The Crazy Game

by Clint Malarchuk

  “Timmy, we’re in Vegas,” I said. “No one is watching this shit!”

  I never told John about that. He might be offended by it, but it was funny.

  In 1998, I was near the end of my player/coach contract in Vegas. Wife Number Three and I had a beautiful baby girl named Dallyn, and we were looking for a bit of a change from Vegas. The Idaho Steelheads in the West Coast Hockey League recruited me to come coach their team. It was a lower-calibre league, but we went out to visit and I took one look at the place and thought, This is God’s country. It was beautiful—rolling fields and forests. Just gorgeous.

  Back in Vegas, Strumm called me into his office and showed me what the owners were willing to give me to return as coach. It was an ungodly low number. The Las Vegas Thunder had been very good to me through those years. But I was also very good to them. I went above and beyond what they asked me to do as a community ambassador, because that was just me. I had a great career there. The fans loved me. Maybe the team thought I was so hooked on Vegas and the organization that they lowballed me. I mean, they lowballed me hard. The offer was for about $35,000. I had a wife and a baby—and two other kids to support. At the time, the lowest salaries for coaches in the league were somewhere around $80,000. “Fuck that,” I said. It was insulting.

  Strummer called me, trying to smooth things over. The owner called me, too. They bumped it up to $70,000. I told them to screw off. “After everything I’ve done?” I said. “I’m done.” It wasn’t a matter of money anymore. It was a matter of principle.

  “You’re one step away from coaching in the NHL,” Strumm said. And he was right. A move like the one I was considering would be a demotion. But I didn’t back down. Strumm had done a lot for me and we would always be good friends. But the team’s second offer was a case of too little, too late. I called up the Steelheads and took the job. There were no hard feelings. I know Strummer was just doing what the owner told him to do.

  Wife Number Three and I packed up and moved to our own private Idaho—a beautiful five-acre ranch in Nampa, a rural area with few houses and lots of farmland. On our first day in the new house, our neighbour came up to greet us. He was about eighty, dressed in overalls and a Carhartt jacket.

  “You might have seen me on the news,” he said.

  “No … why?” I asked.

  “Well, I shot some guy,” he said.

  “Um—really. Well, that’s cool,” I said. “What happened?”

  Apparently, some kids had stolen beer from his fridge in the barn. I could see the barn from our doorstep.

  “I heard their pickup truck take off down my lane, so I loaded my shotgun,” he said. “I was shooting at them, and I guess I got one.

  “I’m a pretty good neighbour,” he added. “Just don’t steal my beer.”

  “This is my kind of neighbourhood,” I said, kidding. “I’m a country boy myself. I’d have shot him in the head.”

  “I was aiming for the head!” he said.

  Sure enough, later that day, I turned on the TV and there he was, on the news. The old man had actually shot a kid for stealing his barn beer.

  The Steelheads were only in their second year when I took over as coach. They had a brand new rink called the Bank of America Center. It seated about 5,200, and we always packed it out. The fans were great. We had a mix of really green young kids and older guys who just wanted to keep playing the game. Matt Loughran was the general manager. He was a great guy—very blunt, a straight shooter. After the first season, the owner told me they wanted to fire Matt and have me take on the dual role of coach and GM. The owner thought Matt was too confrontational. I said no way. Matt was a great guy who told people exactly what he thought. I respected that. He deserved better than to have the owners go behind his back and offer me his job. I wasn’t going to be part of it.

  Loyalty is all that matters to me. If you’re an honest person, I’ll be your friend for life. I don’t waste time with people who are fake or people who are trying to use you to get something. I don’t care about people who are afraid to say what they think. That was always what I liked about Matt. No way would I stab him in the back.

  It was fall or winter—I can’t remember the month. One afternoon, I got a call from my mother.

  “I’ve got some bad news, Clint,” she said. “Your father passed away.”

  It was a heart attack. He was sixty-seven and he was alone, living in a motel in some small town in Alberta, working as a handyman. That’s how he got by in the end. He’d get free lodging while doing odds and ends in these motels. He was in Vegreville, he was in Bonnyville—all these different towns, doing the same thing. He was basically a vagrant.

  I didn’t go to his funeral. There was no reason to go up and see relatives I didn’t know. No one from my immediate family was going. There would be no one there for me to share his memory with. I don’t think my brother and sister ever made amends with my dad. My mother certainly wasn’t going to the funeral.

  I don’t think I saw the worst of him. I know my brother saw different things, worse things, but I don’t know what exactly. My sister did, too. We never spoke about it. Neither of them wanted anything to do with him. I know he called them here and there. He called me, usually when he was drunk, and he just spat out stuttered apologies. “I get it,” I’d say. “I understand. Quit apologizing. You’re killing me.” Now I knew what alcohol could do. I knew how he lived and how he had been brought up.

  I forgave him when he came to Vegas. We had formed a relationship, somewhat. We had made amends. I’d let go of my anger—I just felt sorry for him. He had problems. We had our problems. He wasn’t at any of my weddings. But when my dad wasn’t drinking, everyone loved him. He was funny and friendly. He coached hockey and baseball. He was there for kids. He did a lot. At one time, my dad was pretty involved in my hockey—through those early years, at least. Other stuff was going on, but he was always there for hockey. He really was.

  I got off the phone with my mother and went for a long walk in the field by our ranch. I remember crying.

  I had my own wake for him. “God, please understand,” I prayed. “He wasn’t a bad man. He was a sick man. Please take him to heaven. My dad was a good man.”

  After a couple years in Idaho, the Steelheads got a new GM and I was in limbo. I loved coaching, and I knew I was good at it, but it’s hardly a stable profession. It’s the harsh reality of being a coach that your job always depends on the guy above you. The team wouldn’t tell me whether they would resign me for the 2000–01 season. I was so pissed off that they wouldn’t just give me a straight answer. So I knew I needed to find a backup plan. There was an equine dentistry school about an hour away from our place in Idaho. I had always worked with horses and thought it might be smart to put some of that knowledge to use. So when the Steelheads still hadn’t given me an answer by August, I drove over and signed up. Forget hockey; I was going back to school. The Steelheads called me shortly afterwards to talk about the job. There was no respect. I said, “No way, I’m already signed up for school—I’m done.”

  It was a three-year program, but I got it done in one. At the same time, I worked as a consultant with the Prince George Cougars of the Western Hockey League. I’d fly out there and work with their goalies. And I had a full-time horse dentistry business running out of Idaho. I was the first horse dentist/goalie consultant the world had ever seen.

  I’d go out to B.C. to work with the Cougars’ goalies and consult with team management. During one of those trips, I went out to a bar with a few of the coaches. I was drinking Diet Coke—I still hadn’t touched alcohol in eight years.

  I went to the can, came back and picked up what I thought was my Diet Coke. My taste buds quickly told me it was somebody else’s Crown and Coke. Shit, I just had a drink. I smelt it and tasted it again—yep, definitely Crown and Coke. So I looked to my left, looked to my right and thought, Well, guess I’m going to have my first drink.

  Damn, eight years. Well, guess I blew tha
t one. That’s it. It was like a shutout streak was over, or a run of consecutive games started. That’s how I thought about it.

  I thought maybe I could handle it now. After all, it’d been eight years. Clearly, I had self-control. So I ordered another one. And another. And another. I got liquored up pretty good.

  I went out the next night again. Of course, these people didn’t know about my issues with alcohol. I was there for a week, and I went pretty hard there—fell back into it. I went home to Idaho and thought I could handle it. And I did, at first. I didn’t go drinking every night. I wasn’t hung over every day. But it’s a progressive problem. It’s a disease that festers and builds. I had seen it happen with my dad—how he drowned in the booze and couldn’t see clearly. He could see how he had pulled us in with him. But even when the lessons of the past stare you right in the face, it doesn’t mean you’re immune from making the same mistakes. I don’t know if I was drinking because my dad was gone. I think I had dealt with that and didn’t carry it with me consciously. But I was definitely drinking because of him—because his disease was my disease. Because he couldn’t deal with his life and probably couldn’t define his demons. I knew what OCD and depression were. I understood alcoholism. I’ve wondered if mental illness haunted my father like it haunted me. I’ll never know, because he never did. Different times, different realities, different lives. Same problems.

  The haunting had faded, but it always comes back stronger and louder and fiercer each time. I could see them clearly now—obsession, depression, booze—but it didn’t matter. The demons were circling back. This time they wanted all of me.

  21

  East

  AFTER TWO YEARS OF MY LIFE AS A HORSE DENTIST AND GOALIE consultant, my old friend Rick Dudley called me up one day in 2002. He was the general manager of the Florida Panthers at the time, and he wondered if I’d be interested in meeting with Mike Keenan about the team’s vacancy for a goalie coach. I had applied for a position with the organization before, but it was already filled. When it opened up again, Duds gave me a shot at impressing Keenan, who would be making the choice.

  I flew out to Florida, nervous as anything. I walked in thinking, This is Iron Mike—this is going to be tough. It was just him and me in the interview. But it went unbelievably well—we just clicked. We talked hockey for a while and then went out to dinner. Turns out I had him at hello. They offered me the job a couple days later. They hired me on a consulting basis at first, so I shuttled back and forth between Idaho and Florida. It was a critical moment for my career. I’d be working with Roberto Luongo, one of the best young goalies in the game. You can’t get a better client than Lou. We hit it off right away.

  The Panthers were a bad team. Essentially, Luongo was our team. He was all we had. He faced an ungodly number of shots every night, and Keenan expected him to stop them all. When I decided to become a coach, I promised myself I wouldn’t forget what it was like to be a player. Some coaches forget what it’s like to play. Getting yelled and screamed at, getting ripped in the papers—it’s difficult for people to understand the amount of pressure these guys are under. Often, we forget that many of them are just kids.

  How do you know what you need to do with a guy? You form a relationship. That’s my coaching philosophy. I have to build trust. To know what makes them tick.

  I think my guys knew that I really cared. I wasn’t just doing drills. They knew that when they played badly, I felt bad for them, not for me. Well, I felt bad for me, too—I’m human, and I want to win. But I really cared about my guys.

  There’s so much pressure—from fans, media and management. When you get your ass reamed by the coach, or by the local columnist, it hurts. At least, it hurt me. That’s why I wanted to be the guy who remembered how it felt, how it tore your soul out.

  Players all say it doesn’t bug them, that they never read the papers. Bullshit. They all do. You know it’s there, and the curiosity can’t be avoided. You want to know what’s being said. That’s why I think having a coach who can relate to what you’re going through means a lot. When I played for Washington, Bryan Murray was tough, and it stung. He was a great coach, and I like him, but at the time—especially with all the shit I was going through—it really messed me up. For most coaches, that kind of feedback is rarely personal. But as a player, you’re thinking, He hates me. And now you’re struggling because you’re worried that the coach wants you gone. Sometimes, if you’re part of a staff, there’s not a lot you can say because you can’t undermine the head coach. But you can say, “Look, things aren’t going great, you’re getting your ass chewed, but you’re a good player, a good guy. Keep your head up.” I can tell a kid, “It’s not personal. He’s just trying to give you a kick in the ass.”

  So when I started working with the Panthers’ goalies, I believed a huge part of my job was to be a buffer. Good old Iron Mike was notorious for being hard on goalies. I get that coaches whine about goalies because most of them have never been goalies, so it’s tough for them to empathize. Head coaches have a lot going on, and when things don’t go the way they need them to, it’s their job to ask why. But a goalie can’t afford to be caught worrying about that shit.

  It was inevitable that I would have a run-in with Keenan. Louie hit a rough patch in mid-November through December. After each game, Keenan would get on me about him.

  “You talk to your boy?”

  “Yeah, I talked to him.”

  The next day, the same thing. “Goalie, you talk to your boy?” (That’s what he always called me—”Goalie.”)

  “Yes, I talked to him.”

  The next day: “Talk to your boy?”

  “Yes! I talked to him!”

  Keenan was the head coach and was under a shitload of pressure. I know he couldn’t keep track of the number of times he’d asked if I was doing my damn job, but it got annoying very quickly.

  He asked me again after the morning skate the next day. Luongo wasn’t playing poorly, but he wasn’t magnificent, which is an expectation that has followed the poor guy since the New York Islanders took him fourth overall in 1997.

  Once, when we were trailing after the first period, Keenan came into the coaches’ office between periods and laid into me.

  “Your boy there, did you talk to him?”

  “Yeah, I did. And you know what? Go fuck yourself. Worry about your team, your job, and let me worry about the fucking goalies!”

  The room went quiet. It was very early in the season. Part of me was just completely fed up with being asked if I was actually doing my job every goddamn day. But the other part of me realized he had a million things on his mind, and yeah, he has a right to expect the best from his players. Also, it’s Mike Keenan—you know what you’re getting. Cut him some slack. He was stressed because we were a terrible team and Louie was everything for us. I regretted the outburst immediately. I was certain I’d be fired.

  The whole time this was going on, I never went to Louie and said, “Hey, holy shit, Mike is concerned with your play.” Even after I told Mike off, I didn’t want to lay that on my goalie’s shoulders.

  We lost the game. Keenan and I didn’t talk afterwards, and I was sure I was about to get the axe. The phone rang in my hotel room just after 1 A.M. It was Keenan. Shit, here we go.

  “Hey,” he said. “What do you think of your goalie?”

  “I think he’s fucking good,” I said. “What do you think of your team?”

  “Ah, we’re horseshit,” he said.

  “No shit.”

  “We okay?”

  “Yeah, we’re okay,” I said. “We’re good.”

  And that was it. After that, he and I were golden. A short time later, we got pounded 12–2 in Washington one night and hopped on a plane to New Jersey right after the game. The team checked into the hotel around midnight. Keenan said, “Goalie, meet me down here in fifteen minutes.”

  He trusted my opinion on our goalie. He didn’t want to talk to anyone else about the game. We talk
ed at the pub for about five minutes, and then we were just bullshitting over beers.

  After Florida, Keenan always kept in touch, whenever either of us was looking for work or if something new started. Out of the blue, I’d just get an email: “Goalie, What are you doing? –Keenan.”

  I love Mike Keenan. He was always entertaining to work with. He and Duds used to go at it. Hockey is no fun when you’re not winning. Especially when you’re as competitive as Duds and Iron Mike.

  I could see the same kind of competitive determination in Roberto Luongo. I could just tell he was going to be one of the best goalies of his generation. He was a great student, a great kid. His work ethic was incredible, which is something I could relate to. I used to have to send him off the ice. We had a great relationship.

  He had great lateral movement, but he was never set. He could get from point A to point B faster than anyone, but he was never square and set for the shot. He worked so hard on that and was always receptive to my criticism.

  We spent a lot of time together, on and off the ice. He was kind of a quiet guy, but he had a great sense of humour. I don’t know how he handled the shit he went through with Vancouver, but I’m not surprised that he has come out on top. Not too many people could have done what he did with all the unfair criticism he received as a Canuck and the drawn-out situation with Cory Schneider.

  Goalies are a different breed. I know how much confidence factors into it. I understand the pressure that these guys are under. I’m in a position where I have two guys I take care of. I observe who is down, who is up and what they need to get back on track. I think people underestimate the amount of pressure goalies face. My self-worth was dictated by the quality of my last game. And that’s not right. If you have a bad game or let in a bad goal, you’re still a good person. But we don’t think that way. The focus on your play becomes microscopic. You can’t help but fall into that trap. Maybe when you go home and have a wife and kids and a life away from the rink, you can get out of it. But on the ice, your self-worth is based on how you play and what the coach and the media think. It’s not right, but that’s the way it is. And my job as a goalie coach is to help them get past that. I try to soften it for them. Tell them, “Hell, just go out and work hard. Don’t take what the coach says personally.” Trust me, there isn’t a physiological mindfuck that I haven’t battled with. I can relate to it all.