Looking back, Todd Fedoruk said, fighting Thrashers tough guy Eric
Boulton in the first game of the season was "stupid." At the time,
he believed he had no other option. The challenge was made, and he
responded. It is the way Fedoruk has always played. The Lightning
left wing was careful to shield the right side of his face, which
was so badly damaged in an October 2006 fight with the Wild's Derek
Boogaard that five titanium plates were needed to put his orbital
and cheekbones together. Titanium mesh holds the eye in place. "If
I take a punch in the right spot, I could lose it," Fedoruk said.
So what the heck was he doing with Boulton?
"I wanted to get my 1,000th penalty minute in a fight,"
Fedoruk said. "It's a pride thing."
He has swallowed his pride, and kept his fists to himself,
since.
Fedoruk, 30, has 10 titanium plates in his face. Three hold
together orbital and cheekbones around his left eye, shattered in a
November 2003 fight with the Islanders' Eric Cairns. Two others
hold together a sinus bone broken by a flying puck.
Fedoruk knows it is best that he no longer fights. But if he
doesn't fight, how can he play?
"The way I was taught is, if you play a certain way, if
somebody challenges you, you back it up, and you take that guy
down," Fedoruk said.
The 6-foot-2, 240-pounder has been good at it, too, and
prolific, with 117 fights in a nine-year NHL career in which he has
taken on the biggest and baddest.
"He was," said Zenon Konopka, Fedoruk's teammate with the
Lightning and Ducks, "one of the toughest guys in the league."
The dilemma is how that toughness should be applied now.
How can he play his usual feisty style if he can't answer the
bell when challenged? It just doesn't seem right, he said: "It's a
shock to your pride and your manhood."
He has wrestled with that so much this season, his play has
suffered, and he was scratched for nine games from Nov. 22 to Dec.
7. He said it was for the best, as he had time to evaluate his
career and reinforce how it affects his wife, Theresa, and their
kids, Luke, 5, and Sienna, 3.
"I had to learn I don't owe anything to anybody," said
Fedoruk, acquired by the Lightning in July from the Coyotes in the
Radim Vrbata deal. "I want to stay here as long as I can, and
whatever I have to do, I'll do. If that means reinventing my role,
that's the biggest thing.
"I came into the league saying if I play with an edge, I have
to back it up. It's just not like that anymore. I've got mortgages
to pay, a family to take care of."
Said coach Rick Tocchet: "There are lots of guys who agitate
and are always in your face, and get rebounds and are in your face,
chip the puck and are in your face. Those are the guys he has to be
like to be effective."
Fedoruk said at least one doctor told him he should not play
after he was crushed by Boogaard. Yet Fedoruk, who split that
season with the Ducks and Flyers, fought six more times that season
and took on the Rangers' Colton Orr in March.
Orr broke Fedoruk's jaw.
"I felt I wanted to keep the same game that got me here,"
Fedoruk said. "You want to keep that respect. It's something you
earned. But if you go into a chaotic situation worried that
something will happen to you, you're not going to do very well."
And that brings us back to the battle with Boulton.
Said Theresa: "The first thing he said was, 'I got in a
fight. I turned my face so I wouldn't get hit, so I got hit in my
ear and lost my balance and went down.' I thought, 'My, God, what
is he doing? Where's your head? You don't need to do this.' "
Konopka agrees.
"If he feels weird, he can't fight. It's absolutely
ludicrous. He's paid his dues. He's fought everyone. He is a
warrior."
