When the Lights Went Out by Gare Joyce

Author:Gare Joyce [Joyce, Gare]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-67274-0
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2006-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

Steve Nemeth didn’t understand the optics. If he had, then he probably wouldn’t have stuck a “Kick Me” sign on his own back. That’s what he did. There were hard feelings behind the scenes, but they could have remained an internal matter—strictly inside-the-room stuff. The individual who aired—and legitimized—the players’ grievances was Nemeth himself. Unintentionally.

A couple of weeks after the suspensions were handed down, Nemeth applied to the IIHF for reinstatement. He wanted his suspension either lifted or shortened. His case was simple: he claimed he shouldn’t have been suspended because he didn’t fight. “I wanted to be reinstated so I could play for Canada at the Olympics in Calgary, my hometown, the next winter,” he says today. “I didn’t think what I did merited suspension. I didn’t think that the IIHF was out to punish me so much as give the Canadian team and the national team program a hard time. There wasn’t any sort of hearing or due process when the suspensions were made. I just wanted a chance to make my case.”

A guy without friends doesn’t need to make enemies, but Nemeth did anyway. A lot of Nemeth’s teammates were pissed about his decision not to fight. They thought it had more to do with fear than self-control. One player says that Nemeth’s teammates might have been more forgiving if he hadn’t applied for reinstatement. “He didn’t fight and maybe he couldn’t,” a player said on condition of anonymity. “That was bad enough. But when all of us were taking our lumps together [from the IIHF], this guy asks for a special deal. He didn’t help us out on the ice and then he was ready to leave us behind because he had other things to do. It just made a bunch of us a lot madder.”

Mike Keane won’t give up much about those who didn’t fight. There are many codes in hockey. Keane respects all of them, but none more than the one about keeping some things confidential: What happens in the room stays in the room. For the warden’s son it’s the Blue Wall—strictly don’t ask, don’t tell. Keane hates doing interviews, Theoren Fleury says. Telling him that other players have been forthcoming about their grievances with Nemeth and Turgeon doesn’t warm him up. Keane says that the hard feelings might be overblown: “There were some guys who weren’t involved in the fighting on both sides. At least not as far as trading punches. There were a lot of guys just standing around or pairing up but not trading punches.” Keane’s words on the page don’t hint at, never mind capture, the disdain he plainly feels for the non-combatants (aside from Jimmy Waite).

Keane says that Nemeth applying for reinstatement didn’t change things. “Maybe [Nemeth] was doing what he had to [in applying for reinstatement] just so he could play and make a living,” Keane says. “I wouldn’t have any hard feelings about that, and I don’t think anyone should have.”

Keane says all this in a tone that is completely flat.

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