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

by Jeremy Roenick

  My first tastes of high-level international competition came at the World Junior Championship in 1988 in Moscow, and then in 1989 in Alaska. In that second tournament, Modano, Amonte and I were matched up against Alexander Mogilny, Sergei Fedorov and Pavel Bure. We didn’t have team success in those tournaments, but I can tell you that when we lined up against that Soviet trio, we were anything but intimidated. We could skate with them, and they knew that. In my two WJC tournaments, I registered 13 goals and 12 assists in 14 games. Modano had 10 goals and 10 assists in those 14 games.

  The U.S. program was the beneficiary of the Modano–Roenick rivalry. Because we had been competitors since we were 10 years old, we pushed each other to be better players. Both of us wanted to be known as America’s best young player. I believe Modano helped me become the player I became.

  As proud as I’ve been to wear the Team USA sweater, the truth is that I’ve had a sometimes-rocky relationship with USA Hockey. My early years with the American program were all good. I have fond memories of the 1991 Canada Cup. I played well in that tournament. That was the tournament where the younger American players began to believe that we were going to eventually be a world fucking power in hockey. My buddy Gary Suter made a statement to that effect when he drove Wayne Gretzky into the boards from behind in the game against Canada. I remember going into the dressing room between periods and telling Suter, “You just hit Wayne fucking Gretzky. Nobody hits Gretzky.”

  He just shrugged. That was Sutes. He didn’t give a shit what people thought about the way he played. He had that Mark Messier attitude—“I’m going to do whatever I need to do to win the fucking game.”

  Gretzky was hurt on the play and missed the start of the NHL season. I know Suter wasn’t deliberately trying to hurt Gretzky. But I also know that Suter never wanted you to feel comfortable playing against him. He wanted you to worry about what he might do to you. He was among the league’s best-conditioned athletes. He wasn’t a big man, but he could inflict pain when he hit you.

  Suter and Chelios were great friends, even though they had contrasting personalities. Chelios always liked to be the centre of attention, while Suter always liked sitting at the end of the bar by himself. More than once, I would walk into a tavern and find Suter in his favourite spot, like a less-talkative and fitter version of Norm on the television show Cheers.

  “Hey, Sutes,” I would say.

  “Hey, J.R., you sexy sonofabitch,” Suter would say in a very low, monotone voice.

  My issues with USA Hockey started in 1996. By then, players from America’s greatest hockey generation were well established. There was an expectation that the Americans were going to give the Canadians and Russians a battle in the 1996 World Cup. Some analysts said the Americans were among the favourites. I said the Americans were going to win the fucking tournament. I just flat out made that prediction in a press conference. Team USA general manager Lou Lamoriello was not pleased with my public prediction. Lou was happy I felt that way; he just didn’t understand why I needed to say it. I needed to say it because I wanted the Canadians to know we were a confident bunch. He didn’t want any bulletin board material. I didn’t give a shit. That’s how I felt. I believed the team had too much talent to lose. Ron Wilson was going to be our coach. He can be a prick and a snide bastard, but he is considered a good coach for a short tournament.

  My relationship with USA Hockey started to deteriorate more when I decided not to play in the World Cup because I didn’t have an NHL contract. I wanted to fucking play—no doubt about that. But my agent, Neil Abbott, pointed out the financial risk of playing without a contract. If I suffered a long-term injury, the loss of income would be enormous. Abbott thought playing for the USA would be irresponsible, given my circumstances. But don’t blame Neil for that decision. It was my call in the end. He was doing his job by pointing out what was at stake. I made the final call not to play. Remember, this was the summer when the Blackhawks traded me to the Coyotes, and we couldn’t agree on a deal. I hadn’t yet received a “home run” contract.

  I remember Keith Tkachuk called me when the U.S. team was coming together and said, “Get a fucking deal done and get your ass in here and let’s go win the fucking tournament.”

  I didn’t budge. I think USA Hockey people were pissed off at me, and I think my refusal to play hurt me at various times in my career. But I can tell you this: I loved watching my American boys beat Canada in Montreal. No one was rooting for them more than I was.

  The truth is, we measured ourselves against the Canadians, and we didn’t start having success until we adopted the Canadian mentality. We’d been getting pushed around by the Canadians for years and years. Finally, we realized that if we were going to beat them, we’d have to play like them, have to act like them. We realized that we had to enter tournaments as if we were preparing for a brawl in the alley. We had to prepare as if we would do anything to win.

  Given my disappointment, I was hoping that the 1998 Olympics would help me forget my absence from that 1996 World Cup team. Instead, the 1998 Olympic experience in Nagano ended in a shitstorm. This was the first time the NHL sent its players to the Olympics, and based on the World Cup results, the Americans were considered one of the favourites. Basically, it was the same roster that won the World Cup, except I was now playing. Maybe I am a fucking jinx, because we played terribly as a team and lost three of four games, including the quarterfinals to Dominik Hasek’s Czech team. The Czechs ended up winning the gold medal over the Russians.

  To make matters worse, the American team became fucking embroiled in the controversy involving broken chairs and a fire extinguisher being unleashed in an athletes’ village room. What I can tell you about that is that it has to be among the most overblown and exaggerated controversies in Olympic fucking history.

  Although I was out with my wife and friends when the events unfolded, I can tell you all that really happened was that some of the guys filled goalie Mike Richter’s room with fire-retardant foam as a practical joke. Honestly, I have no idea who pulled the trigger. Sure, it shouldn’t have happened, and the timing was ridiculously awful because we had played poorly. But the amount of damage inflicted in the room was grossly overstated. A thousand dollars in damages, my ass. The shop vacuum in your garage could have cleaned up the mess in under an hour.

  And the most ludicrous charge was that players purposely broke chairs. Yes, we broke several of them, by putting our asses in them. The good people of Japan make quality electronics and cars, but they did a piss-poor job of constructing Olympic village furniture. These chairs were made of flimsy material, similar to balsa wood. They seemed to be designed for smaller Asian people, not hockey players who weighed more than 200 pounds. Every day, one of us would sit in a chair and go crashing to the floor because it would disintegrate beneath us. Every room had a pile of sticks in the corner made from the remains of our chairs. A week before the so-called room-trashing, I was quoted in a media story about how the Olympic village experience was great except for the fact that our furniture kept breaking.

  The 2002 Olympic experience made up for my previous disappointments in playing or not playing for the USA. Certainly, I was disappointed that we didn’t win the gold-medal game against Canada. But I’m fucking proud of the silver medal. That was some of the finest hockey I’ve ever seen played. The 3–2 win against Russia was the most exciting, nerve-fraying, pressure-filled game I’ve ever been in. In the third period of that game, we were desperately trying to hold on to our lead, and the tension was unbearable. I remember taking a puck in the stomach to block a shot on a penalty kill. I would have never fucking forgiven myself if I hadn’t blocked that shot.

  It was a satisfying win over Russia, but it took too much out of us. Meanwhile, the Canadians had an easier game against fucking Belarus. We couldn’t get up to speed again against Canada in the gold-medal game. I hated to lose to Canada, but it’s not like we lost to a bunch of scrubs. We lost to the best players in the world. You could
tell the Canadians needed it. It was their first Olympic gold medal in hockey in a half-century. Al MacInnis said that competing in that tournament was like carrying an anvil around on your back for 10 days. The Canadians were facing overwhelming pressure.

  In 2005, my past issues with USA Hockey began to hurt me again. I believe that strongly. USA Hockey officials decided to start phasing out members of American hockey’s greatest generation, and I was one of the first to be pushed to the sidelines.

  Don Waddell, then-general manager of the Atlanta Thrashers, was the GM of the U.S. Olympic team, and in the late summer of 2005 he left me a voice message saying that I wasn’t being invited to Team USA’s Olympic orientation camp, but I was still in the mix to make the team.

  Bullshit. They had already decided I wasn’t in their plans. I knew it as soon as I heard the message. I’ve never forgiven Waddell for the decision to write me off before the season. I felt like I deserved more consideration than he gave me.

  In retrospect, I’m very proud of my days in a USA sweater. I believe my generation put American hockey on the map in terms of being a world power. Even though the 1980 team won the Olympics and the gold medal, we weren’t considered a world power then. When the Americans won in 1980, I think the reaction was, “Holy shit, we just pulled off the greatest miracle of all time.” Today, we don’t need a fucking miracle to beat Russia, Canada or anyone else.

  In my generation, we were at least a threat to win a gold medal every time we took to the ice. Obviously, we didn’t win any gold medals after 1996, but we didn’t back down from anyone, particularly the Canadians.

  My relationship with USA Hockey has been strong for a few years. But you know I can’t leave well enough alone. When Brian Burke picked his U.S. Olympic team in 2010, I said that Chris Drury had no place on the team.

  I have to say what I feel. That’s just who I am. But Burke was pissed at me, and USA Hockey officials were displeased. As it turned out, I was wrong about Drury, who played well for the Americans in Vancouver.

  But a few months later, my big mouth was overlooked, and I was elected to the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. One of the great ironies was that Derian Hatcher, my Dallas nemesis, was elected at the same time. During my induction speech, in Buffalo, I said: “Everywhere I go, everybody asks me about Derian, and I’ll put this one to rest right now: Derian, I respect you, and I’m envious of you because of your Stanley Cup. But never, ever, did I feel any animosity for what happened on the ice between us.”

  At the induction ceremony, Hatcher said he always felt awkward around me after breaking my jaw, and he was thankful that I always went out of my way to make him feel at ease.

  Another person I thanked at the induction ceremony was NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. “Thank you for letting me speak my mind,” I told Bettman, who was sitting in the audience. “Thank you for letting me have a personality.”

  14. Death in the Family

  My decision to sign with the Philadelphia Flyers in 2001 turned out to be important to my wife, Tracy, but not for the reason I intended.

  When I was sorting out my free-agent options, Tracy said she understood that I needed to do what was best for my career. Hockey came first. She kept that same attitude throughout my career. Certainly, I had to consider the NHL implications first. But I also wanted to factor in Tracy and my daughter Brandi’s horse-riding interests. In choosing Philadelphia over Detroit, I believed I was putting my wife and daughter in a better situation to pursue their careers. It made me happy to factor my family into the decision. It truly did.

  Today, Tracy believes that decision to go to Philadelphia was divinely inspired, because in February of 2002 her mother, Dorothy Vazza, was diagnosed with cancer in Florida. Tracy drove down to Florida and brought her back to Massachusetts.

  “I was there for you all of those years, and now it has to be about my family,” she told me. “I’m going to take care of my mother, and you are going to take care of our kids. You are going to have to do that, regardless of what is happening with your team. Do you understand?”

  I told Tracy that I understood, and I was ready to do that. I needed to do that. I owed Tracy that much. For a few months, I was both a mom and dad to my children.

  The cancer was aggressive, and in late August, it was clear that Dottie was dying. At that time, a very eerie event started to unfold.

  On August 21, Tracy’s mother began to tell us all that she wanted to stay alive until her son Rick’s birthday on August 23. The oddity of that was that Rick’s birthday was August 17. We just dismissed it as medicine or confusion having an impact on Dottie’s thinking. Then, the next night, her condition deteriorated and everyone came to say goodbye. Rick wasn’t able to get there on time, and she died shortly after midnight on August 23. Rick was devastated that he had not made it in time.

  We all stayed up that night, drinking wine and telling stories about Dottie and her life. At around 3:30 in the morning, Rick’s cell phone went off, and Rick looked shocked as he stared down at his screen. The message read, “Happy Birthday.”

  There was no telephone number attached to the message.

  We all almost shit ourselves.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked.

  That was the most unexplainable moment I’ve ever had in my life. I don’t know what I believe about the afterlife, but that was a moment I will never forget.

  15. The Bomb

  The scariest moment of my career came on February 8, 2004, when a slapshot from New York Rangers defenceman Boris Mironov caught me square in the jaw. It was as if my face exploded. Picture a hammer striking a glass bottle. That’s what the impact felt like.

  The Rangers’ team physician, Andrew Feldman, was quoted the next day in the newspaper saying that I was unconscious for three to four minutes. All I remembered was seeing Mironov’s screaming rocket shot coming right at my mouth, and I turned away and it caught me in the side of the face. When I woke up, the ice looked like a crime scene. Blood was everywhere.

  When I was able to rise and skate off the ice with assistance, I was witness to an event I never thought I would see: an opposing player, particularly a Flyers player, receiving a standing ovation in Madison Square Garden.

  The injury did seem like a case of fate piling on, because four weeks earlier teammate Mark Recchi had struck me in the jaw with one of his shots in practice. The wound took 27 stitches to close, and my face was a mess.

  My face was still recovering from that injury when I produced one of the famous rants of my career. It came January 14, 2004, after referee Blaine Angus watched me get cut with a high stick right in front of him and didn’t make a call.

  We were playing Buffalo, and I had already been cut twice in the first 40 minutes of the game. During the third period, I was sliced again, by Rory Fitzpatrick, as I skated into the Sabres’ zone. When I realized no penalty was being called on the play, I exploded at Angus, who was looking at me when it happened. My mouth was a fountain of blood. Droplets were spitting out of me as I screamed at him.

  “What do you mean you didn’t see it, you fucking cocksucker?” I shouted. “It was right in front of your fucking face. Are you fucking blind? You are a terrible fucking referee.”

  Somewhere in the midst of those four sentences, Angus threw me out of the game. I received a minor for unsportsmanlike conduct and a gross misconduct penalty.

  That just escalated my rage. I was still screaming at him from the bench as he went to the penalty box to report my crimes. Recchi was over there, pleading my case, explaining to Angus that I didn’t mean what I was saying. That I was pissed off that I had been cut.

  Just as Recchi was wrapping up his plea for mercy, I threw a water bottle that hit Angus in the leg on one bounce.

  “Did Roenick just throw a water bottle at me?” Angus said.

  Recchi told me that he realized at that point that there was nothing more that could be said on my behalf. He told me he just turned to Angus and said: “Best we just get thi
s game over with as quickly as we can. No whistles.”

  After the game, I was over-the-top pissed off. “NHL, wake up,” I shouted into the television camera. “Blaine Angus is standing right in front of me and he says he doesn’t see it. What’s he looking at? The National Hockey League has to step in and tell these guys to open their eyes.” Not done quite yet, I continued my rant by saying, “Blaine Angus did an absolutely terrible job.”

  Not surprisingly, the NHL suspended me for one game, which cost me $91,463 in salary. Frankly, I’m surprised the league didn’t tack on more after I criticized their decision to suspend me.

  “I’m the one who gets punished and has money taken out of his pocket,” I said. “Not Blaine Angus, but me, because they refused to do their job correctly. Certain referees, and they know who they are, are held unaccountable for their poor, poor decision-making in how they do their job.”

  I added that there were three or four referees who “stuck it up the Flyers’ ass any time they had the opportunity.”

  “The league is too Neanderthal to change it,” I said. “That’s why the game is sputtering the way it is.”

  It was worth every cent of that ninety grand just to get that off my chest.

  By the way, Blaine Angus was fired by the NHL in 2006.

  With all that had already happened to me that season, I certainly had the right to feel like I was the unluckiest player in the league when Mironov’s explosive shot detonated on my face. The Recchi shot and Fitzpatrick slice were flesh wounds compared to the damage that the Mironov bomb had inflicted. X-rays at St. Vincent’s Hospital painted a gruesome picture of the wreckage that was once my jaw. Twenty-one official breaks—18 smaller spider breaks and three major fractures. Surgery was required immediately to stabilize my jaw and wire it shut. Doctors said that I was going to be out of the lineup for a lengthy period.

  But my initial thought about the Mironov shot was that I was fortunate it wasn’t even worse. After I lost the faceoff, the puck went immediately to Mironov at the point. He pounded it. If I had not been able to turn away, it would have destroyed all of my teeth and my facial structure. Essentially, one twist of my head probably spared me from major reconstructive surgery. We can assume that the puck was travelling faster than 90 miles per hour when it found my face.