Sticking It Out

He had weathered the shame of a criminal conviction that earned him everlasting infamy far beyond the NHL, horrific images of him chopping down an opponent with his stick flickering across the nightly news and forever branding him a thug.

He had quietly sat out a yearlong suspension, by far the longest in league history for an on-ice infraction, biting his tongue while pundits besmirched his reputation from Malibu to Moose Jaw, Hawthorne to Halifax.

Happily engaged to a professional beach volleyball player, he was contentedly ensconced in Manhattan Beach, one of the world’s loveliest addresses, and building a palatial beachfront home in neighboring Hermosa Beach.

Financially, he was set for life.

So why would Marty McSorley want to return to professional hockey, to revisit the ignominy of his painful exit from the sport?

And why, in turn, would professional hockey want him back?

The answer to the first question, McSorley says over coffee during an interview not far from the ocean in Manhattan Beach, is simple enough: He loves it.

“There’s a spark there that I really can’t extinguish,” he says.

That’s why, instead of relaxing on the beach with his wife, Leanne Schuster, this winter or traveling the world, as he did during his hiatus from the game, the newlywed McSorley will slog through 16-hour days coaching the Springfield (Mass.) Falcons, American Hockey League affiliate of the Phoenix Coyotes.

You read right: McSorley, a former King perhaps best known in the Southland as the saboteur who derailed the club’s championship hopes when he was caught using an improper stick in the 1993 Stanley Cup finals, is a coach.

As to why the Coyotes would entrust him with their top prospects, one step removed from the NHL, they say that answer is simple too.

They know him.

McSorley served long and hard as an on-ice bodyguard for Wayne Gretzky, co-owner of the Coyotes, keeping bullies like himself off the Great One’s back. His agent was Mike Barnett, now general manager of the Coyotes.

They say there is more to McSorley, 39, than those unforgettable images of him striking Donald Brashear of the Vancouver Canucks in the head with his stick during a game at Vancouver, Canada, two years ago--an incident so brutal that McSorley was prosecuted in provincial court in British Columbia.

They consider McSorley an ideal choice to work with young, impressionable prospects, the very picture of perseverance and dedication when he played.

Though not drafted and only marginally talented, McSorley battled his way through 17 seasons with six NHL teams, winning two championships with Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers in the 1980s and racking up 3,381 penalty minutes, more than all but two other players in NHL history.

“Marty McSorley may be the best example today of a player who enjoyed a stellar career yet willed himself into the league,” Barnett says. “He was never drafted, yet the commitment he made to himself to try and improve every day, every month, was something he could never waver from if he wanted to play in the National Hockey League. Once he got into the league, he was bound and determined no one was going to take that away from him.

“That’s the understanding he’s going to impact on our players. At the minor league level, that’s first and foremost, that you need to make a commitment to yourself and pay a price to maximize your physical potential as a National Hockey Leaguer.”

McSorley scored a career-best 15 goals and 41 points for the Kings in the 1992-93 season, one of three seasons he ranked among the league’s top 10 defensemen in goal scoring. First and foremost, though, he was an enforcer.

“I went out on the ice to fight sometimes,” he says, offering no apologies for a career that, before the Brashear incident, included seven other suspensions for acts ranging from cross-checking an opponent in the forehead to eye-gouging during a fight. “Everybody in the building knew I was out there to fight.”

The night of Feb. 21, 2000, was one of those.

Playing for the Boston Bruins against the Vancouver Canucks, less than a minute remaining and the Bruins trailing, 5-2, McSorley was sent into the game to fight Brashear, McSorley later testified. Earlier, Brashear had inadvertently injured Bruin goaltender Byron Dafoe, then taunted the Bruin bench.

What happened next was caught on videotape and replayed ad nauseam for months:

From behind, the 6 foot 1, 235-pound McSorley approaches the 6-2, 235-pound Brashear, who is skating without the puck, and clubs him on the side of the face with a quick, hard swing of his stick.

Brashear crumbles to the ice. The back of his skull hits the frozen surface as his helmet pops loose and, after lying motionless for a moment, he begins to convulse. He is carried off on a stretcher and taken to a hospital to spend the night, having suffered a concussion that will sideline him for 20 games.

The Canucks were justifiably outraged, the general public horrified.

Even McSorley’s wife-to-be, watching on television, was incensed.

“Seeing the replay,” Schuster says, “I was angry with Marty.”

Her anger quickly turned to sympathy, however, after she’d heard his explanation, that he hadn’t intended to hit Brashear in the head but instead was aiming for a shoulder in an attempt to goad Brashear into a fight.

Others didn’t buy it.

“If McSorley plays another game in this league,” Canuck defenseman Mattias Ohlund told the Vancouver Sun, “then this league is a ... joke.”

He never did.

Nearly eight months after the incident, on Oct. 6, 2000, Judge William Kitchen concluded a nonjury trial in Vancouver by finding McSorley guilty of “assaulting Donald Brasher with a weapon, a hockey stick.”

The NHL, which already had suspended McSorley for the last 23 games of the 1999-2000 season, extended the ban to a full calendar year.

Still, McSorley didn’t believe he was finished. Anticipating a return to the ice when his suspension was lifted Feb. 21, 2001, he joined a minor league team in Grand Rapids, Mich. But he cut short the conditioning stint after realizing that no NHL team was going to sign him. “For whatever reason,” he says, arching his eyebrows as if to imply that his suspension, in reality, was a lifetime ban.

Of course, he was 37 at the time and had played for five teams in five seasons. His playing days seemed numbered, even without his excess baggage.

In truth, the suspension and the criminal conviction had little impact on McSorley’s life. He served no jail time. Kitchen, in sentencing McSorley, had issued a “conditional discharge,” stipulating that for 18 months McSorley must not “engage in any sporting event where Donald Brashear is on the opposition.”

McSorley didn’t, and last spring his criminal record was expunged.

Still, McSorley says that Kitchen’s assertion that “Brashear was stuck as intended ... an NHL player would never, ever miss” is “a joke.” He says also that his peers understand what happened in Vancouver, that hockey players had clubbed each other before this incident and that they continue to club each other.

“They know that there are players put on the ice in certain situations to do less-than-attractive jobs ... and if they don’t do it, somebody else will,” he says. “Some of them gave me a hug and said, ‘We’re proud of you.’ Proud of me not for what happened, but proud of me just for having the courage to say, ‘I believe it never should have happened; it was a mistake.’

“Is it the only time [something like this] has ever happened? No. Nobody likes to see it. I didn’t like to see it. Did I feel bad for Donald? Absolutely. I would rather have had Donald turn around and drop the gloves, as intended. And they understand that. You know, Gordie Howe made the comment, ‘I’ve done worse.’ ”

Though disappointed that his career ended on such a sour note, McSorley says the fallout from the incident has not been all that bad.

An engaging, personable man, he says he is never scorned.

“I have a tough time buying a beer in Canada because I get people coming up who say what they really feel about what happened,” he says.

Of his forced retirement, he says, “I think, in a good way, it affected my life. I got myself prepared to make the next step and part of that next step was to continue to buy real estate, develop properties [in the South Bay]....

“I sat down with Leanne and said, ‘Let’s build a house, let’s try to plant some roots.’ It forced me to reset my goals.”

Free to roam, he traveled to Australia, where he surfed, participated in hockey clinics and attended the Australian Open tennis tournament.

In Switzerland, where his brother Chris coaches, he rode the bus and joined the team for practices. In London, he played in two charity games. In Canada, he played in a Christmas tournament on a team with his six brothers.

He watched Schuster, an Olympic hopeful from Mesa, Ariz., play volleyball. And on Aug. 17, they were married north of Toronto.

“Obviously, the first year out was the toughest because your whole daily routine has changed dramatically,” Schuster says. “But to be honest, I think he really enjoyed kind of taking a step back and being free to do what he wanted to do and being able to just be a fan of the game instead of in the middle of it all.”

Increasingly, though, he found himself drawn back into hockey.

As a spectator, he attended junior games as well as NHL games. A few players, he says, asked if he’d like to be their agent. He considered buying a junior team.

And more than one team, he says, asked him about coaching.

He met with Gretzky during a Mighty Duck game last season in Anaheim and eventually worked out a deal with the Coyotes.

McSorley, whose team opens its season Friday against the Hartford Wolf Pack, won’t reveal his salary but says it’s not much.

“Let’s just say a vast majority of the [players], if not all, will be making more money,” he says.

To McSorley, it matters not at all.

He’s grateful for the opportunity.

“It was kind of an awakening for me to see how much time and money is invested in developing young players,” he says, “and for me to have this responsibility is very important to me. It’s very flattering to me.”

Gretzky and Barnett, he believes, have gone out on a limb for him, though Barnett says that NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman welcomed McSorley back.

“It takes somebody who’s got some courage to do it because they’re going to be faced with people pestering them,” McSorley says of his return to professional hockey. “A lot of people have already said, ‘What justifies him getting a head-coaching job? What qualifies him?’

“And Wayne and Mike Barnett, I’ve heard them both chuckle and say, ‘Seventeen years in the National Hockey League as a client and teammate.’ ”

He pauses.

“Now the ball’s in my court.”

*

Times staff writer Helene Elliott contributed to this report.