Hockey Confidential (21 page)

The Canadiens paid handsomely for it, too, giving Prust more than three times the $800,000 annual salary he was earning with the New York Rangers.

There were those who suggested Prust was simply chasing the dollars, looking to cash in. If that were the case, who could blame him? Fighting in the NHL is oftentimes a high-risk, low-reward proposition, with a short shelf life. There was much more to it for Prust. It was gut-wrenching to leave New York and his posse of close friends that included Brad Richards, Brian Boyle, Michael Del Zotto and Henrik Lundqvist.

“The contract . . . for sure, if you asked me when I was 18 years old, could I ever envision making $2.5 million a year . . . a guy like me, not the most skilful. . . . No way. I couldn't imagine it,” he said. “But it wasn't just about the money.”

Ironically, Prust had met the lovely Maripier in New York while he was with the Rangers. The Canadiens knew he might look favourably on moving to his girlfriend's hometown. He was also hopeful of an expanded role, maybe more minutes of ice time, a chance to get in on the ground floor of a new culture in Montreal being established by a new general manager (Bergevin) and new head coach (Therrien).

“I loved New York City, the organization, the players. I knew I was leaving a very good situation,” Prust said. “It was the weirdest time for me. For two days after I signed, I was the happiest and saddest, all at the same time, I've ever been in my life. So happy to be part of something new in Montreal, so sad to be leaving New York.”

The Prusts didn't just talk about family values; they lived
them.

When Kevin Prust's father, Raymond, died—Brandon was 11 years old at the time—Kevin moved the whole family from their home in London to nearby Thorndale, where Kevin's mother, Georgina, was still in the family cottage overlooking Lake Fanshawe. They built an addition to the cottage—one big, happy, mixed-bag family.

Raymond Prust, Brandon's Papa (grandfather), was of Welsh-English origin. During World War II, he met Georgina Miliardi in Italy. Their relationship was frowned upon in Naples, so Raymond and Georgina left for Canada and got married. Brandon's Nonna (grandmother)—or as he called her, his Nonni—was as Italian as Italian could be. Brandon's mom, Theresa, was born and raised in Glasgow until age seven, when the family moved to Canada. She was a McQuillan, the daughter of a colourful Scotsman, Glaswegian Jimmy McQuillan.

“Italian and Scottish,” mused Prust. “I grew up with Italian home cooking and kilts. I lived with my Nonni. My
Granda
was a real Scot, one of the funniest men you would ever meet. My family, all we ever did—and all we ever do when we're together—is laugh and have fun. That was instilled in me from a very young age.”

Brandon and his sister, Carla, three years his senior, came by their love of hockey honestly. Their home on the lake provided some of the best outdoor skating imaginable, no doubt part of the reason why Carla, who grew up to become a schoolteacher, not to mention a mother of three, played varsity hockey for the University of Western Ontario.

Brandon's dad worked as a salesman for a safety company, travelling throughout southwestern Ontario; his mom spent more than 35 years with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

When Brandon, at age 18, finally made the hometown OHL Knights, it was a cause for celebration for the whole family. Well, almost the whole family.

“My Nonni, she would come to the games or watch them on TV, and as much as she liked me playing [for the Knights], she didn't like me fighting,” Prust said. “She would say, ‘You don't have to fight. Why do you fight?' She tried to offer me money [$20] for any game I didn't fight. I never took it, but it was always offered.”

Meanwhile, there wasn't a game Prust played as a Knight that he didn't give or get a high five from his “Granda,” Jimmy McQuillan, whose Knights season tickets were right on the glass, alongside where the players would walk out onto the ice.

“He loved it, and so did all the guys [on the team],” Prust said. “He had front-row seats and I'd say, ‘Hi Granda,' every night on my way to the ice, and we would all give him high fives.”

Jimmy McQuillan wasn't offering Brandon money not to fight. Neither was Kevin Prust, who Brandon said was a “little more naturally aggressive off the ice, with more of a temper, than me.”

The Hunter brothers, meanwhile, were instilling in Prust, and all the Knights, their own set of hockey family values.

“[The Hunters] taught me what it is to be a professional,” Prust said. “That's what they do there—teach all the kids who go through there how to be pros. I was like a sponge, soaking it all up.”

It was in Prust's second season in London, when he had 35 fights, that his game blossomed, and not just the face-punching part. He showed more dimension than many imagined he possessed. He scored 19 goals and 52 points, with 269 minutes in penalties, in 64 games. In the playoffs, he scored seven goals and 20 points in 15 games and was named the Knights' playoff MVP.

“He showed he could play,” Mark Hunter said. “He wasn't real big, he wasn't real fast. He killed penalties, he made plays. Tough? Oh, yeah. He could fight. Totally fearless. He was a leader. He cared so much for the team.”

The combination of pugilism and production didn't go unnoticed. The Calgary Flames drafted Prust in the third round, 70th overall, in the 2004 NHL draft. It was an amazing step forward for a kid who had played Forest City hockey before one year each of AA and AAA without being drafted into the OHL.

“That's when I knew [he was going to fulfil his destiny to be an NHLer],” Prust said. “I needed some luck, some breaks—the broken Zamboni, my dad golfing—to get to that point, but once I'd been noticed, once I was drafted, I knew it was in my hands now. I could take it from there.”

The real dream season was Prust's overage year, 2004–05. The lockout wiped out that entire NHL season, so all eyes were on junior hockey's most dominant team. London was a star-studded group—future NHLers Corey Perry, Rob Schremp, David Bolland, Marc Methot and Dan Girardi, amongst others. The Knights started the season with an OHL-record 31-game undefeated streak, went on to win the OHL championship on home ice, and hosted—and won—the Memorial Cup, beating Sidney Crosby's Rimouski Oceanic in the championship game before a rabid hometown crowd.

“The guys on that team are best friends to this day and always will be,” Prust said. “There's such a tight bond. It was a fairy-tale season. We made a statement. No chance anyone was beating us. We were dominant. I got to hold up the OHL championship trophy and the Memorial Cup on home ice, right there in front of my family and friends, my Granda in his seats at the glass. It doesn't get any better than that.”

Nine years into his professional career, Prust was still looking for that elusive Stanley Cup championship, but simply forging that length of career was quite an accomplishment for someone who easily could've been a dead-end kid.

In his first three years as a pro, in the Calgary system, he fought all comers, had decent offensive output for a fighter—12, 17 and 10 goals—in the AHL. He showed he could play some to go with the fighting.

“I was trying to make an impression, trying to make a name for myself,” Prust said. “I was playing a lot, putting up some goals and points, and I wasn't backing down from anybody. If I didn't lead the league in fights, I was close to it. I fought anyone . . . John Scott, Rocky Thompson. I fought some scary dudes, but I was confident. I'd become a good fighter. I knew if I played well, did my job, any team [in the NHL] would need a guy like me.”

By 2008–09, his fourth year as a pro, Prust was an NHLer, never to play another game in the minors. He was traded that season, from Calgary to Phoenix, but was immediately dealt back to Calgary in the summer of 2009.

Prust liked playing for Flames coach Darryl Sutter in his first go-round in Cowtown; not so much in his second tour of duty, playing for Darryl's brother Brent. So when Prust was traded from Calgary to the Rangers in the 2009–10 season, he welcomed the fresh start under hard-rock Blueshirt coach John Tortorella. Prust flourished there, providing abundant grit and even scored 13 goals—his NHL career high—in 2010–11 while becoming a fan and media favourite who hit, fought and cemented his reputation as the consummate tough-guy teammate, all heart and soul and nails.

“I've yet to hit 20 goals,” Prust said, with a grin and a puncher's lament. “I had 19 in my second year in the O, 17 [in his second year] in the AHL and 13 [in his second year] with the Rangers. Lot of good years, but I couldn't quite get to 20.”

Brandon Prust smiles easily and often, but his chipper
demeanour can sometimes belie the brutal physical punishment that's been inflicted on his body over a dozen seasons of high-level hockey. It's not unique to him; every hockey player goes through to it to varying degrees, but the United Brotherhood of NHL Fighters and Tough Guys must withstand a level of searing pain that is almost obscene, difficult for an average man to even comprehend.

It's often said that professional athletes must understand the difference between being “hurt” and “injured.” You can play hurt, but not injured. For tough guys, though, in a world where a spot in the lineup isn't as certain as it is for the goal-scoring winger or playmaking centre, the line between hurt and injured is more easily blurred, to the point where it's often indistinguishable. It's unimaginable pain, not to mention unspoken painkilling remedies, often game after game for the better part of a season.

“It is a worry,” Prust conceded. “Some days, you feel like you're 100 years old. You think about 20 years from now and how you're going to feel. You want to be able to live, to play golf when you retire. I'm trying to take care of my body differently now. I train and stretch differently. I'd like to play 15 years in the NHL.”

But fighters, and hitters, have no choice but to sacrifice themselves. It's in their job description; it's in their DNA.

Prust underwent hip surgery after his second year of junior hockey. He had a hairline fracture of his jaw in his third year with the Knights. In his first real NHL season, in December 2008, the Flames winger paid the price for renewing acquaintances with old Windsor Spitfire OHL rival Cam Janssen of the St. Louis Blues. The two fought early in the game in St. Louis—that was the norm—but Janssen later lowered the boom with a violent hit to the head that smashed Prust's jaw, badly fracturing it. His recounting of the incident is not for the faint of heart.

“We were in St. Louis. The doctor gave me three Vicodin to get me through the night,” Prust said. “The team was going on to another game somewhere else, but I had to get back to Calgary the next day, on a commercial flight with a connection—I think it was from St. Louis to Denver to Calgary. I can honestly say it was one of the worst days of my life.”

Prust said he couldn't swallow, could barely breathe. The pain was excruciating, and he had no painkillers. He needed to have his jaw wired shut, but that wouldn't happen until he got back home to the doctors in Calgary.

“I literally had to hold my face together, like this,” Prust said, clamping one hand on one side on the top of his head and the other hand on the opposite side, along his jawline. “My face was so swollen, it was out to here . . . people in the airport were staring at me. I had to change planes. It was a long day. I was in so much pain.”

Welcome to the NHL, kid.

He missed three months because of that injury, and was back in the lineup for about three weeks when Minnesota's six-foot-seven, 258-pound Derek Boogaard hit him with a forearm to the head. Prust was concussed, badly. Boogaard got a five-game suspension.

“I didn't get knocked [unconscious] but I didn't know where I was for an hour,” Prust said. “I didn't know where my stall was. I went into the change room; they asked me, ‘What day is it? Don't know. Who did we play? Don't know. What was the score? No clue.' It all came back to me about an hour later.”

Before he was healthy enough to return to the Flames' lineup, Prust was traded to the Phoenix Coyotes.

Good luck, kid.

In his first full year with the Rangers, in November 2010, Prust tore up his shoulder in a fight with Pittsburgh's Mike Rupp. Prust never missed a game that season—it was the year he had his NHL career-best 13 goals and 29 points—but he lost count of how many pain-numbing shots he took to make it through all 82 games.

“I'd wake up in the morning and not be able to move my arm or shoulders and think there was no way I could play that night,” Prust said. “But by game time, I'd be lining up against [Montreal's] Travis Moen on the opening faceoff and saying, ‘Hey Mo, you wanna go?' You find a way, you have to find a way.”

When the season ended, he had shoulder surgery.

The next season, his last in New York, Prust fought Ottawa's Zenon Konopka in mid-January. He snapped a tendon in his left ring finger. The doctor told him he could have it surgically repaired immediately, regaining full use of the finger, but would miss three months—the rest of the regular season—or he could wait until the off-season to have the tendon surgically removed.

“They told me if I waited, and did it in the summer, I would never be able to bend [the top half of his ring finger] again,” Prust said. “I think it was [Ranger captain] Ryan Callahan who said to me, ‘Hey Prusty, it's just a finger. You don't need to ever bend it again.' The guys were chirping me because they thought I should get it fixed [in-season], but it was a contract year. I wasn't missing three months in a contract year.”

Prust played with the pain, and the painkillers. Again. His whole left hand was a mess by the playoffs.

“There was so much swelling and scar tissue,” he said. “I fought [Ottawa's] Chris Neil in our playoff series and I was in agony. I couldn't even grab onto his jersey; I just tried to hang on for dear life. He won that fight; I did all right. I had to do it. It helped change the series around for us.”