The Crazy Game

by Clint Malarchuk

  Some goalie coaches really upset me. They focus entirely on the technical components of the position but don’t address the psychological side. By the time a goalie gets to the NHL, they know all the technical stuff. They already have skill. Sure, you can always fine-tune, but you can’t overhaul the way a goalie plays the game. The mental stuff is what goalie coaches should be most concerned about.

  Coaches understand goaltending more than they used to. It’s a part of the game that has really changed over the past couple of decades. When I was in Washington, sharing the net with Pete Peeters, the coaches weren’t sure which one of us should start in the playoffs. Our goalie coach told me that one of the assistant coaches, Terry Murray, was worried about my ability to handle pressure because I used to isolate myself before games. I’d sit away from everyone else in the corner and be really quiet, thinking about the game. I really liked Terry, and I don’t want to rip him. But when I found out about that, I was upset and surprised. They were worried about me because I was sitting by myself and staring off into space? That’s what goalies do! What are you talking about? That’s not something you should discourage! The goalie is concentrating. He’s focusing. It’s the most essential part of the position. The goalie coach shouldn’t have told me what Terry said, but he should have explained to Terry how goalies work.

  There are some goalies who deal with the pre-game pressure by laughing and goofing around with a nervous energy. There are others who need to isolate themselves. I did both. I really needed to get centred and do all that mental stuff.

  Consistency is all mental. We all learned the physical stuff growing up. You can play well in one game, two games, three games—but how do you do it for forty or fifty in a row? That’s what separates the good goalies from great goalies. It takes remarkable mental resilience to achieve that kind of consistency. It’s the realm of guys like Patrick Roy and Martin Brodeur. If you were to take all the goalies in the NHL right now, I’ll bet their physical skill level is pretty much the same. There are a few elite exceptions, like the recently retired Miikka Kiprusoff, but the majority are on the same level. Only the ones with the toughest mental approach to the game rise above the others.

  To be honest, I think all goalies have OCD to a degree. The difference, I guess, is in how much they let it overtake their life. But the mind of a goalie is certainly obsessive. Think about all the stress at the NHL level. Your mind can do a lot of talking. When a goalie gets the wrong kind of shit stuck in his head, it becomes destructive in a hurry. And boy, can I relate to that. A goalie is going to go through some slumps, but if he doesn’t have someone there to cushion the blow and advocate for him with a coach who’s yelling and screaming about how much of a screw-up he is, that’s only going to worsen the pressure the goalie feels. A goalie can have a shitty month or even a shitty year. The job of a goalie coach, as I see it, is to be there to take the heat from the head coach and get the guy back on his game.

  In hockey, the easiest guy to point at is the goalie. You learn how true this is after playing a few years in the NHL, and if you’re going to get anywhere you just learn to ignore it, play through it, do whatever you have to do to stay focused. Because nobody—coaches, media, fans, anyone who hasn’t been an NHL goaltender—gets it. They don’t understand. And you can’t expect them to understand, because they’ve never done it. I’m sure quarterback coaches and pitching coaches can relate to what I’m saying. Everyone’s saying your guy threw the wrong pitch, made the wrong pass. Well, they don’t understand and you can’t expect them to.

  A good coach consciously reinforces what he wants the player’s unconscious mind to do. You’re constantly putting thoughts in your goalie’s ear: Keep this going. Just think about one game at a time. Don’t worry about the next one. You’ve got to fortify the notion that it’s just one game. As a goalie coach, you have to keep them thinking day to day, game to game, period to period, puck to puck, save to save.

  The job isn’t just about working with the starting guy, though. Being a backup is one of the toughest roles in the game. Every situation is different. The backup could easily be in the minors tomorrow, but there’s always the possibility of an injury to the starter and suddenly he becomes the number one guy for five months. But even then, the team might trade for some hotshot down the road. So you just tell them to keep doing what they’re doing. And if they’ve been playing well, they might worry that they’re just getting lucky. You have to put a stop to that. Goalies can’t control anything but the way they play. Play like it’s your last game and don’t worry about anything else. At the end of the season, I’d often talk with my goalies about the pressure they felt during the season. With the spotlight temporarily off, they could see the bigger picture. All the negative headlines, the jeers from fans, the impossible expectations of coaches—they just distract. My goalies would often come to an important realization: Are you kidding me? I wasn’t that bad.

  “No, no you weren’t,” I’d say. “But welcome to the NHL.”

  Florida was a lot of fun. It was a great coaching staff—we just clicked. We all had a good sense of humour. One night, we went to a bar and ran into Michael Moorer, the boxer. I didn’t recognize him, but our assistant coach, Steve Ludzik, did. Ludzy was a huge boxing fan. He was also a fan of winding me up. When I wasn’t paying attention, he went over to Moorer and asked him to have some fun with me. I was wearing a cowboy hat and boots, like I usually do. Moorer came over to me at the bar and said, “You’re a long way from home to be wearing a hat like that.” I had no idea who this guy was. I turned to face him. He was big, dressed in this black turtleneck with gold chains around his neck. I took my hat off and set it on the bar, getting ready to throw a punch. Then all the guys started cracking up. They stepped in and informed me I was about to fight the former heavyweight champion. I’m glad they told me before I did something stupid! He could have hurt me pretty bad. Moorer and his bodyguard hung out with us for the rest of the night. (I’m not sure why a guy that tough would need a bodyguard.) We went to a few more bars. Nobody messed with us.

  Even at the rink, we knew how to have a good time. Winning was serious business, but everything else was open season. My office at the arena was across from Dudley’s. One day, the owner, Alan Cohen, was in there talking to Duds, who could see me from his desk. So I did a striptease behind the owner’s back, peeling off the layers until I was completely naked and lying across my desk like a pinup girl. Duds had to bite his lip to keep from cracking up.

  I knew he’d get my humour. He’s one of the most serious guys I’ve met, but he’s also one of the quirkiest. When Duds was coaching in Buffalo, we’d check into these five-star hotels and he’d be all dressed up in a suit, but he’d always have these gross old sneakers tied to his bag. At least he had the decency to keep them separate from the rest of his clothes. He was always a fitness fanatic. He put in a post-game workout area with stationary bikes in this empty loft section at the old Aud. We were one of the first teams to do that kind of stuff. Now everyone does it. Remember, when I first started in Quebec, our post-game routine involved a fridge full of beer and a hot tub. When we were in San Diego, he had the team doing all this plyometric stuff. None of us had even heard about that stuff back then, and we were professional athletes. The man has always been a step ahead of everyone else.

  Duds also hated flying. We’d zigzag across the continent on these small chartered planes. Management always sat at the front of the plane (the way coaches do in minor hockey when teams travel by bus). But Duds always sat at the back of the plane, just sweating the whole time. Some of those flights were rough. We’d hit turbulence and hear him freaking out in the back—”Fuck! Get this thing down!” He’d just snap, gripping the headrest in front of him. The veins on his neck would bulge. I was worried he’d punch a hole in the wall and we’d all get sucked out.

  I’ve never backed down from a fight, but I think one reason I always respected Duds was that he could pound me if necessary. The stories about
his physical feats are boundless. One of the best is that he ripped a water fountain out of the wall when he was coaching the Detroit Vipers back in the mid-nineties. There was water pouring everywhere. It flooded the hall.

  In Florida, one of the drawers in my desk was jammed because Duds picked the desk up and slammed it when he was angry. It was this huge, heavy desk that I probably couldn’t lift. The drawer was jammed after that.

  One time at a Panthers rookie camp, a couple of players came out of the dressing rooms and were fighting in the hall after being kicked out of the game. I guess this pissed Duds off, so outside the dressing room he flipped over a pop machine and it smashed. It was the size of a refrigerator. There were cans of Coke and Sprite rolling down the hallway. Later, I was walking down the same hall with him and passed the pop machine.

  “I think that thing just shook a bit,” I said.

  The thing is, for a big guy who played a physical game, Rick hates goon hockey. He played tough but never coached like that. He has an intellectual approach to the game. He was smart enough to know what he had to do on the ice to stay in the league, and smart enough to see that he needed a different approach to be successful as a coach or general manager.

  Rick has one of the sharpest hockey minds out there. He watches more hockey, at all levels, than anyone I’ve ever met. As general manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning from 1999 to 2002, he built the team that won the Cup in 2004. He builds teams, and then he gets bored! He was a huge part of everything the Chicago Blackhawks have achieved, including their Cup win in 2010, after he left his job as assistant GM to take over the Atlanta Thrashers. But he gets little credit for that. He’s always on the go, building a winner and then moving on to the next challenge.

  Most importantly, though, he’s always had my back. If it weren’t for him, I’d never have had the chance to share this story.

  22

  South

  MY THIRD MARRIAGE LASTED SEVEN YEARS, WHICH WAS A RECORD for me. We didn’t have any huge fights or an explosive end. It was just one of those things where life slowly pulls you apart, and you realize that, for all the good it brought, the relationship was just coming to an end. We had a beautiful daughter, Dallyn, who would always bind us together. But my wife and I weren’t in love anymore. In fact, it wasn’t until we decided to divorce that I had the chance to find out what head-over-heels, knock-you-on-your-ass love actually felt like.

  And the 2004 NHL lockout is the reason I found it—because that’s how I met Joanie Goodley.

  The Florida Panthers sent me to San Antonio to work with the Rampage, their farm team in the American Hockey League. Joanie was the skating director and figure skating coach at the arena where the Rampage practised. She had just moved to Texas from Minnesota to take the job and be closer to her parents, who had retired nearby.

  I noticed her right away. It was impossible not to. She was stunning. She was in her late thirties when we first met, but with no exaggeration, she looked at least a decade younger. And she had the sweetest, kindest heart. I had never met a woman like Joanie before. She was perfect.

  There was an office in the arena with a window that looked outdoors. One day, before we’d really met, I was walking out to the parking lot with a group of coaches and, passing the window, I looked up and saw her. She was in the arena pro shop talking to a friend. I just stopped and stared. She looked up at me.

  “Wow,” I said. She read my lips through the window.

  The next day, I went into the office to apologize for coming off rude—but really, I was just looking for an excuse to talk to her.

  “Not at all,” Joanie smiled. “It made my day.”

  Soon we were dating. We hit it off like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Joanie brought the best out in me. I was kind and caring and thoughtful. She became my best friend. Six months later, that February, I proposed to her at the San Antonio Rodeo. She had been teaching at the skating school all day, and I picked her up and surprised her with a last-minute date to the rodeo. Joanie loves horses almost as much as I do. (Her mom had always told her to move to Texas and meet a nice western cowboy. She couldn’t have expected that when she did, he’d be from Canada.) At the rodeo, I took her down through the stables. She already knew I had studied as an equine dentist, but she didn’t know much about it. She thought I was lying. As we walked through the barn, a lady led her horse in. I stopped her.

  “Excuse me. I’m a horse dentist—do you mind if I take a look inside your horse’s mouth?”

  “Sure,” she said. “No problem.”

  So I did a quick check. “Oh, my—I found something on his tooth,” I said, and pulled Joanie over to take a look.

  There was a ring around one of his canine teeth—I’d managed to slip it on without Joanie noticing.

  Joanie was completely surprised. I pulled the ring off the tooth, got down on one knee and asked Joanie to marry me. It was probably the first successful proposal that involved a horse’s tooth.

  “What if the horse had swallowed it?” she asked me later.

  I hadn’t thought of that.

  Everything was perfect. Even though the NHL players were locked out and the future of my job with the Florida Panthers seemed a bit uncertain, circumstances had led me to San Antonio and Joanie. I’d been in several terrible relationships in the past, but Joanie was different from any woman I’d ever met. And she had an incredible family. I got along really well with her parents. And she loved that I loved my mother, though they hadn’t met yet. After Dudley met Joanie for the first time, he looked at me with a serious face and said, “Don’t screw this one up.” I promised him I wouldn’t.

  Over the years, I’ve lost a lot of money to divorce—legal fees, alimony and child support. It almost wipes you out. My illness affected my relationships, for sure. My ex-wives were living with a man who was going a hundred miles per hour. I was incredibly obsessive and jealous. Looking back, I realize it was mostly my fault, though I don’t think they understood what I was going through. And I can’t blame them for that. Very few people understand mental illness, and when you’re married to someone who suffers from a disease you can’t see or comprehend, it’s almost impossible to empathize.

  I have three wonderful kids from those three relationships. There are a lot of things in my life I would change if I could, but while my first three marriages weren’t with the right women, I wouldn’t change a thing if it meant not having Kelli, Jed and Dallyn in my world. They mean everything to me.

  As soon as my life seemed to be more perfect than I ever thought it could be, all of the jagged, broken pieces of me started to fall apart. I was on Zoloft at the time, but I hadn’t seen a psychiatrist in years. The last doctor I had seen about my condition was Dr. Stahl, way back in San Diego. I thought I was cured and stopped taking my medication as frequently as I was supposed to. It was a gradual decline; I didn’t feel myself slipping.

  When Joanie and I first started dating, we talked to each other about our pasts. She knew I’d been married three times and had three kids. She told me that she had been living in Minnesota for years with this terrible guy who fancied himself a bodybuilder but was actually just fat. It had been a terrible, very abusive relationship. But all I heard was “bodybuilder.” So she’s into bodybuilders.

  My mind was drifting into unstable territory. I’d gone through this in every relationship I’d ever been in. With Joanie, it wasn’t that bad at first. But it grew and grew and got really bad. This guy became an obsession to me.

  A couple months after I met Joanie, I went on a trip to Toronto, and the airline lost my luggage—with my medication in it. I didn’t have it for four days, by the end of which I couldn’t function. As the days went on, I started to panic. The night before my flight home, I had an anxiety attack. I couldn’t leave the hotel room. It’s difficult to explain to someone who has never gone through it. But I wasn’t capable of thinking clearly. I couldn’t sleep. My flight was at 8 A.M. and I tried to go to bed, but I just lay ther
e awake, spinning—Can’t sleep, can’t sleep, can’t sleep. I can’t remember much of this shit; it’s part of the fog. At one point, I got up, took a shower, pulled on my boots, packed my bags and sat on my bed. It was probably midnight. My flight wasn’t for hours. I just sat there on the bed. I didn’t watch television. I just sat there and panicked about missing my flight.

  Morning came and I couldn’t leave the hotel room. I didn’t want to go to the airport. I didn’t want to go to the lobby. I missed my flight. This will sound ridiculous to most of you, but anyone who has ever experienced this kind of fear and confusion will understand how debilitating my anxiety was. Because of my past experience, I knew I was sliding—and quick. When it does come, it comes quickly. And now it was day four without medicine. I had my wits about me enough to tell myself, You have to get a plane tomorrow. Get your goddamn self together.

  It was kind of like in that movie What About Bob? when Bill Murray couldn’t get on an elevator or walk down the hall. Everything was “Baby steps, baby steps”—so he’d take little tiny steps. My experience wasn’t far off from that. But really, it’s hard to explain OCD. Why does somebody wash their hands constantly? They’re clean, right? But no, they’re not—they never are. When I was a kid, I always wanted reassurance from my mother—Do you love me? Do you love me?—and she’d say, “Yes, of course,” and for some reason that made me feel relieved. But only for a short time. I was like that with my relationship with Joanie at this point. We’d only been together for a few months and I was constantly worried—Are you mad at me? Are you mad at me? And I’d be so relieved that she wasn’t, until I started worrying again that she was. They call it the doubter’s disease. It’s the things that you really care about that make you obsessive.