Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard

by John Branch

  There were no fights in Derek’s first two games. He would have to wait until the Wild, loser of six of its first seven games of the season, played at home on October 21. Early in the second period, away from the puck, Colorado’s David Koci needled Derek with his stick. Derek agreed to a fight. He casually flipped aside his gloves and positioned himself at center ice. He stood upright and steady, his fists raised stoically. Koci, a six-foot, six-inch Czech, crouched and circled around him. Fans stood.

  Derek jabbed Koci in the chest, then grabbed his jersey near the collar. Koci jabbed at Derek’s chin, but Derek seized the opening with a hard overhand right fist to the left side of Koci’s face. He hit him again in the same spot, dropping Koci to his knees momentarily.

  Derek, still clinging to the jersey, helped lift Koci back up. Koci scrambled to get away, turning his face as far from Derek as possible. They held each other by an arm and swung, trading simultaneous left-hand punches before Derek hit Koci again with his closed right hand. Koci fell to his knees, got up with Derek’s help, and stepped into another right fist. He tried to flee Derek’s grasp. Derek, without a hint of malice or any trace of an expression, stopped and let the officials step between the two.

  “Derek Boogaard needs to do this, and he needed to do it soon,” the television announcer said over the replay of the fight. “Just to continue to keep that belt, if you will.”

  It was his first fight since January. There was no mention of rehabilitation, and no word of the impending breakup with his fiancée. Derek simply beat up another man. Fans cheered. Teammates banged their sticks against the half boards. The fight was replayed in slow motion. Derek was in the penalty box.

  By all appearances, everything was in perfect order.

  WHEN HE WAS discharged from the Canyon in early October, Derek signed an “aftercare plan” with the NHL/NHLPA Substance Abuse and Behavioral Health Program. The form had the logos of the NHL and NHL Players’ Association at the top. It listed 10 requirements.

  1.I will remain abstinent from all medications, drugs and alcohol unless specifically approved by Program Doctors or prescribed by Minnesota Wild Team Physicians.

  2.I will not attend adult entertainment centers, strip clubs, men’s clubs, or massage parlors.

  3.I will not gamble, attend or enter gambling establishments.

  4.I will attend a minimum of three 12 Step meetings per week. The Program Doctors will approve the meeting schedule. I will document my attendance at all 12 Step meetings.

  5.I will submit to random urine testing. Schedule of testing will be determined by the Program Doctors. If I miss a test, I understand it will be deemed a positive test.

  6.I will choose a Home Group from my 12 Step meeting schedule. I will be active in this Home Group.

  7.I will keep in regular contact with the Program Doctors and Dan Cronin and will return all phone calls on a timely basis.

  8.Any and ALL changes in this schedule must be approved IN ADVANCE by the Program Doctors.

  9.This contract shall be in effect until altered by Program Doctors.

  10.I understand and agree that failure to meet the conditions of this Aftercare Plan may result in a permanent suspension at the sole discretion of the Program Doctors.

  The two-page contract was signed and dated by Derek, program counselor Dan Cronin, and the program’s founders and co-directors, Dr. Dave Lewis and Dr. Brian Shaw.

  Derek was considered in “Stage 1” of the program’s four defined stages of substance abuse. Under Stage 1, players continued to receive their full salaries, provided they met the obligations of the program. A player was moved to Stage 2 if he violated the aftercare program. A Stage 2 player would be suspended, without pay, during active treatment of substance abuse and not be reinstated until approved by Lewis and Shaw. A player who violated the plan while in Stage 2 would be moved to Stage 3, with a mandatory six-month suspension.

  The program, jointly overseen by the league and the players’ association, had been cloaked in secrecy since its inception in 1996. Confidentiality, the doctors argued, was critical to counseling, because players would not come forward if they thought there was a chance that their struggles could become public—or, even, known around the league to executives, coaches and other players.

  There was an oversight committee, also responsible for management of the league’s performance-enhancing-drug program. The committee was made up of one executive from the NHL, one from the NHLPA, and one expert chosen by each of those entities. One chosen expert was Lewis. The other was Shaw.

  Privacy was such an overriding concern that Bill Daly, the NHL’s deputy commissioner and the league’s lone representative on the oversight committee, said in 2011 that even he was not told which players were in the drug-rehabilitation program. That would change, presumably, if there were cause for suspension. Such a step was rare; through the years, only a handful of substance abuse cases became known to the general public, and usually only after the fact, when word leaked or the player felt the need to explain his long absence.

  Shaw and Lewis directed team medical staffs on how to treat players in the program. During the 2009–10 season, following Derek’s return from rehabilitation, Wild team doctors prescribed Derek no oxycodone or hydrocodone. There was just one prescription for Ambien, on December 10, the day before Derek fought Calgary’s Brian McGrattan.

  There were dozens of prescriptions for other drugs, however—anti-inflammatories (many to treat a torn labrum in January), more moderate painkillers like tramadol, and a lot of trazodone, meant to fight depression and anxiety. Derek never went more than two weeks—and rarely more than a few days—between prescriptions from Wild team doctors.

  He sometimes missed drug tests, and scheduled most of them directly with the sample collector, phone records show, usually through text messages. He had at least one positive result, and bank records reveal that he frequented bars and strip clubs. Any one of those could have been considered a violation of his aftercare plan and resulted in his suspension, but none did.

  Lewis and Shaw, in notes later obtained by Len Boogaard, each expressed concern over Derek’s attitude and his missed drug tests. By April, they were asking Derek’s agent and program counselor Dan Cronin to “intervene.”

  While the public never caught on to Derek’s problems, teammates suspected all along. They could tell something about Derek was different, because he showed up late to the practice rink and left early, and because he sometimes said things that did not make sense, and because he occasionally slumbered in a heap near his locker.

  Teammates traded knowing glances and smirks. That’s Derek. Big, goofy, invincible Derek. You don’t worry about Derek. He worries about you.

  But they also knew that his problems were related to drugs. That was because, when Wild players were prescribed painkillers for their own ailments, as most of them were, the drugs came with a new warning: Do not give your pills to Derek.

  THE STRING OF conquests was an impressive one. Derek delivered three beatings in 10 days of December, all against heavyweights of hefty reputations, each victory more impressive than the last. If the past couple of injury-riddled seasons and the missed time from a “concussion” at the start of the season eroded any of Derek’s standing as a bruiser, it was rebuilt in late 2009.

  The first victim was Wade Belak, the fellow Saskatchewan native who had knocked out Derek’s tooth a year before in Florida. Belak had since moved on to the Nashville Predators. The men spent 30 seconds staring down one another theatrically with raised fists, then 60 methodical seconds throwing occasional punches. There was no antipathy or urgency. Derek finally steered Belak against the boards and, after a couple of halfhearted punches, let him go, allowing the patient officials to casually step between them.

  Two nights later came George Parros, the Anaheim enforcer with a Princeton education, whom Scott had hammered while Derek sat in rehabilitation. Derek slammed another Duck into the corner, and Parros responded with a shove. Derek look
ed unimpressed and uninterested as Parros shook his gloves away. Finally provoked by some words, Derek jabbed Parros with a gloved hand, igniting a ruckus. The men danced tightly, squirming through clutches. They eventually unfolded mirror-image rights. Derek landed a couple of shots to the side of Parros’s ducked head, and the players fell together in a clump.

  A week later, Derek’s hard check crushed a Calgary Flames player named Brandon Prust, who would become a teammate and friend a year later, and drew the ire of McGrattan, a big, bombastic bruiser. The preamble lasted longer than the fight. Derek jabbed McGrattan with a left, then hit him with two hard rights. McGrattan fell to his knees, and Derek pounded down on him twice more, as if driving in a stake. The fight was over in 10 seconds.

  It was more than enough to re-establish Derek’s league-wide reputation. Derek was in the final year of his contract, on his way to playing 57 games, the most he had played since his rookie season four years earlier. A 2010 poll of NHL players showed that 44 percent considered Derek the “toughest fighter.”

  Those who knew Derek best, including his family and closest friends, believed that he had emerged from his addictive throes of summer. Maybe it was a one-time issue, now resolved. His care was overseen by a Wild franchise that always seemed to have Derek’s best interest in mind, counseled by the NHL/NHLPA Substance Abuse and Behavioral Health Program. There was reason to think that the worst was behind him.

  Then again, there was no one close to keep tabs. Len and Jody lived in Ottawa, both working at Royal Canadian Mounted Police headquarters. Joanne was still in Regina. The Boogaard children were scattered over Saskatchewan, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. Curtis, Derek’s half-brother, lived in Alberta. Ron Salcer, Derek’s agent, lived in Los Angeles. In Minnesota, Erin, the ex-fiancée, was out of the picture, and the Wild was run by an entirely new group of executives and coaches. Doug Risebrough, the general manager who drafted Derek and envisioned his rise, was gone. So was Tom Lynn, the assistant general manager, who wondered about Derek’s changing personality. Jacques Lemaire was coaching the New Jersey Devils. Most of his assistant coaches had scattered to other corners of the NHL.

  Even one of Derek’s closest friends on the team, Marian Gaborik, was gone. He signed a five-year, $37.5 million contract with the Rangers after becoming a free agent in July. Derek moved into Gaborik’s empty, expansive apartment in downtown Minneapolis, having left his own apartment to Erin when he returned from rehabilitation.

  In the weeks and months after privately submitting to the league’s substance abuse program, Derek was re-established as the league’s toughest man. And he was as alone as ever.

  DEREK AND JOHN SCOTT seemed to have little in common, other than size and a willingness to fight. Scott was from St. Catharines, Ontario, on the southern shore of Lake Ontario near the American border at Niagara Falls. He played a season of junior in the relatively low-level North American Hockey League, and spent four college seasons at Michigan Tech. While fighting was rare in college hockey—rules against it were far stricter than in junior—Scott managed to rack up 347 penalty minutes and just 19 points.

  At the same time that Derek was working his way through top-level junior teams in Regina, Prince George, and Medicine Hat, then moving on to minor-league hockey in Louisiana, Scott earned a degree in mechanical engineering. He became one of several well-educated enforcers in the NHL, a fraternity that included George Parros and Kevin Westgarth, both of whom went to Princeton and helped blur the stereotype of the mindless hockey goon.

  After Derek reached the Wild in 2005, Scott signed with the Houston Aeros, Derek’s old American Hockey League team. A six-foot, eight-inch defenseman, he had Boogaard-like size, but little experience as a fighter.

  He got to know Derek because they were part of the same organization, through training camps and a common role. But he mostly got to know him through videos of his fights. Scott played them again and again, awed by Derek’s calm demeanor and relentless attack. Outside the Boogaard family, Scott studied Derek’s fights more closely than anyone. He imitated Derek’s upright stance, which made the men appear even taller and more daunting. He, too, learned to be the aggressor in fights, to try to end them quickly, but he struggled to emulate Derek’s ability to patiently absorb punches to the face while waiting for an opening to put a brutal end to a fight.

  So engulfed in that violent dimension of Derek on videotape, Scott presumed him to be a bully off the ice, too. He was surprised to find that Derek had barely a rough edge. There was no need to steer clear of him; if anything, Derek drew you in. He was funny and curious. He befriended arena workers and low-level team employees. Scott loved that about him.

  After Scott was promoted to the Wild during the 2008–09 season, to add beefiness to a roster that had lost Todd Fedoruk and Chris Simon from the season before, the two became workout partners and road roommates. They occasionally went to restaurants with teammates, but mostly ordered room service, often platters of chicken wings. They watched movies and relaxed. They talked about fighting and joked about the next rival enforcer on the schedule. You take him this time, Derek would say. And so Scott would.

  Scott noticed that Derek had pills. Most hockey players had pills, though, and to pry about their origins or their purpose would be like visiting someone’s house and rifling through the medicine cabinet. Scott did not know what they were or where Derek got them, and it never felt like his business.

  Scott had a close look at Derek’s tangled decline. There were the surgeries and the pills and the rehabilitation during training camp. There was the teetering relationship with Erin, and Derek’s frustration that his family did not accept her or trust her. There were the personnel changes among the Wild, and Derek’s growing concern over the size of his role and his long-term future. His reputation was intact, but nothing else was the same.

  Over time, Scott saw a hollowed shell of a man, like a spirit risen from the departed.

  “It just left him,” Scott remembered. “He didn’t have a personality anymore. He just was kind of a blank face.”

  Whatever Derek’s teammates thought of him, none of their worries had the benefit of hindsight.

  “It was not like he’s going to die,” Scott said. “He’s still going to play hockey, he’s still going to be the toughest guy in the league. There’s nothing that’s going to happen to him. It’s just like he was kind of our big brother—like, okay, nothing’s going to happen to him.”

  IT WAS MARCH 14, 2010, and Derek and Scott were on the ice together in the early minutes of a home game against the St. Louis Blues. There was a whistle, but Scott, as if he did not hear it, smashed a Blues defenseman against the boards behind the net.

  St. Louis forward D. J. King, 230 pounds of gristle, skated toward Scott. Derek stood in his way. He shoved King—an old adversary, another fighter from Saskatchewan, with the shaft of his hockey stick. The two had fought, but they had never truly met.

  Let me get to him, King said casually to Derek, unless you want to go instead. Derek, his shoulder numbed and pain-free from a pregame injection of Toradol, was happy to oblige. He would handle this one.

  King slid backward, a showman understanding that such a bout belonged at center ice. Derek stopped and froze, too proud to be a follower. The men stood and posed comically far apart. King drifted closer, as if pulled by the bigger man’s gravity. Each player dropped his stick from his right hand and instinctively shook away his gloves. They pushed up their sleeves.

  Teammates and officials backed away.

  “The referee just looked at them and said, ‘Okay, boys, let’s get it going here,’ ” one television announcer said.

  “This is a super-heavyweight bout,” his broadcast partner said, his voice rising with excitement.

  Derek stood in place, turning slowly. King orbited, clockwise, like a moon around a planet. King used the time to consider his strategy: Get in close, to avoid the full heft of Derek’s right hand. Punch with the left, to keep him off-balance. Goad
him into lefts of his own. Spot the opening and come back with the right. He batted at air, like a cat at a toy, gauging the distance to Derek while staying safely out of reach. Finally, King stabbed with his left and, head down, charged the bigger man with a wild right fist. Derek blocked it. King managed to get close to Derek, as he wanted, and delivered a pair of left-hand punches to Derek’s face.

  Derek, six inches taller, seven feet high on his skates, immediately thundered down a couple of right fists on top of King’s head, blows that King only felt after the adrenaline of the fight faded later. The television announcer’s voice raised to a shout.

  “And then Boogaard fighting back!” he said.

  King, his head still down, threw a couple of wild right hands that pierced the air. But one of them blindly bashed Derek in the nose and broke it.

  “Oh! And King stuns Boogaard,” the announcer shouted. And just as he said it, Derek threw a right hand that struck King in the forehead. King’s white helmet flew from his head. It spun, like a saucer, completing a dozen revolutions before it landed and skittered across the ice.

  In a fight for the Wild, Derek knocks off D. J. King’s helmet.

  They had been swinging at each other for only eight seconds.

  The men traded right hands, Derek hitting King on top of his bare head, King tagging Boogaard in the face again. They slid into one corner of the rink, against the boards, and grabbed each other’s shoulders. The television broadcast displayed a “Tale of the Tape” graphic, showing the combatants’ heights and weights.

  Derek and King, as if roped together, drifted around the ice for 30 more seconds. King tried to steer the bigger man into the boards, where the fight might stall and be interrupted. Derek, his face throbbing in pain, tried to hit King a few more times, but King was content to hang on in a hug. Finally, as the men came to rest behind the goal, officials slipped between them. Derek’s nose was bleeding, and blood was smeared across his forehead.