Posted: Wed November 26, 1997
This was not what Marybeth LaFontaine really wanted. She sat in
the good seats in Madison Square Garden and watched her husband
come onto the ice two weeks ago with the rest of the New York
Rangers as the lights on the scoreboard whirled and flashed and
as that song Tubthumping, by Chumbawamba, was played as loud as
possible on the sound system—"I get knocked down. But I get up
again. You're never going to keep me down"—and she didn't know
if she could watch.
What if her husband got knocked down? What if he didn't get up,
if he got knocked out again? What if...? A columnist for the
Ottawa Citizen, Allen Panzeri, had written as the season began,
"Watching Pat LaFontaine play hockey this year is like going to
an automobile race to see the crashes. You're not really
watching for the goals and the assists, you're watching for the
wrecks." That was as good a description as any.
"I don't know how this is going to go," Marybeth said to Tammy
Keane, the wife of Rangers winger Mike Keane. "I don't know if I
can take it."
The memories of less than a year ago were too fresh. This was
the 18th game back for Pat, an undersized, 32-year-old center,
from the grim aftereffects of a fifth concussion, which had
caused him to miss most of last season. This was Marybeth's
first game back. She had been wrapped up in the business of
closing the old house outside Buffalo, setting up the new house
in Greenwich, Conn., moving the three kids and two dogs from one
place to the other and finding new doctors and schools and dry
cleaners, taking care of everything in slightly more than a
month. Unpacked boxes still filled the new house. The
babysitter, Mokey McCarthy, brought from Buffalo to help for a
week, was in her third week on the job.
Now, finally, there was time to watch Pat play. As she settled
into her seat, Marybeth couldn't help thinking that everything
could have been so much easier, so much safer. Stay in the old
house, the one she and Pat had built to their specifications.
Live the same life they'd lived for most of their 10 years of
marriage. Take the guaranteed contract for almost $10 million
for the next two years. Retire. Maybe some doctors had cleared
Pat to play again, to take chances, but hadn't almost everyone
else told him to be smart, to grab the money, to begin to live
the rest of his life? Hadn't she told him the same thing? "I
couldn't do what you're doing," she had told him, flat out. "I
wouldn't do it."
The game, hockey, scared her now. She had seen what it could do.
"He was very emotional," Marybeth says, describing the bad times
of a year ago. "I would walk into a room, and he would be
crying. He cried a lot. Or he would be holding his head from the
migraine headaches. They were terrible. He wouldn't leave the
house for a week. He wouldn't change his clothes, wouldn't
shower. It was all the classic signs of depression. I thought he
was having a nervous breakdown."
Pat, a bouncy 5'10", 180-pound perfectionist who had almost
willed himself into becoming arguably the best U.S.-born player
in history, the star of the Buffalo Sabres, had been replaced by
a zombie, a husk. His skin was pale. His eyes, the same wide
eyes that had caused teenage girls to leave phone numbers and
undergarments on his car when he was a 19-year-old playing for
the New York Islanders, were now glassy. A man of many interests
now had interest in nothing.
On Oct. 17, 1996, he was dropped by a hit from 6'6", 236-pound
Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Francois Leroux. The blow from
Leroux's left elbow was to the left side of LaFontaine's head.
As he fell, his helmet came off. He struck the right side of his
head on the ice and went out cold. At first there didn't seem to
be a problem. He regained consciousness after a few minutes, and
though he sat out the rest of the game, he was able to drive
himself home. He missed the next game but was back one week
after the injury to play against the Montreal Canadiens. He
appeared in six more games. He was fine.
No, he wasn't. The depression had landed in a thick cloud in his
head. His hand-eye coordination had gradually disappeared. The
migraines had begun. He couldn't remember the simplest things.
He was gone, off to a different, scary world. Before the final
game he tried to play, against the Philadelphia Flyers, he gave
an emotional speech to the Sabres, an apology for the way he was
performing. Buffalo coach Ted Nolan pulled him from the lineup.
It was time to get help.
Continued
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