by Grant Fuhr
Even Boston’s management was feeling the nerves as the series headed to the Aud in Buffalo. “On the basis of the first two games,” said Boston president and general manager Harry Sinden, “I think we should win in Buffalo. But I thought we should win here, too.” Sinden’s caution was well-founded. Stabilized by Grant, the Sabres defeated the Bruins in overtime in Game 3 and 4, shutting the door on the Bruins’ big shooters in extra time both nights. It was the Sabres’ pugnacious forward Brad May’s “May Day” goal (immortalized by Buffalo announcer Rick Jeanneret) that sealed the improbable sweep. Buffalo moved on to face the Montreal Canadiens in the Adams final, while the despondent Bruins dealt with their earliest playoff exit since 1987.
Then the old injury jinx cropped up again for Grant. A groin injury incurred in the Bruins series seemed to hamper him in the next round against Montreal, though no one else could resist the amazing karma of the Canadiens that spring either. The Habs, on their way to an unlikely Stanley Cup win behind their superb goalie Patrick Roy, won all four games against Buffalo by scores of 4–3—three of them ending in overtime (the Canadiens went a perfect 10–0 in OT that spring, a mark that may never be matched). While Grant lost the showdown with eventual Conn Smythe winner Roy, it seemed his performance had earned him a new home in western New York. Even more important, it had restored his confidence. Soon he began sporting a mask that had five Stanley Cups painted on it, one for each of his triumphs. “It’s a reminder to me,” Grant told writers. “But mostly it’s a reminder to everyone else.”
In addition, playing for Muckler, despite his reputation as a grumpy disciplinarian, was still a comfort zone for Grant, and his new teammates began looking to him as a conduit to their coach.
Grant:
The first full year I was in Buffalo was the first they brought in the new NHLPA rules restricting how many hours you could be at the rink. Muck’s old-school. That rule was not going to be a big seller, and we knew that. The first couple of days, we would practise for an hour, skate for an hour, stretch for an hour. The guys were going down with sore groins. They were getting tired. Guys I talked to, they were just running out of gas three or four days into camp. Some of the players thought that maybe somebody should mention to Muck that the guys are falling apart.
Being the player with longest experience with Muck, they asked if I minded having a word with him. I didn’t have a problem with that, even though I knew it wasn’t going to be a very cheerful conversation. I said, “I think the guys are done here.” I got the quick “you’re undermining my authority” speech, and we were out of the office in about two minutes.
I was giving him feedback he didn’t want to hear. Which I understood. At the same time, Muck will listen. He won’t tell you he’s listening, and he won’t ever tell you that you were right. But he does listen, and he was a good players’ coach. He just would not ever let you know that it was your idea.
Our practices got better after that. Just when you started to get too comfortable, you’d have another one of those practice days, but it wasn’t every day. So maybe I had some effect.
Settled in Buffalo with future wife Candace after another divorce, Grant sounded like he was planning to set down roots in the community. “I figure I’ll play five or seven more years,” he told SI. “I still have a few more people I want to torment.” Once acclimated, he set about finding a place to indulge his other sporting passion, golf. Getting onto the links helped him escape from the pressures of his job in net. But that first summer, an incident on the golf course would thrust him into uncomfortable territory as a national symbol of racial tension.
Grant had almost always shied away from addressing his place as a minority in a white-dominated sport. Generally he ignored the attention of those who called him a hero for all black hockey players while still recognizing the examples of Willie O’Ree and Mike Marson, who’d blazed a path before him.
Grant:
It was the same when people wanted to write stories about me being a black player. It was more of a story to them than it was to me. The same with the guys on the team: it was more an outside story than it was an inside story. Some of the US cities, if you go down to Buffalo, Washington, and some of the different cities, it was way more of a story. But in Canada, not so much.
Grant’s colour, however, was an inescapable fact of his life at a time when political correctness was less prevalent than it is now. Some of his teammates in Edmonton had nicknamed him KoKo (after the WWF wrestler KoKo B. Ware), but Grant considered this part of the jocular humour of the dressing room, where everyone is teased. Other letters and comments from outside the room had not been as kind. Grant sloughed them off. Thanks to Bob and Betty, Grant saw the world as a place where character, not colour, defined you. While current standards would not tolerate the hazing Grant faced, he remains unaffected by the treatment and forgiving of those who teased him.
Grant:
I figured I could waste a lot of energy getting upset about things like that. But what was the point? At the end of the day I didn’t want to be judged by anything but the way I played—what kind of teammate I was. So I left all that stuff to other people.
Unfortunately, there seemed no escaping race as a factor in his experience with the Transit Valley Country Club in the Buffalo suburb of Amherst, New York. And this time Grant would be less forgiving. Alex Mogilny, Dale Hawerchuk and several Sabre team officials were members of the club, and it seemed a natural place for Grant to obtain a membership—until he learned from second-hand sources that he would not be offered a place at Transit Valley. Grant was told the rejection was because he was black.
Grant:
A bunch of guys had joined Transit Valley. I applied there and got denied for no real reason. Then I found out what the reason was. That was kind of the first experience of that. It was like, “If that’s the way they think, that’s fine.” Which other people there took a lot more seriously than I did. If they don’t want you there, then you don’t really want to be there.
In an interview shortly afterwards, Grant implied that his race might have been an issue in the decision, and the story hit the papers in Buffalo, generating a national firestorm. A statement from the club insisted Grant’s attempt to gain membership was rejected due to “incomplete and incorrect” information on the application form. However, club officials refused to specify what that information was, citing that membership information was deemed confidential. The club received a huge backlash from the media and public, with accusations of racism and discrimination being levied against them. The fact the club had no black members stirred up the critics further. The week after the controversy erupted, the Transit Valley club was defaced when vandals broke onto the course and burned a swastika onto the 14th green. The club’s office received a barrage of bomb threats, and threatening phone calls alleging the president was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
There were also rumblings that the other Sabres personnel would cancel their memberships in protest if it were deemed racial bias had anything to do with Fuhr’s rejection. Grant was appreciative of the support. He noted, “I’ve met a lot of nice members [from Transit Valley], and I feel bad for them. They all get painted with the same brush. That’s unfortunate, because it’s not all the members. That’s what I’d like to emphasize.” The club apologized and offered him a membership after all. The apology was accepted, but Grant eventually declined the offer after being admitted to the Fox Valley Club in nearby Lancaster, New York.
Grant:
They later came back and offered me a membership. I didn’t think it was appropriate at that time: it was easier to just let bygones be bygones and stay where I was and play. Actually, we lived in a neighbourhood in Buffalo on the Country Club of Buffalo which, at that point, was a traditionally white golf club also. They’re very friendly people. I had no problem going out there as a guest and playing. They wanted me to join and would have been happy to have me as a member.
Not surprisingly, the Transit Val
ley Country Club suspended its membership committee and formed a new committee to review the club’s bylaws and constitution, specifically to incorporate anti-discriminatory language. With a statement that included the line “The Transit Valley Country Club does not discriminate based on race, sex, religion or ethnicity,” it was obvious they were conducting heavy damage control.
Grant:
It stirred up some feelings in people in Buffalo. I actually wanted no part of it. Didn’t really want to be part of the controversy. It was easier just to go to another golf club and play. Other people wanted it to go further along than it really needed to go, and I had no interest in doing that. I’d much rather just find another place where they’d rather have me play.
While Grant was a reluctant symbol of racial outrage, others took up his cause. Seeing the platform that Grant had as a black athlete in a white sport, they jumped on the incident. But Grant had always been unwilling to lead any crusades. When Toronto Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard had passed on Grant in the 1981 draft to select Jim Benning, Leafs legend Johnny Bower (then a scout for the team) said, “He was my number one choice. But the organization felt that we couldn’t draft a black player at that time. I told the team that we would regret it if we don’t choose him. And I stand by it to this day.” Ironically, Grant was a Leafs fan and would willingly play for Toronto after Ballard died, but he never criticized the Maple Leafs for the decision.
Then in 1988, Bob White, a coach and mentor to many black athletes in Montreal, used Grant to make a point about racial discrimination in Canada. “If Fuhr had been born in Quebec, he might not have made it to the NHL,” White says. “You can be recruited with a mask on, like Grant Fuhr. He was lucky he was out west, outside of Quebec. And it’s good he wears the mask.” A spokesman for the National Institute Against Prejudice and Violence said Fuhr was an easy target for prejudice. “They pick an acceptable target, someone they think is okay to treat as a non-person.”
Grant:
It wasn’t like it was a crisis for me. My parents taught me that race doesn’t define you as a person. My parents had always brought me up that everybody’s the same. When you play hockey, you’re not black or white. A person on the street’s another person on the street. Everybody puts their pants on the same; everybody puts shirts on the same. You treat everybody the same. Back home, I think there were two other black kids at school—a couple of brothers, Donovan and Percy Whitaker—that was it. There were some Native kids in the school, and I played ball with and hockey with them. Everybody knew you were either a hockey player, or ball player, or you were one of the kids. There was never anything about race.
Still, working in America for the first time was an illuminating experience for the product of sleepy Spruce Grove, Alberta.
Grant:
It was also my first experience playing in the States. It was kind of an eye-opener that, okay, everything you see on TV is actually true. It exists. The first thing I really noticed was when a friend from Edmonton had come down: we were sitting in a restaurant having breakfast, and he’d ordered brown toast. In Canada, you order brown toast, everybody knows you want whole wheat. Everybody got their breakfast and finished for half an hour, he hadn’t gotten his breakfast yet. There was this older black lady who was serving us, she didn’t take the order of brown toast very well. We had no idea. Nobody even thought twice about it.
All of a sudden, you knew you were in a different element. Words had to be chosen a little more carefully. What’s status quo at home is not status quo there. We were a little more careful about those things when we got to Buffalo.
In my opinion, it’s more an American deal that race means something—it means more there. Fortunately in the sports world, you’re an athlete first and foremost. Society should be more that way.
Though Grant is idolized first and foremost for his on-ice achievements by goalies of all backgrounds, young black players who followed him to the NHL, such as Jarome Iginla (from St. Albert, Alberta) and Fred Brathwaite, made a point of acknowledging his importance as a role model.
Grant:
Fred called me when he came up in Edmonton. He wanted to ask my permission to wear No. 31 with the Oilers. I said it was okay. I knew Jarome from when he was four. His uncle was the manager and he was the bat boy on our team. Jarome was always a good pro. He still puts the time in, puts the effort in, he’s good with the kids and that’s what you really love to see.
After his playoff heroics for Buffalo in 1993, Grant thought he had found a place where he could become comfortable in the starter’s role for awhile. For a third time, however, he was about to find himself playing the warm-up act to a younger player—this time, to one who would eventually win a stunning six Vezina trophies. In the 1992 off-season, the Sabres had made a trade for Czech phenom Dominik Hasek, soon to be known as “The Dominator.”
Grant:
Dom had started to play well and was starting to make his presence known. I had seen him from the Canada Cup in 1987 when he almost beat us singlehandedly for the Czechs. You knew Dom was good from that game alone. There was no question. Dom was great in Chicago: I remember that great breakaway save he made on Mario [Lemieux] in the 1992 playoffs. It’s just the Blackhawks had Eddie Belfour. Jimmy Waite was there; Greg Millen was there. Dom didn’t have the opportunity to play, and they had a lack of coaching. It just didn’t fit. He got shipped to the Sabres in a trade for almost nothing, and was already in Buffalo when I got there. Bet Chicago wishes it could have that one back.
As was often the case, Grant’s approach to conditioning didn’t help his case as the starter. In 1993–94, Grant came to his first full Buffalo camp well above the weight the Sabres wanted, exasperating Muckler. “One thing that maybe Grant doesn’t realize is that he’s not 20 years old anymore, he’s 30 years old,” sniffed his coach. “It takes a little bit longer to get the conditioning up. He knows that he’s going to pay the price. And we’ll get him in shape.”
Grant was still of the opinion that he knew best how to get Grant Fuhr ready to play, however. But as Muckler predicted, the price for carrying excess weight into the season was recurring troubles with Grant’s ever-worsening knees. While Grant attempted to get himself back to playing shape, the lithe Hasek, a training fanatic, stole the spotlight and the No. 1 job en route to the first of his Vezina Trophy seasons. The limber Czech was also a runner-up for the Hart Trophy that year. Even though Grant enjoyed sharing a Jennings Trophy with Hasek for the league’s lowest team GAA, his numbers that season were mediocre by his own standards—a 13–12–3 record with a bloated 3.68 GAA and .883 save percentage. Hasek, meanwhile, went 30–20–6 in 58 appearances, and had a stunning GAA of 1.95 (the lowest mark in three decades) with seven shutouts and a .930 save percentage (a record at the time). Even harder for Grant to swallow, Hasek started for Buffalo come playoff time and played brilliantly in a seven-game opening-round defeat at the hands of the New Jersey Devils.
Grant:
I got to play for a year in front of him, and shared the job the second year. I got to see him play every day. Phenomenal work ethic. Every shot meant something even in practice. He took it to another level, which was great to watch. He understood the game better than most guys I played with. He was a student of it and wanted to know certain things. He was actually a lot of fun to play with: in fact, he reminds me of [Miikka] Kiprusoff a little. Kipper and Dom would be guys who had the athletic style—not the pure butterfly. Kipper was a little more in control than Dom. Even though he looked like he was all over the place, he was in pretty good control. You’d see him make a lot of second and third saves that most guys couldn’t get.
Although Hasek’s extraordinary rise and starring role in the playoffs made Grant feel expendable after the season, decisions about Grant’s future weren’t uppermost in anyone’s mind—at least not right away. In September 1994, the NHL owners invoked their first player lockout, a labour stoppage that stretched until February 1995. During the lockout, commissioner G
ary Bettman prohibited teams from making trades or signing players. But when hockey finally started again, the Sabres had a problem to face: they couldn’t afford to pay two starting goalies the market value created by the new collective agreement. In the past, salaries and bonuses had typically been tied to team goals. But with salaries shooting upward in this new NHL economy, the criteria for getting paid was slowly morphing, and goalies were now being judged more on individual statistics than on wins or losses.
Grant:
You had to get your numbers down now. Save percentage. Goals against average. I still said that the only thing that mattered was whether you won or lost, but now all of a sudden, come contract time, everybody wanted numbers. You could plead your case like, “I won X number of games, lost X number of games,” and they’d sit there and go, “Well, look at the other numbers you have.” It didn’t matter. “Would you prefer me to have great numbers and split the wins and losses?” “That’s not important.” Growing up through sports, I thought the winners usually get rewarded, the losers don’t. I think it’s still important. But this was a different philosophy entering the game at that point.
Adjusting to the new reality—and the spiking salaries—Grant drove himself to be in better shape to extend his career. As play resumed in 1995, he began using aqua aerobics as a way to stay fit, even though he couldn’t swim. As Grant explained to the late Jim Kelley of the Buffalo News about his workout regimen: “I had to decide if I still wanted to play in the National Hockey League and, if I did, at what level. Once I decided that I did want to keep playing, I knew I had to do something to make sure that I could.… There are some people in Buffalo and in the organization that feel they made a mistake in getting me,” he added. “I want to prove them wrong.”
