Boogaard Derek - Boy on ice: the life and death of Derek Boogaard

To Joe and Ally

D EREK BOOGAARD DID NOT have to fight.

This time, all he had to do was skate onto the ice. He could keep his thickly padded gloves on his hands, rather than theatrically flick them aside. He did not have to curl his mangled fingers into fists and raise them with malicious intent. Instead of dropping his stick, he could hold on to it with two hands, as if he fully intended to scramble for the puck and shoot it into the net, just like all the other players, just as he did as a boy.

He could glide past the bad guys, the ones Derek was paid to fend away with the constant threat of savagery and the occasional use of violence, and do nothing more than smirk and shrug. He was a hockey enforcer, maybe the scariest one in the league, with a reputation for scattering opponents with a look and shattering faces with a punch. But now, Derek simply could be a child, beloved for doing nothing but being himself, sliding effortlessly in little curls.

Boo-gaard, Boo-gaard, Boo-gaard, Boo-gaard

The sold-out crowd at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, home of the National Hockey Leagues Minnesota Wild, chanted his name. The voices of nearly 20,000 people echoed from the rafters to the ice, from the seats against the glass to the concession stands on the concourse, building into a loose and chaotic chorus.

They pronounced his name the way all strangers had in recent years. When Derek was a teenager, first being molded into a hockey fighter by professional coaches, the men who discovered him in the small prairie town in Saskatchewan dubbed him The Boogeyman. Soon, the first syllable of the boys last name was transformed to something more frightening, too, with a simple tweak of pronunciation: Boo, not Beau.

Boo-gaard, Boo-gaard, Boo-gaard, Boo-gaard

It was Dereks second NHL season. He was 24. He had scored no goals and recorded one assist the entire year, on a forgettable goal in a February game against Florida. Of the 32 men who suited up for the Wild that season, Derek averaged the fewest minutes of ice time. Yet Dereks replica jersey, No. 24, was the best selling of all the Wild players.

He was listed in the game program at six feet, seven inches, one of the tallest players in the league, but Derek was closer to six foot eight. With his skates on, to the top of his helmet, he was roughly seven feet tall. The height distorted his shape and disguised his strength, stretched him out into something almost lean and gawky. Teams listed him at 260 pounds, but it was wishful thinking. Derek usually arrived at training camp weighing at least 10 pounds more, and occasionally approached 300. His arms and chest and shoulders were oversized, but not chiseled. Dereks center of gravity rested low, in his thick thighs and massive seat, more like a speed skater or a cyclist than a hockey star.

He had little of the outward menace of other enforcers, those desperate to intimidate with snarls and sneers. Derek rarely looked angry on the ice. His lean face was in a constant position of indifference, as if to cloak what he was thinking behind the sad eyes with heavy lids. His nose, repositioned too many times to remember, descended down, then left, then down again, as if following a detour. For some players, missing teeth were a badge of honor. Not Derek. But his full set of white teeth was only partly real.

Under his own oversized jersey, Derek wore the flimsiest of shoulder pads, the same ones he had worn when he was a boy, playing in a small-town rink with aluminum siding and three rows of bleachers. Then, the only sounds echoing through the building were those of the puck smacking the base of the boards with a thud, the hand-me-down skates carving the ice, and the volunteer coaches shouting instructions and encouragement. The bleachers were empty except for smatterings of parents and siblings. When there were road games, the family van or his fathers police sedan cruised through the frozen black night of the impossibly flat prairie. The trips often ended long after bedtime on a school night, the bright light of the warm garage awakening the boy balled up and asleep in the back seat.

When the boy dared to dream, he dreamed like this.

Boo-gaard, Boo-gaard, Boo-gaard, Boo-gaard

There was no opposing players jersey to grab with the left hand, no face to smash with the right. There was no fear of getting his nose broken, or of having the frayed muscles of his shoulder shredded, or of feeling the bulging disk in his back send jolting waves of pain up his spine. There was no worry over having his raw knuckles explode in blood against the helmet or jaw of the other man. There was no risk of another concussion, or of that one perfectly timed blow that can rearrange a career, the kind that Derek had already built a reputation for delivering. There was no thought of a quick and embarrassing fall to the ice to deaden the crowds enthusiasm and end the fight, which is the way so many of them go, because boxing is hard, but it is harder still while standing on ice with quarter-inch-thick blades attached vertically to the soles of lace-up boots, knowing your job and reputation are on the line.

The moment was just that, a moment in a life made up of millions of them. But to Derek, it was never forgotten. Four years before this night, he had played for a low-rung minor-league team in Louisiana, getting paid a few hundred dollars a week, drinking cheap beer in a ground-level apartment that he shared with his first girlfriend.

Four years after this night, he would be a millionaire living alone in a 33rd-floor condominium overlooking Central Park in New York City, a player for the famed New York Rangers, given nothing less than everything he had ever wanted and silently longing for something else.

Boo-gaard, Boo-gaard, Boo-gaard, Boo-gaard

There was 1 minute, 48 seconds left in Game 4 of Minnesotas first-round playoff series with the Anaheim Ducks. The Ducks had won the first three games of their best-of-seven series, each by one goal. Derek had missed Game 3 two nights earlier with the flu. And in Games 1 and 2, he had spent about nine minutes on the ice and 16 minutes in the penalty box.

Now Minnesota coach Jacques Lemaire wanted to add a desperate dose of Dereks feistiness to the series. Derek had all the subtlety of an armor-plated Zamboni, reporter Jim Souhan wrote that night for the StarTribune in Minneapolis.

Late in the second period, with Minnesota trailing 10, Derek corralled the puck in a corner behind Anaheims goal. He was a good skater for a man his size, but his strength was in straight-ahead momentum rather than ice-carving agility. He was able to build speed with his long strides, and opponents tended to give him a wide berth, the way cars peel aside for an oncoming fire engine.

Given room, Derek flicked a pass that slid between two Ducks players and arrived on the stick of teammate Pierre-Marc Bouchard, standing in front of the goal. Bouchards first shot was blocked and returned to him. His second tied the game.

Derek was credited with an assist. It was the only postseason point he would ever score in the NHL.