The War with Brophy
This is the headline in a 13 page long chapter found in Miroslav Frycer’s autobiography.
Frycer played eight seasons in the NHL, six of them with Toronto during the 1980s.
He scored 330 points in 415 NHL-games.
Frycer wrote that Brophy had a friendly attitude towards him when he was an assistant coach to Dan Maloney, but that it all changed when Brophy became the head coach (for Toronto).
”After about five games he stripped me of my ”A” that was given to me at the start of the season, and gave it to Tom Fergus. I was told that it would be beneficial if the ”A” could be rotated among the players. That didn’t bother me at all, it was just a letter, and Fergie was a great guy.”
”Then Brophy came up with the idea that I should get into more fights during games, and had me pummeling a punching bag for half an hour after each training, this bothered me a lot more.”
”I mean, he wanted the most productive player to turn into a fighter. "Hey listen, Johnny, you know me, and what kind of hockey player I am. I am willing to drop my gloves against anybody, but I am more valuable to the team in other ways", I explained.”
“With this our war began. Brophy made me his own personal punching bag, and began to hinder my development as a player, whenever he could.”
“Brophy didn’t like my playing style that I played together with Peter Ihnacak. We tried to be creative, criss-crossing, attacking in different way than the Canadian players, and it worked well. But in Brophy’s eyes this was “European S**t Hockey”. He wanted us to shoot/dump the puck along the boards. I barely got the puck on my own blue line before I heard him shout from the bench, “Dump the puck in.””
“What the heck, why should I play like this? " "I’ve played in the NHL for five years, and I don’t just give the puck away, if I don’t have to". "I tried to explain this to him, all in vain. Brophy wouldn’t budge”
“Another novelty that he introduced was that we had to weigh in before each game. Why not? We are pros after all, and the coach have the right to be in control. The problem was that Brophy had no clue whatsoever. This was a bit more advanced than his EHL days when a bunch of lumberjacks just used their sticks on each other. He had no advanced schooling to be a coach, and was clueless how many percent muscles and body fat we should have proportionately to our body mass/height. He gave each player a number and we were not allowed to get over it, period.”
After a game during breakfast at Marriott hotel.
“I sat at a table with Iha (Peter Ihnacak) and had a toast while drinking coffee and reading the newspapers. Suddenly, dead silence, what’s up? And I raised my head – Across me was Brophy". “I know that you did it on purpose last night. Before the game you had hookers in your room and being drunk.” My blood pressure began to rise, because it was all hogwash. But I tried to hold back. Don’t let him provoke me I told myself - please just shut it John.”
“But he continued, telling me that I was always faking everything, that I was lazy, and that they lost because of me. That got me over the top, I stood up, grabbed him by his neck and shouted, “say one more word and I’ll punch you to la-la land.”
“I couldn’t care less if he had any boxing skills or not. After that I took my keys and approached our management at another table. I’m going up (to the room) and I’ll call a cab. You in the meantime will fix me a plane ticket to Toronto. I’m not going to play for this moron.”
“They clearly didn’t expect that. “Mirko, don’t overreact, everything will be ok, we have an important game ahead of us.” “I didn’t budge though, I flew home and the rest of the guys flew to Philadelphia, only to lose 1-6.”
“Earlier I had coaches that I didn’t agree with all the time, and that’s part of sports. I didn’t see eye-to-eye with [Michel] Bergeron [Quebec], but I respected him for what he had done in the NHL. [Mike] Nykoluk [Toronto] was not much of a coach, but he was a good guy. [Dan] Maloney [Toronto] also had his moments, but was always fair. Brophy was a different kind of breed altogether.”
“Brophy’s vocabulary was “exemplary”. To him we were just a bunch of motherf***ers and bastards. I would have a more intelectual conversation with someone who finished fifth grade in school than with Brophy. Brophy’s basic word was f**k in all shape and forms. Once when we lost a game against Minnesota he managed to get the word in 57 times in a span of six minutes during an interview. To me, who had played for educated gentlemen as Ludek Bukac and Pavel Wohl it was quite a cultural change.”
“Brophy was also like a lunatic in the dressing room. He could enter the room during an intermission, totally out of his mind, ripping off his jacket and shred it to pieces. Or he would take off his watch and trash it against the floor. Trash cans flew around the dressing rooms constantly and we didn’t even raise an eyebrow. I also remember how he came into our dressing room once with blood trickling down his hand, just because he tried to tear down a plexiglass partition while being in a state of rage. In Los Angeles, he once was hit in the head by a puck, his grey hair filled with blood, but he never noticed and kept on shouting, being in total trance.”
“Brophy with his almost perverse style of coaching most definitely didn’t mean any harm. He loved hockey and wanted to win, no one can take that away from him. He wanted to get the best out of us and get us going, but he chose the worst possible path for that. Especially the young guys were not prepared for that. Al Iafrate was a nervous wreck before each game and I had to calm down Gary Leeman to ignore the madman and concentrate on his own game instead.”
“Brophy was old school even by NHL standards in the 1980s. The game was heading in a totally different direction, where Edmonton ruled with fast and technical hockey. But Brophy still wanted to play the type of hockey that ruled in the lower leagues. To provoke your opponent, put fear in him and beat him up". "Knock him off his feet, let him end up in a wheelchair!" "With these instructions he sent his big guys to the ice.”
“When we let in a lot of goals from the goal crease area, he gave us lessons on how to avoid it. He used Chris Kotsopoulos and Val James, a big black guy who joined us from the farm team occasionally, to demonstrate how to defend. Brophy grabbed the stick with both hands and chopped them in their kidneys until they fell down, and again, and again. “if you don’t master this, you don’t have any reason to be out on the ice", he shouted.”
“One of our new players (1987/88) was Dave Semenko who used to be Wayne Gretzky’s bodyguard in Edmonton and a great fighter. He was a tower of a man, but a very kind person who wouldn’t hurt a fly off the ice. Semenko was a humorous and intelligent guy. I really liked him and we got along very well. As a player Semenko was exactly Brophy’s kind of guy. At least it seemed that way.”
“Brophy envisioned that Semenko would beat everyone up. Dave however was not a bad player at all and wanted to finish his career by playing real hockey. In Edmonton he protected mainly Gretzky and didn’t fight unnecessarily. When Wayne was hit or taken advantage of, it was Semenko’s task to set things straight so it wouldn’t happen again. He gave his star some much needed space on the ice. Here Brophy wanted him to attack the opponents star players. This was against Dave’s code of honor. Get back at someone?, fight another tough guy?, ok, that’s all fine. If it helps the team to get going, why not? But he refused to fight without a reason and just be a hired gun for Brophy.”
“It didn’t take long before Dave asked me over a couple of beers, “Oh my god, what kind of lunatic is coaching us?” “In Edmonton he was used to winning and comfort, in Toronto he didn’t find either of those things. After another confrontation with Brophy, he decided to quit hockey, even before the season finished.”
After getting traded from Toronto
“Before training camp I stopped by Maple Leafs Garden to get my equipment. As I walked in there, I bumped into Brophy. Our farewell was short but honest.”
“F**k You !”
“F**k You !”
