Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard

by John Branch

  “You have no idea how much I owe him and Jacques for playing in the NHL,” Derek told reporters.

  That same day, records showed, Derek picked up a prescription at Walgreens for 40 oxycodone pills, prescribed by the Wild’s team orthopedist. Three days later, team doctor Dan Peterson prescribed 30 more. Three days after that, the orthopedist prescribed another 40. Over 16 days, Derek was prescribed 150 oxycodone pills and 40 hydrocodone pills—both considered Schedule II controlled substances under the Controlled Substances Act, “with high potential for abuse.” Generally, the recommended doses for the types of pills that Derek received were one pill every four to six hours, as needed for pain. But because the records obtained later by Len Boogaard do not detail the recommended number of pills to take at a time, or how often they were to be taken, it is unclear if Derek did anything other than follow the doctors’ advice.

  In total that season, Derek’s fourth in the NHL, he received at least 25 prescriptions for oxycodone and hydrocodone, a total of 622 pills, from 10 doctors—eight team doctors of the Wild, an oral surgeon in Minneapolis, and a doctor for an opposing team. It is unknown how many other pills he might have received directly from the doctors, or in transactions unnoted in pharmacy records and medical records later obtained by the family. But Derek quickly discovered that team doctors did not communicate with one another when it came to prescriptions. There was no tracking system in place to tell one doctor what another had previously prescribed. He could get pills from a doctor one day, and more from another the next. He also learned that team doctors might dole out drugs without an office visit. Derek had their cell-phone numbers and could call or text them and ask for a refill. He could then pick up the prescription at his nearest pharmacy.

  By the time Derek had the nose and shoulder surgeries a week apart in April 2009, he realized that he preferred oxycodone to hydrocodone—OxyContin and Percocet (a combination of oxycodone and acetaminophen) to Vicodin (hydrocodone and acetaminophen). He told doctors that Vicodin made him feel strange. They began to prescribe him the others instead.

  His building tolerance for the pills fed his appetite. Aaron had a similar surgery on his shoulder at the same time as Derek that spring. Doctors said it took twice as much anesthesia to knock out Derek than it did Aaron. Like Derek, Aaron was prescribed oxycodone to combat the pain. But while Aaron took three or four pills at a time, Derek gobbled eight or 10.

  Team doctors continued to prescribe Ambien for Derek all through the summer of 2009—210 pills between late April and early September, records showed. But prescriptions for painkillers appeared to stop during the off-season.

  By then, Derek had found other sources.

  AARON BOOGAARD RETURNED from his season with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins of the American Hockey League. His ambitions of being an all-around player had faded. After scoring two goals and fighting 16 times, his goal of reaching the NHL rested largely in his fists.

  Aaron ended the season with shoulder surgery, just like Derek. He moved into the apartment that Derek and Erin shared in Lilydale, across the river from downtown Saint Paul.

  Between hockey seasons in which they rarely saw one another, the two brothers were virtually inseparable. They went to Jeremy Clark’s gym. They rode bikes. They played video games for hours. They went to bars at night. Almost every errand, from filling the car with gas to buying groceries, was done together, because Derek hated to be alone.

  On occasion, Derek stopped the car at a check-cashing store. Aaron never quite understood what was happening. He just knew that Derek sent money to someone in New York.

  Aaron, four years younger, revered Derek. He wanted to follow him to the NHL. But four years was a strange distance in age. In the summer of 2009, Derek turned 27 and Aaron turned 23. Aaron was old enough to recognize what was best for Derek, but too young and obedient to tell the mightily successful Derek what to do.

  Aaron was a hockey enforcer, too, and he understood the pain and quiet desperation. But he never quite understood why Derek always had so many pills. Maybe it was just different in the NHL.

  Aaron once saw a package arrive for Derek that looked like a book, only its pages were carved out and filled with pills. Aaron came to learn that Derek also got pills from at least a couple of sources in the Twin Cities, including a young woman near Saint Paul and people he met at Sneaky Pete’s. When Aaron asked, Derek offered the same reply.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he would say.

  It was Erin, more than Aaron, who found Derek uncharacteristically mysterious and undependable that summer. On sunny days, he would keep the blinds closed and black out the room and play video games or sleep. He spent less time at the gym than ever. Surgery was a good excuse for his lethargy, but Derek seemed sapped of his drive. A zombie, she thought sometimes.

  The two drifted apart, and their lives, even within the apartment, crossed with fading regularity. Erin left for a family wedding, and heard stories about Derek’s nights at Minneapolis bars while she was gone. She canvassed social media and found photos of Derek out at night, often smiling amid pretty women.

  During a time together, Erin, Derek, and Aaron visited the jewelry store where Derek had purchased the engagement ring. Erin wanted something looked at, so Derek and Aaron made amicable small talk with the owner in the back room while Erin’s ring was fixed. After 30 minutes or so, they came back out to the showroom. Erin had found a ring she liked better. She wanted to trade in the one Derek had helped choose for her and bought her. Aaron was furious.

  “I don’t think she’s in it for the right reasons,” Aaron told Derek later. “I don’t think she’s right for you. I think she’s more into the money than she is into you.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Aaron recalled Derek responding. “I’ve noticed that, too. It’s just hard to admit.”

  Erin was having second feelings about the whole relationship. Derek was changing, and she did not like who he was becoming. He slept during the day and went to bars at night. He showed a grumpy side she had not seen. His moods swung wildly. His memory seemed frayed.

  She began to question him about the pills, the Ambien that was being constantly prescribed in the off-season by Wild doctors, the pain pills that Derek always had by the handful, and he waved her off, the way he waved off Aaron when he dared to pry.

  “He joked about it a lot,” Erin recalled in an interview two years later. “But I worried even when he joked about it, especially when he started to take more and more of them. And he would say he was in pain—‘It’s OK.’ The biggest thing that made me worry was that he was in denial about it. He wasn’t saying, ‘I know I shouldn’t be doing this, I know it’s a problem, but I’m in pain.’ He wasn’t even being honest with himself about it. I was angry more than anything. There was nothing you could do. You can’t do anything with somebody who can’t even admit it’s a problem. More than anything, it was just really frustrating. I felt like there was no outlet for my frustration because of who he was. There were so many favors. They give him so much more slack than the average Joe.”

  He was the toughest man in the NHL. Who was she to question that? The relationship deteriorated, though Derek was slow to recognize it. Erin wondered about the long-range future: What will it be like when he is not playing hockey? What’s going to happen when he finally admits to a problem and no longer has the resources available to him? Marriage? Children? Where will this all end up? She had met Derek when everything was going perfectly—a future bursting with possibility. She shuddered at the thought of where it was all headed.

  DEREK’S LIFE UNSPOOLED quickly in small episodes. In August, during a phone conversation with Ryan, Derek slurred words and spoke incoherently. Was it alcohol? Drugs? Concussions? Ryan called his parents. His mother and father had had similar experiences, too.

  Near the end of August, Derek, still volunteering for public appearances to help the Wild, unveiled the team’s new third jersey at the Minnesota State Fair. He was unshaven and wore sunglass
es. Even in pictures and videos from the event, Derek’s friends and family could tell he was not right. Was he drunk?

  September came. Aaron left for the start of his hockey season, back to Pennsylvania with the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. Derek called his agent, Ron Salcer.

  “Ronnie, my shoulder’s still not right,” Derek said. “Think I should go see Chuck and tell him I need another month?”

  Chuck was Chuck Fletcher, the Wild’s new general manager, who had taken the place of Doug Risebrough. Salcer was aghast.

  “You kidding me, Derek?” Salcer replied. “What have you been doing? You’ve got to be doing whatever it takes to get yourself ready for training camp in two weeks. Call them and tell them that you need another month? That doesn’t sound like someone with an NHL mindset.”

  Derek showed up to training camp overweight and out of shape. On September 20, the day of a home preseason game against the Chicago Blackhawks, he was found asleep in the driver’s seat of his Denali along the side of a road. A police officer stopped behind the car and recognized Derek. He brought him home to Erin. The Wild reported Derek as a healthy scratch for that night’s game.

  Derek had no recollection of any of it. Erin could not figure out what was wrong with him. There were times when she found pills loose in his jacket pockets. Derek told her they were anti-inflammatories, but when she looked them up online, she found they were prescription painkillers. It was late one night when she watched him bump into walls and stumble over things, like a drunken sleepwalker. Derek spoke, but his words made no sense. Through the haze he said something about taking four Ambien—Wild team doctors prescribed him 90 of them between September 1 and September 16—but Erin knew it was something more than that. She was scared. She called Joanne Boogaard in Regina.

  Tobin Wright, Derek’s friend and manager, hurried to the apartment. He had been suspicious of Derek’s drug use for months, but Derek adamantly denied that anything was wrong, and Wright said that he could never catch Derek buying drugs or taking them. But there were times when they were together, like in a restaurant or in a car, when Derek’s phone rang, and he would speak in some strange, suspicious code to someone on the other end. All the small episodes were beginning to make sense.

  Wright cried as he sat in front of Derek. He was scared to confront him.

  “I’m putting you in the substance abuse program,” Wright said, recalling the conversation with Derek. “Enough is enough. If you don’t do it, you’re going to be suspended, probably without pay, and it’s going to be public knowledge. Everybody’s going to know about it.”

  Calls bounced between Erin and Joanne and Len and Salcer. Dots were connected, and the message was clear: Derek was addicted to something. There was talk of OxyContin and Percocet and Ambien, drugs that sounded familiar but that no one knew much about.

  Ryan Boogaard was with his mother in Regina while he attended a training session at the RCMP Depot. A few miles away, at the Agridome, now renamed the Brandt Centre, an NHL preseason game between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Ottawa Senators was underway.

  Wait a minute, Ryan thought. He had read a newspaper story about the return of Todd Fedoruk, the former Regina Pat, now with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Ryan rushed to the arena and arrived just as the game ended. He managed to work his way to the tunnel where players walked between the ice and the dressing rooms, and he shouted at Fedoruk, whom he had never met.

  “Todd!” Ryan shouted. “I need to talk to you! I’m Derek Boogaard’s brother! I need to talk to you!”

  Fedoruk said he would change clothes and come back out. He did. Ryan explained the situation, and Fedoruk was not surprised. He had seen the arc of Derek’s troubles bending more than a year earlier. But he had his own problems. By the end of the season, Fedoruk would be drunk at a game that proved to be his last in the NHL.

  “He has to admit he has a problem,” Fedoruk told Ryan. “He has to want to get help.”

  Ryan booked a flight for the next day to Minneapolis. He had no passport with him, so his girlfriend drove several hours to meet him with it at the airport in Saskatoon. While he waited for his flight, Ryan received a call from someone in the NHL’s substance abuse program. Derek was scheduled to go to a clinic in California, Ryan was told. And you can go with him.

  THE NHL’S SUBSTANCE ABUSE and Behavioral Health Program began in 1996, co-founded by Dr. David Lewis, a psychiatrist based in Los Angeles, and Dr. Brian Shaw, a clinical psychologist in Toronto. The men created and oversaw a similar program for Major League Soccer. Salcer had sent players their way before.

  “I need to get Derek out here,” Salcer told them.

  In Minnesota, Ryan sat on the end of Derek’s bed. Derek was curled under the sheets. It takes a big man to admit he has a problem, Ryan told his brother. The family will support you. Get the best possible treatment, get better, and put this behind you.

  Derek was embarrassed. He was afraid that people would find out. He was afraid that the Wild would replace him. He was adamant that he had no problem, but if the league insisted that he do something, Derek wanted to stay home and go through detoxification in Minneapolis, and keep Ryan around for support. He would be fine, he said. He just needed a little bit of time.

  But plans were set. A day later, Ryan and Derek were on a plane to Los Angeles. Derek called Risebrough, the deposed general manager, to apologize for letting him down.

  Salcer met Derek and Ryan at the airport. They stopped for lunch, where Salcer told Derek that other clients of his had had the same issues, but they had gotten help and made it through.

  “You’ve got a pot of gold here,” Salcer told Derek. “Don’t piss in it. You are one of the most unique guys in the world. How many guys are six foot eight, 270 pounds, and can skate like you and play hockey? People are supporting you. You know how expensive this place is? It’s, like, $50,000 a month. But they’re paying it for you. They’re paying for you to get better. Don’t piss in your pot of gold here.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Derek said.

  Salcer, like an exasperated father, hoped the message sunk in. He could never quite tell with Derek.

  They drove less than an hour to the Canyon rehabilitation center, set in the serene hills above Malibu. Lewis was on the staff there, listed as a consulting psychiatrist. Derek and Ryan were given a tour of the facilities, its grounds pristine as a country club, its atmosphere as relaxed as a spa. Ryan sat in on an introductory meeting.

  Derek was admitted. Ryan left the next day.

  In notes from the Canyon later obtained by Len Boogaard, Derek provided his “substance abuse history” upon admission. He said he had been taking eight or nine tablets of OxyContin and three tablets of Ambien daily. He admitted to recent use of Vicodin and Percocet, up to 10 pills per day. He said he regularly used Vicodin and Ambien throughout the previous season, to combat a sore back and sleeping problems, and sometimes chewed them.

  The Minnesota Wild announced that Boogaard was out with a concussion. It was the only time that he was publicly diagnosed with one. It just happened not to be the reason for his absence.

  “We don’t know the extent of it,” first-year Wild coach Todd Richards told reporters, when asked how much time Derek would miss. “It could be a week, two weeks. It could be a month, two months. We don’t know.”

  He said he did not know how the concussion occurred.

  Players figured out the truth. The Wild never told Derek’s teammates, and Derek never told them, either. But they knew. One day, Derek was there. The next, he was gone. It was not hard to understand why.

  8

  DEREK HAD NO TIME for this. The regular season was starting. He had teammates to protect. He had a job to do. And when he heard that John Scott, the young six-foot, eight-inch defenseman, had been elevated to the primary enforcing position in his absence, Derek got especially anxious.

  Scott crushed Chicago’s Danny Bois in a preseason fight, then Columbus’s Jared Boll in another. In the second game of the regula
r season, against the hated Anaheim Ducks, Scott battered George Parros.

  Derek looked suddenly expendable. He worried about what people were saying about him. And he felt stranded and forgotten in Malibu, sentenced to the five-star accommodations of the Canyon and its celebrity clientele. He told people, both friends and counselors, that he had no reason to be there. He had nothing in common with the other patients, people with real drug problems to sort out and, apparently, with plenty of time to burn. The sessions were a joke, he thought. Admit to an addiction? Come on. There are more important things to do, especially right now.

  Derek felt like a child on a time-out, quarantined while the world moved on without him. Time slipped away. But it was not just the unease over his role on the team that bothered him. He worried about his broken relationship with Erin.

  Ron Salcer came to visit. Tobin Wright came from Minnesota. They, along with others, told Derek he needed to focus on getting himself together and not worry about Erin. They told him that she had canceled plans to come see him in California.

  “Everybody in his life was telling him, ‘This girl isn’t good for you,’ ” Wright later recalled.

  Derek had real-life problems to fix and jobs to do. He couldn’t do anything as long as he was stuck in Malibu. Every day he asked when he could leave.

  It wasn’t long. Derek spent three restless weeks in rehabilitation. He was dismissed, conveniently, just after Scott’s winning fight in Anaheim with the Wild during a five-game road trip to the West Coast. Derek attended the next game, against the Kings in Los Angeles, before he began to skate with the Wild, eager to reassert himself as the top enforcer—not just in the league, but on his own team.

  He played his first game of the season about a week later, at Edmonton on October 16, 2009. News reports said, without further explanation, that Derek had returned from a preseason concussion.