Perhaps the best aspect of my move to Massachusetts was my decision to play at Thayer Academy, where I met my wife, Tracy, and my lifelong friend Tony Amonte. Tony and I lit it up at Thayer in terms of offensive production. Our game was built on speed, and there weren’t many defences that could keep up with us.
It is anybody’s guess whether Tony or I was the faster skater, but I’m going to say it was Tony because of the bizarre story of his broken leg. As a Thayer freshman, he had broken his leg during a game. The break was severe enough that there was concern about whether he would still be the same player. It was broken badly enough that he missed a month and a half of school. People wondered whether his skating would be the same. It wasn’t; it was better. After the injury, he became an amazing skater. He was a powerful strider. No one should have been surprised because he was such a hard worker.
It was costly to attend Thayer Academy, and Tony and his brother Rocco had their own landscaping business to raise their own money. When Tony wasn’t playing hockey, he was working. Rocco also played college hockey at Lowell. Tony wasn’t the best athlete in the Amonte family. His sister Kelly was an unbelievable lacrosse player, and today she coaches at Northwestern.
On the ice, Tony and I had great fucking chemistry. As a sophomore, I played 24 games and had 31 goals and 34 assists for 65 points. Tony had 57 points on 25 goals and 32 assists. As a junior, I played 24 games and had 34 goals and 50 assists for 84 points. Tony had 68 points on 30 goals and 38 assists. The third man on our line was Danny Green, a quality high school player who is now an attorney.
But what I remember most about our days at Thayer is how much fun we had off the ice. Tony and I had our version of mild hazing for the rookie players when we were there. We held naked cookie races. In the dressing room, the freshmen had to place a cookie between their ass cheeks and scoot across the floor without dropping the cookie. The loser had to eat the cookies. It was a lot more fun than it sounds in writing.
Today, I’m a guy who thinks he has a fashion sense. But when I was in high school, I was the worst fucking dresser in Massachusetts. I regularly wore this ugly pink, fuzzy sweater that looked like something Dr. Huxtable would have worn on The Cosby Show. The sweater had threads hanging off it like split ends. Mallgrave attended St. Paul’s Academy, and he was always razzing me that my entire wardrobe came from the Sears catalogue. Everyone always kidded me about my sweater.
One day at practice, Tony was using a blowtorch to work on his hockey stick. He turned to talk to me as I entered the room, and the flame of his blowtorch reached the threads of my sweater, and suddenly they were on fire. The flames climbed up my sweater and singed my eyebrows before they fucking leaped over my head and evaporated. The threads were like wicks, and the flames went out as soon as they burned down.
Although it seems like a scary situation, the two of us just fucking laughed hysterically for a very long time.
Tony has the most infectious laugh you will ever witness. When he laughs, it seems as if he is out of control. His laughter makes you laugh. Our laughfest over my singed eyebrows didn’t come close to matching Tony’s greatest cascade of laughter. That would occur a few years later, when we were teammates on the Chicago Blackhawks. We decided to see the movie Dumb and Dumber. Early in that flick, Tony started laughing and couldn’t stop. His laughter became so outrageously loud and funny that everyone in the theatre was laughing at him, instead of at the movie. I was in stitches.
Tony was also with me when I got my first tattoo, of the Tasmanian Devil holding a hockey stick. We were 16 at the time, way too young for me to be getting ink on my body.
Although Mallgrave and I went to different schools, we remained friends because he would stay with us in the summer—we played hockey together in the summer leagues. He would play on a line with Amonte and me. One of our favourite memories is of the time I tried to fix up Mallgrave with Tracy Vazza, the woman who would eventually become my wife. I’ve known Tracy since I was about 14, but I initially didn’t view her as a potential soulmate. At the time, she seemed out of my league. I wasn’t the most confident person on the planet when I was in prep school. She was a grade ahead of me, and she was far more socially active than I was. She was into fashion, and the only fashion I was concerned about was how I looked in a hockey jersey.
At the time, I was trying to date Tracy’s friend, Martine Sifakis. It seemed it would be in my best interest if I could get Tracy and Matt together.
We were driving on Route 3 in Massachusetts en route to the arena for a game, and I told him, “Matt, I’m going to hook you up with this hot, awesome girl named Tracy.” Just as I said this, a Porsche flew past us at about 90 miles per hour, coming back from Cape Cod. It was Tracy, behind the wheel of her mom’s car. “That’s her,” I said as the sports car zoomed ahead.
We laughed then, and we still laugh about it today.
Tracy has always said that it didn’t make any sense to her when she was introduced to me as Thayer’s new hockey star. She didn’t know much about the sport, but her brothers had both played at Thayer. Based on her brothers, Rick and Stephen, and their teammates, Tracy’s impression was that all hockey players were rough and tumble and aggressive. I didn’t fit that description. She considered me shy. When she tells that story to people who know me now, they find it amazingly funny.
“My brothers would fight someone on the street,” Tracy has told me, “and you seemed like a wimp. I wondered, ‘Who is this kid?’”
Anyone who knew us both would have said that Tracy was rebellious and I was straitlaced. Tracy dated a guy who wasn’t from Thayer, someone her parents didn’t like. She liked to host parties and attend parties; I was the kid who stayed home on a Friday night because I wanted to be well rested for a hockey tournament.
Tracy always says our relationship happened because she pursued it. We were friends for a couple of years before we started to date. We were always around each other. Amonte was actually dating Tracy’s close friend Laurie Pfeffer, who is now Tony’s wife. Laurie’s parents and Tracy’s parents were close friends. Laurie and Tracy used to take baths together when they were toddlers. Then, one day, Tracy and I became a couple. It just kind of happened. One minute we were talking after a hockey game, and the next we were making out at a party. Now, 25 years later, we are still together, married for almost two decades, with two great children, Brandi and Brett.
If you ask Tracy why she decided to make the first move, she will say “because Jeremy was just so flipping nice.” I hope people still say that about me, because that has always been my objective. I’ve always tried to treat people with respect, and I try to be courteous to people I meet. What I liked about Tracy, besides the fact that she was hot, was the fact that she is a very smart, strong woman. That would become increasingly important to me as we started to navigate through life as adults.
Initially, Richard Vazza, Tracy’s dad, had doubts about whether I was the right fit for his daughter. Mr. Vazza was a highly successful real estate developer who lived in style and comfort with his wife and five children. He placed a high value on ambition and education, and he wondered whether I would have either of those items when I was an adult.
Tracy still didn’t know much about professional hockey at that point in our relationship, and when I told her that I thought I would be drafted early in the 1988 NHL draft, she didn’t know what to think about it. When she mentioned to her dad my expectation of being drafted, he told her not to become too excited.
“Every kid wants to get drafted into the NHL, and few actually do,” he said. Although Mr. Vazza had never seen me play, I’m sure he looked at my scrawny physique and figured I was confusing my daydreams with reality.
One evening, I was eating with the Vazza clan at a family dinner when the subject of college came up.
“I’m not sure that I’m going to end up in college,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Tracy’s mom asked.
“I think I can make it in the NHL,”
I answered.
Tracy’s dad looked across the table at me as if I had just committed a felony in his presence. “Son,” he said, “you had better think about an education, because the chances of you making the NHL probably aren’t as good as you think they are.”
Later that night, Tracy told me that when I was in the bathroom, her dad asked where our relationship was going.
“We are 17, Dad,” Tracy had said. “We aren’t getting married tomorrow.”
But he still wanted to make it clear that he was concerned about what kind of potential mate I would make for his daughter. Tracy was an accomplished equestrian rider with Olympic aspirations, and her dad had just spent $250,000 on a quality horse for her.
“The boy is going nowhere,” Mr. Vazza told Tracy. “He is never going to be able to afford another horse for you.”
I wondered why it was deathly quiet when I returned from the bathroom.
* * *
Marrying Tracy was the best decision I ever made, and the second-best decision was hiring attorney Neil Abbott as my agent. Like my wife, Neil was with me through richer and poorer, and through sickness and health, during my NHL career.
At a time when many agents were knocking at my door, Neil seemed like the right fit for me. He knew the game because he was a former player, having played college hockey at Colgate from 1971 to 1975. Mike Milbury was his teammate there. As a lawyer, he knew the law. Because he was also working with NFL players, he knew the ins and outs of negotiating and injuries. He knew how to deal with American prep school players because he had represented Brian Lawton when he was the NHL’s first-overall pick in 1984.
More importantly, Neil had a sincerity about him that convinced my family that his objective would always be to do what was in my best interest.
As it turned out, we were right in our assessment. Neil took care of my contract issues, my legal issues, and often some of my personal issues. He seemed more like a friend, or an older brother, than an agent. He was never the kind of agent who tells clients only what they want to hear. His opinions were always well reasoned, and his advice was always straight to the point. If he believed I was making a mistake, he told me. He didn’t varnish his words to make me feel better. I’ve always respected him for that approach. When you are taking a cut of an athlete’s salary, I think it is human nature to not want to rock the boat with that athlete. Neil would tip my boat over if he felt I needed it.
He had formed a partnership with Gus Badali, who at the time represented Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Steve Yzerman.
Neil was always well versed in injuries and public relations; throughout my career, if I was hurt, Neil always knew who should be called. If I created a messy situation with my mouth, he served as the cleanup crew. Neil could contain the contamination before it spread too far.
“Neil is too smart for the business he is in,” Duberman always says. “This business is not rocket science, and Neil could have been a rocket scientist. He is very intelligent and weird at the same time. He is an abstract thinker.”
The bottom line for me is that Neil always had my back, through bad times and good ones.
In 1982, Neil represented Normand Léveillé, who received his full contract and benefits after he was stricken and paralyzed while playing for the Bruins in October 1982. In 1989, Neil was co-counsel when Glen Seabrooke sued the Philadelphia Flyers doctor for malpractice over treatment he received. Former first-round pick Seabrooke was awarded more than $5 million in damages. It may still be the largest sports injury case ever.
It was at Thayer that I met coach Arthur Valicenti, who helped ready me to play for Mike Keenan. When I met Keenan for the first time, his ability to intimidate reminded me of Valicenti. He was tough, and he looked like a fucking Mafia crime boss. Maybe that’s why I didn’t like looking him in the eye when he was yelling at me.
Valicenti also coached football, and I begged him to let me play wide receiver on his team. But he would only let me serve as the placekicker because he was afraid I might get hurt for hockey season. The following season, Amonte replaced me as the kicker.
During my freshman year at Thayer Academy, I was still playing part time for the New Jersey Rockets. I essentially played before and after my prep school tournament, but Coach Valicenti and our family had a disagreement about one tournament in which the Rockets wanted me to play in North Bay, Ontario.
The disagreement was simple: Coach Valicenti said I couldn’t play in that tournament, and we decided to go anyway and not tell him. Remember, this was before the Internet. This was before every breath a young premium draws is recorded on YouTube. This was before players were committing to colleges at age 15.
Our trip to North Bay was scheduled carefully to make sure we could fly from Boston to Ottawa to North Bay and back again in time for me to be at school Monday morning. Even planning for the Rockets to make the tournament final, we felt like it would be no problem getting home on time.
Our mistake was that we didn’t count on a winter storm that forced our flight from North Bay to Ottawa to be cancelled. Undaunted, my dad rented a car and we drove through ice and snow. The trip should have taken four and a half hours. Instead, it required 10 hours of scary driving. But we made our connection in Ottawa, and I was in school the next morning and at practice on time, comfortable in my belief that Coach Valicenti would never know.
But when I showed up at practice, Valicenti knew every detail from the tournament.
“About 15 scouts called me about you,” Valicenti said. We realized then that it was no longer possible for me to hide at a tournament.
Despite my gaudy numbers and the attention I was receiving, it wasn’t really until after my freshman season at Thayer Academy that it seemed reasonable to dream about being an NHL player. Before then, my family believed I was a better soccer player than a hockey player. On many weekends, I would head home from New Jersey and then go directly to a soccer game.
In Virginia, I had played AAA travel soccer, and I had a knack for finding space on the soccer field. I actually took some of the tactics that worked for me on the pitch and applied them to hockey. Soccer is about anticipating where the seams of the defensive coverage are going to be and sliding into those areas to receive a pass. My father is a very analytical man, and he and I would talk constantly about understanding where I needed to be in order to be successful.
There was truthfully not much discussion about me playing in the NHL until Thayer Academy played undefeated Avon Old Farms for the New England Prep School Championships in my freshman year. It was estimated that there were about 300 NHL scouts, major junior scouts and college coaches there, mostly to look at Brian Leetch, who was Avon Old Farms’ best player. Leetch had 94 points that season, and Avon Old Farms was heavily favoured. But when the game was over, we had won, and Amonte and I had two goals and two assists each.
After that game, my life changed dramatically. My father was surrounded by scouts and coaches. “It was like I was standing in Best Buy at five o’clock in the morning on Black Friday,” my dad recalled about that day. “I was surrounded.”
I was the hot item, and it seemed like every junior team in Canada called me. One call I did take was from then-Edmonton Oilers star Wayne Gretzky, who owned the Hull Olympiques of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. His general manager, Charlie Henry, reached out first and said Gretzky wanted to talk with us about the possibility of me playing in Hull. He met my family for breakfast when the Oilers were in Boston and brought us down to the dressing room in the Boston Garden. Gretzky was quite persuasive about the benefits of playing junior hockey, but the bottom line was that Wally and Jo Roenick were concerned that if I went off to play junior hockey, I would pay no attention to my high school studies. They probably were correct in that assessment.
The interest the NHL had in me was mind-boggling. In my second year at Thayer, I was playing in a summer pro-amateur league and had games on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Tuesday, my dad gave me money to
go to the movies. Ten minutes after he dropped me off, the phone rang and it was a Pittsburgh Penguins official saying that Pittsburgh general manager Eddie Johnston was in town to see me play that night.
My dad told him that I wasn’t scheduled to play that night, and the Penguins official was insistent that I needed to come down and play. My gear was thrown in the car, and my dad pulled me out of the movie. I showed up five minutes before game time and scored three goals with Johnston watching. When I was playing for the San Jose Sharks two decades later, my family was in Pittsburgh the night before I played there, and Johnston strolled into the restaurant where we were eating. His first words to us were, “Do you remember when I came to Boston and you left the movies so I could see you play?”
In the NHL, I played an aggressive, gritty style. I viewed myself as a pit bull. Heavy hitting was part of my game. Probably everyone who watched me play in high school would be surprised by my transformation. In high school, I was strictly a finesse player. Mallgrave would joke that I was a “wimpy” player. I was never known for being overly tough. I didn’t particularly like to be checked, and I would whine when I was hacked. One night, while playing in the Hockey Night in Boston tournament, I was incensed that I was getting hacked all night. In my rage, I punched a door and broke my hand.
When I was younger, I would be the player who lay on the ice after a collision. It got to the point that my dad wouldn’t even come out. But I was never a perimeter player. I went where I needed to go to score goals. And I was definitely not a weakling. Although I barely weighed 150 pounds when I was a junior in high school, I always felt like I was the strongest player on the ice. I never touched a weight in high school, but the strength of my forearms and wrists always seemed to be an advantage.
Mallgrave started lifting weights when he was 15. He weighed 185 pounds and could bench 185 pounds. He outweighed me by more than 30 pounds, and my training consisted only of hockey and golf. But he could never defeat me in a wrestling match. He kept increasing his weightlifting and training. “I’m going to beat you this time,” he would say. But no matter how strong he was, the outcome never changed. I would roll him over and pin his ass every time. NHL scouts certainly suspected how strong I was, but they didn’t know for sure because prospects aren’t tested like they are today.
J.R.: My Life as the Most Outspoken, Fearless, and Hard-Hitting Man in Hockey Page 2
