six and in the gym. I could still be hung over from a night on the town in Calgary and be on the bench, pumping reps, before sunrise.

  My best friend back in Calgary was a one-time rodeo star named Coleman Robinson. He was one of the top riders on the Canadian professional circuit when we met in the eighties. I just rode ponies compared to him. He was the real deal. Everyone in Calgary knew who Coleman Robinson was. He was as well known as I was as an NHL hockey player—rodeo is that big out west. When he wasn’t riding, he worked in the movie business for years, arranging for big Hollywood productions to come to Alberta and shoot on ranches or up in the mountains. We’d met back when I played for the Nordiques, and he became one of my closest friends.

  I was newly single in the summer of 1988. I’d recently divorced Wife Number One and was eager to make up for lost time. Coleman and I hung out on the Calgary rodeo scene, which always had lots of women around. The rodeo adventures were particularly good. Compared to the rodeo, hockey was tame—crazy tame. Every weekend, I’d be out at the rodeos across Alberta with him, getting in trouble and having a blast. Coleman and I have had more fun than two people should ever be allowed to. He was actually a lot like Dale Hunter, but much more social.

  We used to drive around looking for fun in my old beater of a truck. It had all this cow shit in the back from some work I’d done up at my brother’s ranch near the mountains. I hadn’t bothered to get rid of it. It had been there so long, weeds were growing up out of it. Here we were, an NHL hockey player and a rodeo star, and we were driving around in a beat-up piece of junk. Coleman and I didn’t care.

  One night, we were driving through downtown Calgary on our way to a Hank Williams Jr. concert. We were sitting at a light when my muffler fell off. Coleman got out, picked it up, threw it into the truck bed and away we went.

  All things considered, we had a lot of success with that truck.

  Often, the rodeos we went to were out of town. There was a big group of people on the Calgary rodeo scene, and I fit in with them like one of the boys, even though I was playing in the NHL. We would go out in a big group of guys and maybe eight of us would share a hotel room to cut costs. We’d flip coins for mattresses and cram in. But you never wanted to sleep next to a married guy, because they’d always throw a leg over you.

  This one time, we stayed at a Marriott. We had a king-size bed and we raided the minibar. Coleman and I woke up nose to nose. We were pretty much cuddling. I opened my eyes at the same time he did—probably because he farted or something.

  Seriously, these rodeo guys were characters. They made hockey players look like Boy Scouts. During one of our rodeo excursions in Innisfail, one of our buddies decided he needed some privacy with a buckle bunny in a porta-potty. They were in there for quite a while when we got a brilliant idea. I maintain that I was not part of the crew who snuck up behind the travelling toilet, but I watched the whole thing. It tipped over so fast. Thwack! Door first. The guys rolled it over and the door flew open. Our buddy and his girl were both covered in shit. She was furious. He thought it was hilarious. “Best orgasm of my life,” he said.

  My contract with the Washington Capitals stipulated that, for insurance reasons, I wasn’t supposed to take part in any dangerous activities off the ice. It wasn’t a rule I intended to respect. I was never a real rodeo rider, like Coleman. But I held my own on old nags. I picked up my first win in Crystal Creek. I did a really good job of keeping my rodeo riding from the Capitals. It was easier back then, before every move you made was posted on Twitter. But I still managed to get busted pretty good once.

  I was part of this exhibition ride at the Calgary Stampede that summer. It was a special kids’ event where cowboys came and gave demonstrations of their skills. A bunch of elementary school classes had come to see their first rodeo, but all the cowboys thought it had been rained out. I was working the chutes that day. My friend Winston Bruce, the big boss of the Calgary Stampede, was in a bind. He was a buddy of mine, so I told him I’d do it.

  “Are you kidding me?” he asked. “You’re an NHL player. You can’t do it.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I’m in.”

  The ring was all slop. I’d worn a slicker, the kind of yellow coat the cowboys wear, because it was pouring rain, but I was covered in mud. I rode about eight different horses for the kids, showing them mane and tail, bareback and a lot of fun stuff. I didn’t think anything of it.

  The next day, I was back at the rodeo when I was paged over the public-address system. My mother was looking for me. I went to the Stampede office and called home right away.

  “You better call David Poile,” she said. “He just called looking for you. And he sounds mad.” I thought I’d been traded or something, but when I called, he just tore into me. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

  I played dumb. “What are you talking about?” I didn’t realize that a photographer had been at the event. A picture of me being thrown off one of the horses went over the Associated Press wires and appeared on the front page of the Washington Post. The headline read: WASHINGTON CAPITALS GOALIE, CLINT MALARCHUK—AIRBORNE. I’d been riding bareback in the photo and had just been tossed way up in the air.

 
“You’re flying off a horse that’s about ready to kick your head off!” he shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Think fast, Clint. Think! “Oh, that’s my brother,” I said. “They said it was me, but it wasn’t.” My brother doesn’t even ride. He’s afraid of horses.

  Poile didn’t buy it. He was pissed. The contract said I wasn’t supposed to do stupid stuff, and by his definition, this classified as pretty goddamn stupid. I could see where he was coming from, but I tried to bargain.

  “Look,” I said, “I’ll sign a waiver.” No deal. No rodeo.

  13

  Capital Crimes

  IN THE FALL OF 1988, THE CAPITALS WENT TO TRAINING CAMP IN Lake Placid. For a team excursion, they took us all out on a trail ride one day. As I’ve said, I’m quite handy with horses, but I told our guide that I was actually the Capitals’ stick boy and that this was my first time riding a horse. A bunch of my new teammates were in on the gag with me. I had one of them introduce me to our trail guide. “This is Joey. He used to be pretty good with horses, but he got kicked in the head when he was a kid. He’s not right.”

  I hammed it up like I had a speech impediment. The guide had us riding single file down the trail, looking at the scenery and enjoying nature. Every couple of minutes, I’d go charging off the trail with my horse.

  The instructor tried to catch me. “Come on, Joey, come on back here!” Then I’d come crashing back through the trees. This guide was a dude, meaning he wanted to be a cowboy, but he wasn’t a cowboy. He looked the part and tried to act the part. But he wasn’t a cowboy. He had a rope on his saddle but had no idea how to use it.

  “Hey boss,” I yelled in my Joey voice. “Can I try your rope? I want to throw your rope!”