From: cs4cb3@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Peter Granic)
Subject: John Kordic (Toronto Star Article)
Organization: Department of Computer Science, McMaster University
Distribution: rec.sport.hockey
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 03:15:35 GMT

Toronto Star, Monday August 10, 1992
by Milt Dunnel

Kordic's Death Raises Questions for NHL

     It was John Kordic's fists that kept him in hockey.  He used
them almost up to the moment he died.  While details have not been
spelled out, as they would have been in a referee's report to NHL
headquarters, it apparently took a corps of Quebec cops to restrain
him and get him into an ambulance, where he died en route to
hospital.
     This was in the late night hours when Kordic always lost his
fights.  He beat most of his foes on the ice but he couldn't beat
the ones that came out of a bottle.
     Now, the National Hockey League, which had plenty of warning
on Kordic, will have to determine whether it really has an adequate
program for drying out drunks or whether it just uses them.  Kordic
was a classic case of a player who was handed off, from club to
club.  They all knew what his problems were.  Let the next guy take
care of it.
     Montreal Canadiens might have changed the entire course of
Kordic's career in 1989.  They couldn't help be aware of an
escapade in which Kordic had climbed up on the roof of a house in
which he was living at the time, in the early hours of the morning.

He was hallucinating that enemies were trying to kill him.  It
might have been possible to dry him out then.  Instead, the Habs
did what just about every professional club would do.  They dumped
him on the Leafs along with a ninth-round draft choice for Russ
Courtnall. [NOTE: I believe this is a mistake, it was a fifth round
draft choice]
     It was one of the worst deals in the history of hockey.  Even
if Kordic had been Mr. Clean, it would have been a laugher.  John
Brophy, who was coaching the Leafs at the time, was blamed for
talking the late Harold Ballard into the trade.  Kordic, who logged
252 penalty minutes in 55 games during the 1989-90 season, was
regarded as Brophy's type of player.
     "It doesn't matter now but I'll take the blame for it," Brophy
offered yesterday, speaking from his home in Virginia, where he's
coach of the highly successful minor league Hampton Road Admirals. 
"I noticed a change in the kid when he came to Toronto."
     "I thought he had done an excellent job for the Canadiens.  In
Toronto, he was only fair.  I always felt the death of his father
might have had something to do with it.  They were very close."
     When Brophy was fired, Kordic lost any support that remained
for him at Maple Leaf Gardens.  Doug Carpenter, who followed
Brophy, had little use for a nine-goal right winger.  Kordic sulked
over time spent on the pine and was exiled to the farm club at
Newmarket.  He was traded - actually given - to Washington
Capitals,
along with Paul Fenton, for a fifth-round draft choice.
     There still might have been time to check Kordic's skid.  In
February of 1991, after missing one of the Caps' workouts, Kordic
met with officials of the club and told them he was an alcoholic. 
In its statement regarding the incident, the Washington club
advised:  "By his own admission he (Kordic) has a serious problem
and will be seeking professional advice."
     That should have been enough to alert the league.  If it had
a substance program, as it claimed to have, here was a player
practically pleading to be hauled from the tank.  Whatever advice
he got for himself obviously didn't take.  Under a proper league
program, he wouldn't have been allowed to play until he was
declared clean.  After that, he would have been subject to periodic
testing.
     But, as the Habs had done and the Leafs had done, the Caps
sent him on his way.  Let somebody else suffer the headaches.  Last
season, he hit bottom, playing 19 games for the Nordiques before
they told him to pack.  He had been telling people who would listen
that he expected to attend the Edmonton Oilers' training camp in a
few weeks.  No one took that too seriously.  Kordic had run out of
places to go.  By this time, it was too late.  Everybody knew too
much about him.
     Inevitably, the question is going to be asked whether there
are two levels of concern about the lifestyle of NHL players. 
Would a 50-goal gunner have been allowed to destroy himself, as
Kordic did, without some meaningful effort to break his fall?
     Kordic never was a complete NHLer and there never was any real
reason to think he would be.  He averaged only 12 goals per season
as a junior in the Western Hockey League.  [Note: He played defence
in junior]  What the pros liked was the time he spent in the
penalty box - more than 200 minutes per season.  In a league which
requires at least one enforcer on each club, a 6-foot-2 brawler, at
210 pounds, was a natural.  Unfortunately for enforcers, that kind
is considered expendable.
     Kordic should be remembered in hockey not for what he did, but
for what might have been done for him.