Clearing The Crease Podcast
Hockey’s best podcast featuring Mike Commodore Andrew Raycroft and hosted by James Cybulski.
Clearing The Crease Podcast
NHL Legend AL IAFRATE gives one the FUNNIEST interviews ever
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In a very special CTC live interview, Al Iafrate joins Mike Commodore, Andrew Raycroft and James Cybulski to talk his great NHL career, how he developed one of the hardest shots in league history, his transition from juniors to the show... and an unfortunate story involving a dog who posed for a picture. All that and more on today's episode powered by Ozoon!
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SPEAKER_04Welcome back to the Clearing the Crease podcast, powered by Ozun. Well played. I'm James Tabalski. With me as always, the Rock Stars, your favorite Stanley Cup winner, Mike Commodore, the Razor, your favorite Calder trophy winner, Andrew Raycroft. And our guest today, one of the greatest shots, one of the great cannons in the history of the sport. And I am not exaggerating by any stretch, Al Ayafrady. Al, thank you for joining us. And first things first, you're wearing a toque, and I'm thinking, where's the skulllet, man? Like you, every hockey fan right now, where's the flow? Where's that flow right now?
SPEAKER_01Well, I had a I had a a fro, like uh I had long curly hair, and then I started to go bald and kind of like the Samson thing. I was like, I can't cut my hair off. So anyone can wear a man bun. So I was like, I'm gonna have a skulllet. So I rocked the skulllet at the end of my career. I shaved my head when I got to Boston, and I think everyone misses the skulllet, like you said. But it's all it's gone. I waved goodbye to it, and I'm I appreciate being here. Love these guys as athletes, as players, they're awesome guys. So it's I'm honored to be here.
SPEAKER_04Well, you don't do a lot of these, so I appreciate that. That's all that's dealing with. This is yeah, so like this is a big deal.
SPEAKER_02Big Al's literally the best guy of all the guys that we could have on. It's literally my favorite.
SPEAKER_04Tell the story my favorite. What are you wearing? What tell us the story about this toque right now?
SPEAKER_01Because I thought you were joking when you said it, but I had to I have to mark my turf, right? So I love it. When I was 16, I didn't think I was gonna make 21, and then I just turned 60. It's the year of the fire horse, right? Uh, once every 60 years. Um, I turned 60 and I feel like I'm in the seventh innings trench. So there's still a lot of places I want to go and and see. So I figured I gotta mark my turf wherever I go. So I got this. I don't know what camera I'm on, but it says that it says I love to pee outside.
SPEAKER_00And I mean I need one of the I need one of the best thing about it is I can like this.
SPEAKER_01I can put it wherever I want. I'm very uh resourceful. Much to the dismay of a lot of my coaches, I am resourceful.
SPEAKER_04You said this is gonna be fun.
SPEAKER_03Literally, this is who I hang out with whenever I can. Speaking of 16 to 21, I want to bring it back to go back in the day. 18 years old Olympics, right? Yep. 17. 17 years old. Oh, so how'd that come about? I mean, that's incredible.
SPEAKER_01It was uh Elfie Turcott and Pat Lafontaine were teammates of mine. Great players, first round draft picks, Hall of Famer. Elfie's a great hockey player as well. His son Alex is uh LA. Yep, it was all right. Um so after after my midget career with uh Compuer, Pete Carmanos, I played for the original Compuer, one of the original Compuler teams with his oldest son, Pete the, he might be Pete the fourth or third, the boy. And uh, you know, Pete was a big proponent of uh getting guys to the next level. So he kind of opened up the whole American player playing in the OHL and stuff like that. Before that, it was you know, the 80 Olympic team won the gold medal. It was a college type thing if you're an American player. And Pete knew a lot of the scouts, and you know, he probably had his visions of owning a team at that point, you know, in time. And after our mid-year, we won the national championship, and they had tryouts for the sports festival, which was north, south, east, west. They'd have zones. And uh me and Pat went to the tryouts and I I made the cut like out of the part of the Midwest we were in, and uh went to the camp in Colorado Springs and Colorado Springs. I I played pretty decent, and Shelly was there, and you know, a lot of other uh great players, and me and Pat made the team, and I was like, this is awesome. Yeah, and you're teaching quit high school.
SPEAKER_00I was like, school's awesome. I finished my junior year.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I finished my junior year, and I was like, oh, I was a good I was a pretty good student. I was getting letters from like, you know, a lot of big Ivy League schools and stuff like that, because I was a good student, and uh, but I didn't love school. I loved hockey, yeah, and I loved football. And uh were you a football player too? Uh I played football up to a point, and that's funny because my mom was like, you've got to decide when I was uh sophomore in high school. She's like, you've got to decide. Uh if you play football, you're gonna you're gonna get hurt, you're gonna hurt your knees. So I played hockey and ended up having nine surgeries, three back surgeries, just got my hip replaced. So um, you know, back to the to the question Kami asked me. I made the team. I went to the camp in uh Colorado Springs, and then I made like the final roster where I was gonna travel around the world with because before it was pros, it was amateur, and the the national team would travel all over. So we played like 20 games against the college teams, 20 games against the the affiliates of the pro teams. I think it was the CHL back then, maybe, and uh International Hockey League. So we played a lot of the minor pro teams, and then it was the Olympics, and then I went to Belleville right after the Olympics because they drafted me in the OHL in the first round. And that was kind of a bummer because Larry Mavity and Doc Vaughn, Doc Vaughn known Belleville, and Larry Mavity's a legendary coach, obviously. Yeah, um, I had to call them and tell them I'm not coming. You know, and they were great with it. They were like, you know, it's an unbelievable opportunity. We understand. And then after the Olympics, I went to Belleville, but it happened. I went from like, you know, being in high school, going to the parties, to going to a tryout to, hey, I'm gonna be on the Olympic team. Right. Yeah, you know, it was like from midget hockey four months later.
SPEAKER_00Pretty big jobs here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And then uh, you know, I I wish I would have been able to play a full year of junior, because I think I really would have developed uh more so before I got to the NHL rather than the growing pains of being an 18-year-old. Because when I was 18 at my first NHL camp, I thought it was a track meet, man. I was like, oh, I'm gonna go end-to-end every time I hit the box. You know, then I realized, okay, these guys are as big as me, they're fast like me, they're stronger than me, and they're way more experienced. Yeah. So it was uh some learning pains for the organization and myself, but if I could do it all over again, I'd do it the exact same way. You know, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you guys gotta see the jumpsuit he has. It's worn. He's got the jumpsuit from Stereo Yarrell and he'll break it out on the leaf.
SPEAKER_01He's like the classic 80s uh dumb and dumber team suit. Red, white, and blue, awesome USA colors. Um Levi's was the big sponsor. And I I wore it, I wore it at an event with Razor a year or two ago in uh in uh Brockville, right?
SPEAKER_02It was the Four Nations, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It was the Four Nations and uh I wore it. I wore it for the Gal fits of the Gallip. It still fits. But I mean, maybe not a little bit. It still fits. I'm like 10 pounds heavier than men.
SPEAKER_02Well, he was 17, by the way. So you can imagine the mansions held up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was like 212 then. I'm like 227 now. So it's it's a little snugger, but it's good.
SPEAKER_04You can pull it off. Uh that's incredible.
SPEAKER_02Talk to us about when you went to the NHL and how that, like you just talked to maybe one more year juniors. Of course, you and I won't Mav had was my coach, Doc Vaughn from Bell thing, those guys, another year would have been great, but you also were ready for the NHL physically.
SPEAKER_01Uh physically, because I could like my I mean, I'm known for my shot probably the most, but I was a skater. No, you flew. Yeah, you flew with that. That was my game was skating and shooting, right? Um, but like I said earlier, it was uh I had to learn the game because you know, playing up until I got to the Olympic game, you I could pretty much do whatever I wanted from the blue line. And uh it was a it was a big learning curve, you know, learning, you know, how to play down low with the center, you know, being your guy with you down low with the D, and you know, when to pinch and you know, when to try to go end-to-end when it's five-nothing, and you're trying to go end-to-end, and there's a minute left in the game and you're winning, and then the other team scores and the shutouts gone. Yeah, that kind of stuff was painful. Uh, you know, with especially I remember one time I did that, and uh we were playing Winnipeg. We were winning, I think, 3-0, and there was like two minutes left in the game, and I wanted a cookie or something. So I was like, all right, I'm gonna go end-to-end. And I decided I was gonna go end-to-end, and Randy Carlisle, classic hip check, flips me. They go down and score. My best buddy was Kenny Reggett. We live, we live together, right? Yeah, yeah, and uh that ended his shutout bid. And uh the next day in practice, bro, he has a bucket of pucks. And he's like, Boys, we're gonna skate a side of beef. Come on and watch. And he dumped out all the pucks, and I had to grab a puck, sprint to the red line, dump it in, and yell, I will dump the puck. And then I'd skate back and get another one and have to do the whole bucket. Oh, I need to do the whole bucket. It was horrible, but it was deserved, so you're gonna skate a side of beef.
SPEAKER_04That's gonna, if you don't mind, like core memory unlocked, having you sit here. When I think of hockey night in Canada growing up in the 1980s, watching the Leafs were always on Saturday night, and at a time when you know the team wasn't winning a lot of games, sort of in the 80s. But man, your group as as a there was so much promise and they kind of tore it apart a little quicker. But there was yourself, there's Wendell, I mean, Russ Cordinel was uh, you know, come along, and there were so many Domfoos and and so many good young players that never really got a chance to develop. But man, like I just think for me, when I think of Hockey Night in Canada and the Leafs, just for my generation, I just I can hear and see the television with Bob Cole's the soundtrack. I afraid he down the wing and I'm not doing it proper justice. He scored! Like just he let it go. And like your speed, the shot, all of it. But that time in Toronto, did you not feel like there was something there, even though it wasn't you weren't winning games, but that court felt like it had something.
SPEAKER_01Is that am I right? Uh yeah, I mean, I was the fourth pick in an unbelievable draft. You know, there was there's like Patrick, Patrick Law and Brett Hall went in later rounds, but like the first rounders were Mario, Mueller, Eddie, me, Corson, Gary Roberts, Joe Neuwendike, um, you know, the list goes on. Yeah, there's probably some Hall of Famers I'm missing, but there's so many of them, it's hard to keep track of them. And uh having that young core, I was the 84 pick first round, and then Wendell was the number one pick overall the next year. And we didn't qualify for the playoffs, obviously, having Wendell as the first pick my rookie year, but then you could see glimpses of things happening, good things happening, because we'd make the playoffs, we'd always squeak in at the end, and uh Norris didn't I personally feel like that uh that whole no free agency, 50 first rounders if you sign for more than $100,000. It was a hard time, weird time, because as a player, they were always trying to change you rather than them drafting a guy that they needed. It would it would be like if you lost three games in a row and uh weren't playing well defensively, the next week of practices would be killing each other in practice. We need to stop giving up so many goals and they'd kill each other. And they'd get they want guys that are young goal scorers that are rather than pour water on the flower and let it blossom, they were trying to turn a rose into a tulip corner. Yeah. So it was it was weird. They were trying to get guys to do things that they probably weren't nearly as adept at doing, right? And I was kind of uh I was kind of a hybrid, you know, wild type uh musk thing where I kind of I was more of a rover than a defenseman until I really learned Well, your game would be perfect now.
SPEAKER_02Oh, how many goals would you score right now? Honestly, that would be cool score score in this league right now. Well, steroids.
SPEAKER_01Um I don't know, we'll never know, but it would be fun playing now. Yeah. I mean, every year is great no matter what. Because, you know, it always hockey always comes down to you gotta have you gotta have uh guys that can finish. We'll say talent, but you gotta have toughness, man. You can go back to the, in my opinion, the way I perceive head and see hockey, the history of it. You can go every Stanley Cup championship team, they're probably obviously skilled, but it's always one of the toughest teams, man for man. They play, and that doesn't mean fighting. That means guys that'll take hits to make plays. That means guys that'll uncharacteristically, uncharacteristically hit that aren't big hitters, you know, and it's a mindset that I think you learn and develop over time, being with a you know, the pack of wolves on a team, and you wanna, you know, you wanna bring something to the table and you realize what you gotta do to help your teammates and so the whole team can, you know, strive and get better.
SPEAKER_03What would you say, like coming in as an 18-year-old, how long, like you you touched on a little bit, I I'm interested, how long, you know, or how many years or whatever time frame you want to put on before you think you were like comfortable and like where you learned how to like you weren't gonna take the puck up and you know every single time. And how long do you did did that take, like what do you think, to adjust?
SPEAKER_01I'd say at least uh three to four, three to four years. Three to four years. Because I would like he said, I would like Razor said, I was like a a man child in a you're like a young in the mind in a man's body. In his body, yeah. But I don't know, I'm the youngest. You still are still. I'm the youngest in an Italian family, so you're kind of you're kind of catered to a little bit. A baby boy in an Italian family, it's like being a prince, right? So someone would yell at me, like bro, first Dan Maloney would yell at me, and I'd be like, why are they yelling at me? But I would say three to four years, and then it was kind of my coming out where um I think it was either my third or fourth year. I had like 12 goals in the first 20 games. Yeah, you know, and then I you know, tied the record for most goals by a leaf defenseman in a season and was an all-star my first time, and you know, it was three or four. I was like 21 or 22, yeah. Which I think a lot of it was, you know, I had to grow up. You know, it's looking back at it, not grow up so much as in uh like grow up in that I have to be responsible for my actions. And you know, learning that on a team was uh it was difficult for me. I don't know why. And that's probably why my mom would say, What's wrong with you? But it it just was, it was hard because I just felt like I just wanted to carry the puck, man. Yeah, you know, okay. I wanted to fly around. So I was like a little bit of a who's the best player you ever played with? Oh, that's a great question. I would have to say like not including like not all-star games, like T. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I would say Ray, Ray Bork. No. Just you know, I'm I'm I feel like I'm one of the luckiest guys in the world. It was like when I was eleven or twelve, Borea Salming was, you know, the first European like superstar playing in the microcosm of hockey in Toronto. And I was like, man, I want to beat Borea Salming. Because he had this one move where he'd do like a half pivot and put it through his legs, and then make a quick pass right to the center break, and when he'd be on the in the neutral zone. And uh I was like, man, I want to be able to do that. And then when I was like 15, Ray Bork was like a rookie. And I'm like, wow, I want to be Ray Bork. And then lucky me, I get drafted by Toronto, I get to play with Boria, and then I get traded to Boston in my tenth season or whatever, and I get to be teammates with Ray. So pretty cool. But Ray, with Ray, just obviously the way he could defend and how strong he was, and his shot, and the thing with being a defenseman with Ray is like, as you know, when you when there's a breakout under pressure, there's two options usually. I'm not saying when they got the kitchen sink coming A, but in most situations, when it's not a dumping and they're changing, there's two options of a guy you can give it to. And one of them's gonna be a super clean exit, or the other one could end up you get hemmed in. And all the years I played against Ray and saw Ray play, that first pass leaving the zone is always the exact right pass. And that's huge because I'm a big believer like in football and hockey. It is a territorial game. The more time you spend and you're on, even though the other team's not scoring, and you're getting outshot every game, it's not a good thing. That means there's a flaw in everything you're doing, right? Yeah. So just being able to get out of your zone consistently all the time, that's so huge for a team. And Ray was the best.
SPEAKER_04I recently watched a documentary on former Leaf's owner Harold Ballard. Um, complicated individual, like some people look at one of the worst owners ever, could also be very generous with charity as well. Do you have a Harold Ballard story from your experience? Oh. Is there one that stands out?
SPEAKER_01There's a lot of them. I'll give you a couple of them real quick.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Where it's Pic Teen Picture Day, and T. C. Puck was this uh white Bouvier. They're big mass of dogs. And uh that was Harold, Harold loved this dog, and he always wanted the dog to be in the picture. The picture, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So you remember the dog? The dog in the picture. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So we got this. We're waiting and waiting and waiting because we were, I don't know, because everyone wanted their hair to be looked good or whatever. We're waiting to be for practice to do the picture, and the dog, Harold had it at the groomer. Right. So we're there like for like an hour and a half, waiting for this for Harold and this dog. And then they finally get there. And trying to get everyone organized, because there was a like a big uh conglomerate of people that weren't on the team, playing weren't players with the brass, right? Getting everyone organized, taking pictures, the dogs sitting there perfectly. After like 15 or 20 minutes, they're finally like, if this is a wrap, okay, we got the right picture. And then TC goes to get up, and his nutsack is frozen. They had to get the water out. That was awesome. Poor TC. Yeah, so that one and then another one. Harold, John, when Brofe was the coach, if we were like on a losing streak, Harold always sat like halfway down. I think it would be the top of the there was the golds, then the reds, right? Yeah. Reds. He'd sit like on the rail of the reds near the top of the last row of the Reds, and we'd be practicing, and then you'd hear, John! And you're like, is that Jesus? John. And then Brof would blow the whistle and stop practice. And he'd be like, You make sure those guys listen to you. And then we'd all stand there. And we're like, what do we do? What do we do next? And then we'd start practicing again, and then he'd go, John! Everyone would stop. And he'd be like, tell Cordinal and I afraid he to skate around the rink as fast as they can. So we'd burn around the rink. Just look up. Is that are we good? Like another. It was just it was you can't make it up. It was like you gotta live it, right? Yeah, yeah. Toronto to Washington. Was that a tough adjustment? Oh, that was awesome. Awesome, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, because uh landover too at that time, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Like I people can say whatever they want about the Toronto Maple Leaf. Being a Toronto Maple Leaf, it's awesome. Yeah. Like if you love uh chaos, if you like being like a Phoenix and rising from the ashes, it's the place to play. It's and then you know, like I'm waiting, I can't wait for the party when they, you know, turn the corner and well, you're gonna be on the first float too, aren't you? Just you know, if you love hockey and people that love hockey, I'm a hockey person. So, you know, being a being drafted by Toronto, you know, it was awesome. It's the things I get to do now because I was a Toronto Maple Leaf, and you know, you played.
SPEAKER_04Can you still come back? Can you still come back to Toronto and like you're you're still associated as being defined as a leap, I would say, most of your years were there?
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. I do a lot of stuff here in Toronto, you know, just the opportunities after hockey with people from that era that love hockey that are all my age or you know, ten years younger when they were teenagers. I was in my heyday. Yeah. You know, it's just it's just amazing all the opportunities, all the opportunities that uh, you know, are in front of you. And, you know, back to the question with going to Washington, it was great because uh they traded two good players for me, Bob Rouse and Peter Zezel. Um God bless Peter, he's a great player. And Bob Rouse, obviously, you know what he did with Detroit when they won their cups. And that guy was a that guy was a beast. Like he was a heavy, heavy player. Yeah, him and what the Wendell Clark Bob Rouse fights are epic. Yeah. And uh you know, they traded too, both teams were struggling right near the the trade deadline. Or no, this was January. Both teams were struggling in January, and uh Washington needed me, and Toronto needed these guys, and it was kind of nice to see that the trade worked out really good for both teams. Yeah. Because it helped Toronto, you know, elevate their game and get a little better. And Washington was kind of in a funk, and for me, I was just coming off uh a big, big knee injury. The the April or the end of March, the year, the season before, I tore my ACL, MCL, medial meniscus, subluxed the head of my fibula. It was a bad knee injury, and uh I was slow to get back um up to speed because you know you go from flying around the ice to all of a sudden now you you know it's a struggle to walk after an injury like that, and a lot of things going through your head. Am I gonna be able to do what I used to do? And and then, you know, being the young guy that I was, I was pretty natural athlete. It was the first time I really had to realize that, well, I thought I was working hard, but I gotta work a lot harder to get back to where I was. And that was great because that injury kind of helped me, you know, become a better player, uh, for sure, because I I realized how much how much hard work I really had to put into it, because the speed and all that was so natural for me that uh it was never an issue where I was working on my skating, right? I was all it was the mental part of the game. And uh David Poyle and Terry Murray, you know, they welcomed me with open arms, all the teammates. It was great. And you know, we had a good team. Unfortunately, there's uh the Pittsburgh Penguins. Like for years it couldn't get past them, and that you know, they were winning the cups then. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Last one for me, Al, just last one. What's your best moment in hockey? What's the first thing you think of when you think of your career?
SPEAKER_01Well, I didn't win a Stanley Cup like commie. No, I know, which is uh everybody wants to do. You know, I scored scoring goals.
SPEAKER_03Can be personal, I don't know either. I was I wouldn't have minded doing that, but uh I hear you.
SPEAKER_01No, but just like you got the ring, your name on the cup, but just being part of 25 people that all have the same focus on the sense of urgency to everything you're doing and believing that all of that is is going to end in something that's forever. Yeah. It's the forever part, right? Exactly.
SPEAKER_02It's uh literally you're doing six.
SPEAKER_01Not getting to experience that is something, you know, I wish I could have, but I didn't. But you know, scoring big goals in playoffs and all that stuff is it's all great, but I think the moment it was either when I when you hear that national anthem at the Olympics or the first NHL game where you're like in a sense, not quite as epic as winning a Stanley Cup, but you know, uh the end of a trail that you had a vision and a and it manifested into reality is uh you're like wow, I did it. Yeah. And then all the you know, then you learn that hey man, getting there is one thing, staying there's another thing. No question.
SPEAKER_04Uh last one here. Uh let's make it our ozone well-played moment. But your shot, one of the best shots in the history of the sport, I think. It's fair to say. I mean, how hard it went. What was the highest it ever about to be?
SPEAKER_01Uh the hardest I ever shot was 106.7.
SPEAKER_04Miles per hour. Where did that come from? So where did that shot come from? Uh like kids watching this or people wondering, like, where did that shot come from? Because I can't even imagine now with a composite what that would look like.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it was it was like a level up the boards exactly. Yeah. It was like a it was like a long journey. I gotta give my sister some credit because we lived right on a main road with my grandma and grandpa, and I'd I'd make her put pillows on her legs. So there was uh like a uh a real estate like office that was like a house. Right. And there was a wall right on the property line of my grandma and grandpa's house. And we'd walk around the corner and I'd draw like two marks on the wall, which would be the posts. And I'd she'd put a helmet on with that weird-looking nose guard thing that went around her mouth. And pillows. She'd wear gloves and pillows on her legs, and I'd fire tennis balls at her. Oh kidding. And then I would hit her and it would hurt, and she would say, Oh, it hurt. And then I've learned not to hit her and just put it by her, right? Yeah, yeah, and then it would bounce off the wall and come right back to me. I'm like, this is better. It's not going over the wall. I gotta go, I gotta go get the thing. So that, and then just growing up, I was it was real turcot. It was uh he's like a pioneer. All of it, he was like the original hockey hockey school guy. Okay, the real turcot stick handling school, man. Every hockey school since then is a diversion of that. It's like the it's the first one that was like huge. And uh I wanted to shoot the puck hard because when I got to the NHL, I had a decent shot, but I I think I got drafted more because I think when you can just flat out fly, that kicks the door open. They're like, oh, we wait till we teach this guy everything. Right, yeah, yeah. And so that speed is it gets the door kicked open. Yeah, yeah. And then obviously, like I was talking before, there's a lot that goes into playing a professional sport, learning the game and systems and everything like that. So Kenny Reggett, my roommate, I was we would always we would stay on the ice forever, like me, Russ Cordinel, Stevie Thomas, Todd Gill, Bob McGill, Gary Nylon, Jeff Jackson. There was like 10 of us that were 18 or 19. Yeah, you're all kids at that time, right? Yeah. And uh Kenny Reggett, Alan Bestard, we were all kids, and we Dan Maloney would stay out there forever and pass pucks to us, and we would shoot for as long as we wanted at Maple Leaf Gardens, like for hours if you wanted to. And uh one day I was uh during training camp, my rookie year, I'm hammering the puck as hard as I can. And Ken Ken Raggett's like, You're a f first round pick. He's like, he's like, You can't even shoot. And he took it, took his helmet off, threw his glove down, put his hands behind his back, and he's like, shoot as hard as you can. And I was just ripping pucks at him, he's kicking him away, blocking him with his shoulder, and I was like, Man, I better start shooting a little bit harder. I thought I had a hard shot, but he doesn't think I have a hard shot. That's a true story. So just that, and then I was always uh the word. But your shot didn't evolve until it like it evolved even as a it evolved as a player, you know, just uh always working on my stick, tweaking my stick, looking at other guys' sticks that have bigger shots, and then I, you know, I I bent my stick a little bit where it was a kind of a six iron from the heel, figured out the blade that and then I was like, I want to learn to get a quick shot off and a hard shot off. So all my because I was shooting different shots from different parts of the blade, then I curved this, tweak this blade to the point where when I catch a pass, when I give a pass, when I take a wrist shot, snapshot, slap shot, it's gonna come from the exact same sweet spot. So in my mind, I was thinking this is consistency, it's it's uh constant where no matter what I'm doing, the puck is always gonna be on the same part of my blade, unless I'm defending, trying to tip a pass or whatever. But when it came to any part of the shooting or skilled part of the game, passing, puck handling, it was a small sweet spot on my blade that everything came off of it. And I was always checking, because I always used white tape, and I would always check the marks, the puck marks on you know, if I was utilizing it the way I should. Oh, I was dialed into it. And then, you know, later I became a sticky guy.
SPEAKER_04Smalllet and everything easy. Yeah, you're still in medical. I became a stick guy.
SPEAKER_01Because, you know, back then there was no social media. You can only party at the bar so long. You can only do that so many days in a lot in a row. And so there's a lot of thinking and a lot of time in the stick room.
SPEAKER_04Did you not work for a stick company right after retirement?
SPEAKER_01Um, I I had my own 20 years ago or so? And then I worked, I did one with Cliff Ronning, bass hockey, and then I worked for uh Warrior for five years. Yeah, okay. Awesome. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you guys. Perfect. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you to be a good one. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_04That was uh just a treat. Uh thanks so much. For somebody who doesn't do these often, yes, please do more. You've got an amazing story. So I mean freezing nuts. Nobody else, yeah, just with us. Did not expect.
SPEAKER_02I didn't I didn't know you, I thought you always shot hard. I didn't know that. Well, I mean, I had I had a but Mr. No, I thought you hammered it all.
SPEAKER_01Like I thought you were like, I kind of did, but uh it never it was it was a hard shot, but not like super hard like at the end. But I was always uh Mr. Real Turcott taught me he's like he's like you're gonna take no slap shots, you're gonna you're gonna develop a wrist shot. And then from the wrist shot, once you have a hard wrist shot, then you progress into a hard slap shot with the technique and stuff like that, and you know, building the strength in your arms and all that. So I hadn't taken tons of slap shots. Yeah, you know what I mean? I was more because I was always up by breakaways all the time. Or trying to catch a guy in the breakaway. One or the other. One or the other.
SPEAKER_04One of our favorite episodes. Reminder: be sure to like and subscribe to Ozoon on YouTube, and be sure to follow along on Instagram, X and Social for Clearing the Crease. He's Tommy, he's Razor. I'm Sabalski. Special thanks to an absolute rock star of the hockey world, the one and the only Ally Freddy joining us here on the Clearing the Crease podcast, powered by Ozun. Well played.