J.R.: My Life as the Most Outspoken, Fearless, and Hard-Hitting Man in Hockey

by Jeremy Roenick

  Whether Schoeny didn’t like the scenarios I laid out or whether he simply decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation, he started to stand down.

  “Let’s sit down and work this out,” he said.

  The tension began to evaporate. I couldn’t tell you what was said because I was too busy pulling myself together after being on the verge of annihilation. We talked about our issues, and he said what he needed to say and I said what I needed to say.

  The meltdown we had didn’t make our relationship any better or worse. I wasn’t his favourite player and he wasn’t my favourite coach.

  One reason why I was so bothered by Schoenfeld’s attack on me is that I always cared greatly about my team. I always gave what I had to my team. For him to think that I was focused on the Selke Trophy was insulting to me. I cared about my team to the point that I once pummelled one of my Phoenix teammates, Oleg Tverdovsky, in practice because I didn’t believe he cared enough.

  Tverdovsky and I played three seasons together, and he ranks among my least favourite teammates of all time. Few players have had more talent and done less with it than Tverdovsky. He was a highly skilled defenceman from the Ukraine who rarely wanted to work on his game. He seemed to believe that he could get by in the NHL on his talent alone. He never put forth a consistent effort in practice, and it always infuriated me. He never listened to the coaches, never cared about what we were doing. No matter what drill we were doing, he would foul it up.

  One day in practice, he screwed up another drill and I skated over and dropped my gloves. Tverdovsky had never had a fight in his NHL career when I beat him up. Just to further make my point, I thumped him again later on when it seemed like he still wasn’t putting forth the effort that I thought he should.

  7. Guts

  The Phoenix Coyotes probably hold the unofficial National Hockey League record for the highest-stakes poker game ever played on a team charter. One night, our card game in the back of the plane ended up with $110,000 in the pot for a single hand.

  That’s a league mark you won’t see listed in any NHL publication.

  Some of my favourite off-ice moments with the Coyotes involved playing poker with my teammates at 35,000 feet. As soon as the landing gear on the plane went up, the dealing began. Rick Tocchet, Keith Tkachuk, Craig Janney, Jim McKenzie and Bob Corkum were regulars in the game, but occasionally others would play. Most of the guys were afraid of our game because the stakes were high. My practice was to have five to ten thousand dollars in cash, or close to it, when I boarded our charter. I know Tkachuk would have that much or more. But the cash wasn’t a requirement because we always accepted IOUs when pots began to escalate. The $110,000 was a one-time event, but we had other pots in the range of $80,000, and we routinely had games with pots in the range of twenty to thirty thousand.

  The danger of teammates playing against each other in a big-money poker game is the hard feelings or ill will that can result from a bad beating. The NHL celebrates, and depends upon, team chemistry more than any other sport. If linemates, for example, were at odds over the outcome of a poker hand, it could have a negative impact on the team. But we truly never had issues with our game, probably because every player was a veteran, and most of us had lucrative contracts. It also helped that we were good friends.

  We played dealer’s choice, meaning that when it was your turn to deal, you could choose any game you wanted to play. When we played games such as five-card stud or draw poker, the action and pot sizes were tame by our standards. However, whenever we played a game like acey-deucy or Guts, where there is a risk of a player having to match the pot, then the pots would begin to spiral and the adrenaline would begin to flow like beer from a tap. As a general rule, athletes have competitive personalities. We believe in our own abilities. We believe we are going to win, and we enjoy the rush that washes over us when we have success. That kind of thinking builds poker pots quickly.

  Tocchet was the most skilled player in our group. He had the perfect poker face; it was impossible to know whether he had the nuts or rags in his hand. He was street smart, a guy who had played enough cards to understand when to be aggressive and when to sit back. Much like on the ice, the best poker players are those who can read the game and anticipate what is about to happen. As is often the case in neighbourhood poker, the money would move from one player to another in our game. You would be up, and then you would be down. But occasionally we would have some big winners. I remember on one trip McKenzie used his fucking winnings to purchase a new SUV with cash.

  Obviously, everyone on the team knew we were playing poker in the back of the plane, but not everyone knew how much money was at risk. I don’t believe the coaches knew what the stakes were. Our game was “protected” by the fact that our captain, Big Walt, was a primary participant.

  Playing poker was a routine pastime for players when I first came to the NHL in 1988. When I arrived at my first NHL training camp in Chicago, I played in my first big-league poker game before I played in my first NHL game. In August, I was bumming ten dollars off my parents to go to the movies, and in September I was betting four hundred on two pair in a poker game.

  When Denis Savard, Doug Wilson, Steve Thomas and Keith Brown and the boys invited me to play in their poker game, I felt honoured. I really did. I was proud to be invited. I thought they were mentoring me, making me feel as if I belonged. However, it didn’t take me long to figure out that the boys might have been more interested in acquiring my money than my friendship. I was a naive teenager with plenty of money in my pocket. I’m a believer in the old poker adage that if you can’t identity the patsy at the table, then it’s probably you. The attitude of the veteran Blackhawks when I showed up in their game was, “Welcome to the team, kid. Now put your money in.”

  When I started playing cards with the Blackhawks, you might lose a few hundred dollars, maybe a thousand or fifteen hundred if you had an unlucky night. If a pot was more than a thousand bucks, it would have been huge in those days. Chicago players educated me about poker in those early days. I have vivid memories of losing $500 one day and a thousand the next, and a veteran pulling me aside and telling me, “Don’t worry. Tomorrow will be another day, and it could be your day.” Then tomorrow would come and I would lose another $500. That seemed like a big loss to me, considering that two months before I would feel rich if I had $40 in my pocket. But even though the boys might have taken advantage of me in those early days, I would not have traded that experience. Whether their motives were pure or not, the older Chicago players did mentor me by inviting me to those games. I learned to be my own man in those games. When you are a teenager, it’s just cool to be hanging out with people you look up to and admire. I loved hanging out with those guys. They got to know me as a person, and they all began to look after me on the ice. I think I entertained them, or at the very least, they were amused by me. I didn’t win at cards very often in Chicago, and when I did win, I didn’t keep quiet about it.

  The bigger poker pots in my Phoenix days simply reflected how much more money players were earning after Bob Goodenow took over as the executive director of the NHL Players’ Association in 1992. We played for larger pots because we could. In 1990–91, Wayne Gretzky was the league’s highest paid player at $3 million per season, Mario Lemieux was making just over $2 million, and there were only a few players making a million. By 1995–96, Gretzky was making six and a half million, and a year after that, Lemieux was being paid more than $10 million to play for one season. In the days I was playing poker on the Coyotes’ charter, I was making $4 million per year. Tkachuk was playing on a five-year deal worth more than $17 million. The season before I joined him in Phoenix, he made $6 million. When I left Phoenix, Tkachuk was earning $8.3 million, while Craig Janney was making $1.6 million per season. Tocchet was making more than $2 million per season. Corkum and McKenzie were probably the two in the game with the greatest risk, because their salaries were in the range of $500,000.

  Although we were in the
back of the plane playing poker for what most fans would consider big money, the truth is that on a percentage basis, I was probably taking a bigger financial risk back in Chicago when I was in a $500 pot while earning $100,000 than I was participating in a $20,000 pot when I was earning $4 million.

  Still, I’m sure every Coyotes player at our table realized our poker game was out of control when there was more than $100,000 in the pot. What made the situation scarier was the fact that we were playing Guts, a poker game that has a provision that losers of each hand must match the pot.

  Here is how Guts is usually played: each player is dealt three cards, and then the player must decide whether to stay in the hand or fold. Since there is an advantage in knowing how many players are in, every player must reveal their intention to play or fold at the same time. You do that by placing a coin, or not placing a coin, in your hand under the table. When your hand returns from under the table, your fist is closed. The dealer says “play or drop” and the players open their clinched fists. Those holding a coin have chosen to play and risk matching the pot. The players with no coin in their hands have dropped out of that hand. They cannot win, nor are they at risk to match the pot. At that point, players still in the game reveal their hands. The player with the winning hand claims the pot, and the losers must match the pot.

  But this night, we were playing a variation of Guts that I call Squares. You still receive three cards, but then cards are placed in front of you, Hollywood Squares style, that you use to complete a traditional five-card poker hand.

  Honestly, I don’t recall the sequence of events that led to $110,000 being in the pot. But I remember that most of the money in the pot previously belonged to Tkachuk and me.

  In some games of Guts, there is a “maximum burn,” meaning no matter how much money is in the pot, a loser won’t pay more than a predetermined limit. At that point, we didn’t have a “maximum burn” in our game. Because of that, I expected most of the players to “drop” rather than risk putting $110,000 in the pot. Even if you are earning millions, it’s hard not to blink in the face of a risk of losing more than a hundred grand. Nervous laughter filled the back of the plane as the pile of cash and IOUs sat on the table. With that amount of money in play, the game suddenly seemed far crazier than it had seemed 15 minutes before.

  Given my personality, you know I had to go in. When the call was made to declare our intentions, there was only one other player holding a coin. It was Big Walt. That created a buzz in the back of the plane, because everyone realized instantly that one of us was going to have to put $110,000 in the pot. Remember, loser has to match the pot. Big Walt and I looked at each other with forced grins that said neither of us was happy to be in this position. Neither one of us wanted to show our hand. I’m not sure either of us was breathing at that point. The insanity of this confrontation was clear to both of us. Our “friendly” poker game had become dangerous; it was a threat to team harmony, to friendships and probably to marriages.

  “Do you want to just split the pot?” Tkachuk offered.

  “Yes,” I said.

  I think both of us exhaled at that point. Guys were complaining as Big Walt divided up the money. They protested that the game should be continuing with another $110,000 in the pot. But the grousing didn’t last long because in their hearts they knew Big Walt had made the proper decision for a variety of reasons. First, Tkachuk and I had fuelled that pot by losing previous hands. It wasn’t as if we were going home with $55,000 profit. Second, Tkachuk and I were the only likely participants for pots this size. It wasn’t in the team’s best interest for their two prominent players to be facing off for that much money. Third, everyone understood that we had no business playing for that much money in this setting. It was daring to play for $25,000; it was irresponsible to be playing for $110,000.

  Finally, the unrest died quickly because Big Walt was a highly respected leader. Once he decided that splitting the pot was the right course of action, no one was going to argue with him. Everyone always looked to Big Walt to make the right decision.

  After that hand, we decided to dial back the stakes of the games. We instituted a maximum burn limit. My observation is that that $110,000 pot shocked us all back to reality. We decided to move to safer ground. The poker game continued, but we were all more keenly aware of the line that shouldn’t be crossed. We never again ended up with that much money in a pot.

  What you probably really want to know is who would have won that hand. Yes, after we agreed to split the pot, Big Walt and I did compare hands. Big Walt would have won with four of a kind. I had a full house. I would have been on the hook for $110,000.

  In the spirit of full fucking disclosure, let me say that the poker game in the back of the Phoenix Coyotes’ charter wasn’t my only experience with high-stakes gambling. I won $120,000 playing blackjack one night in Las Vegas. Another time, I started with $85,000 in chips and was down to my final $500 chip before I began to rally. Before I left the table, I had turned the $500 chip into $100,000. What looked like an $85,000 loss ended up being a $15,000 profit.

  I enjoy most forms of gambling. I like playing cards, and I’ve cashed at some. I played in three World Series of Poker satellite tournaments; cashed in one and came within 10 people of cashing in another. I like going to casinos. I’ve had some good nights and some bad nights. I think some athletes get drawn to betting because they like living in an arena where there are wins and losses. Gambling is a competitive venture where there is both success and failure. Athletes are comfortable in that arena.

  Based on what I’m hearing, there is far less poker being played among NHL players today than there was when I was playing. Today’s NHL players are all into video gaming. That seems to satisfy their competitive cravings when they are away from the rink.

  My presumption is that guys still like to bet a few bucks when they golf. When I was a player, I didn’t play too many rounds of golf without some money changing hands. When I played for the Coyotes, I always played for money against Tkachuk and Janney. It wasn’t for big money. If you had a bad day, you might lose a thousand dollars. Since I regularly flirt with par, I was usually giving five or six strikes.

  When Tkachuk heard that I was working on a book, he jokingly said to make sure that I include a sentence that I’m not to be trusted on the golf course. He and Janney never trusted my ability to find my golf ball, no matter what level of shit I found myself in on the course. When we first started playing, they would become incredulous when I would yell “found it” when I was three feet into the thick brush on a woodsy course. After a while, they would just start mockingly yelling “found it” before I even entered the problem area.

  Frankly, it angered me that the boys thought I was cheating. The truth is that I have a GPS-like sense about where my golf ball is going. I do have an uncanny ability to locate my golf ball. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Big Walt’s accusatory “found it” didn’t piss me off to the point that I felt justified in using the “foot wedge” to give myself a better lie.

  8. Payback Was a Bitch

  No one during my NHL career inflicted more pain on me than Dallas Stars defenceman Derian Hatcher. On April 2, 1995, when I was still playing for Chicago, Hatcher hit me knee on knee and caused a slight fracture and severe hyperextension. I missed 23 games. Almost exactly four years later, when I was playing with the Coyotes, Hatcher brought his elbow up on a high check and blew apart my jaw as if it had been constructed out of Lego bricks.

  The story behind the latter incident starts with a hit I laid on Mike Modano of Dallas with twelve games left in the 1998–99 regular season. Given that I had a rivalry with Modano that dated back to our youth hockey days, I always took advantage of any opportunity to sting him with a heavy hit. I measured myself against him on a daily basis, and I always wanted to make it clear that I was the more physical player.

  Modano was coming around the net, and I smoked him. Knocked him out. The general consensus was that it was a clean che
ck, but the Dallas Stars believed it was a late hit. A jury would probably call it a borderline hit. But there is no disputing that I crushed him.

  The problem was that we were playing Dallas three weeks later, and there had not been nearly enough time to heal Modano’s wounds or any ill feelings that the Stars had for me. Just by reading the newspapers, I suspected there would be retribution. I didn’t know when it would occur, or who would deliver the message, but I knew punishment was coming.

  The Stars didn’t waste time. In the first period, as I came around the back of the net, Stars defenceman Craig Ludwig broke my thumb with a slash. Seconds later, six-foot, six-inch, 240-pound defenceman Derian Hatcher leaped elbow-first into my face. It was the most vicious hit I ever took in my NHL career. My jaw was broken in three places. Eight of my teeth were either cracked or broken.

  I knew right away that I needed surgery. It felt like pieces of my jaw were flapping around under my skin. If it weren’t for the skin, it felt like I could have pulled pieces of jaw out of my mouth. There is a video on the Internet that shows me moving my jaw for the trainer in front of the Plexiglas, and it is so gruesome that a lady in the front row passes out.

  At the time of the hit, we were already on the power play. Now we had a five-on-three advantage, and all I could think of was beating these guys. I started heading back onto the ice to play, and Phoenix trainer Gordon Hart said, “Where are you going? Your jaw is broken.”

  I said I knew it was, but it wasn’t going to get worse than it already was. “Let’s see what we can do on the power play,” I said.

  As I was skating around, I could hear my jawbones smacking against each other. We did score on the power play, but it wasn’t my goal. I came close but couldn’t put it in. My focus might not have been what it should have been. Near the end of my shift, I got hit again, and the pain in my jaw was indescribable. As soon as I got to the bench, I told the trainer I needed to go to the hospital. “This is bad,” I said.