There are few pursuits and endeavors both as physically demanding and mentally taxing as playing professional ice hockey.
A sport that contains both finesse players, and ruffians. A spectacle of poetic movements and grit. Each moment adding a layer to history and each period carving a layer of ice.
But what about the lives of the people that play the game?
Well... here is one account...
Defecting from Czechoslovakia is not ideal if you hope to maintain your crippling dependency on alcohol. Although the United States proudly boasts a reputation for having a good time at Happy Hour, it’s tough to keep the valve open on the liquor trough quite like the Czechs do. Just ask Jaromir Jagër, Right Winger for the Dallas Stars.
Luckily for Jaromir, and morbidly humorous for us, he’s a rich professional athlete. He can afford to booze while playing the game he loves, and thus his story can be told...
By the third period, he’s half in the bag and fully in the penalty box. If the game goes into OT, he goes into intensive care.
You read that correctly, this drunk... err... hockey player's surname is “Jagër,” as in: Jagërmeister.
Many athletes refuel and replenish with electrolyte-laden sports drinks. Not this asshole. He goes to a recently-opened bottle of Jagër, and he goes to it after every shift.
He comes into the 1st period like fire on ice, and in 20 minutes, heads into the locker room looking to ralph in a trash can.
He’s drank so much Jagër over his career that he can no longer taste many flavors of ice cream. The majority of his taste buds dead after repeated bouts of alcohol-induced paralysis.
Just like a girl at the bar throwing darts, Jagër sometimes gets a shot on net. After three gulps of his anice flavored fuel, he reaches an optimal level of prowess. An additional drop to his bloodstream, and his performance suddenly plummets. He becomes lightning out of the bottle, striking randomly and without warning, peppering vulcanized rubber throughout the rink.
It becomes impossible to coach what you see out there. The breakout speed, the unbelievable stickhandling, and the fact that he's now taking a lengthy piss in an opposing face-off circle. He’s just too talented to be reigned in. And by the 14:59 mark in the first period, he's too hammered to even have a clue as to what you're talking about.
Just check out this list of italicized observations about Jagër’s careless play:
He once wore a tuxedo onto the ice during game 3 of the 1992 Stanley Cup Finals.
When they play Journey during a face-off, he thinks that the arena is about to close.
His “Off The Ice” problems don’t even compare to his “On The Ice” problems. Namely, his drinking problem, which has forced him to rely on an adult diaper he wears beneath his hockey pants as a "last line of defense."
He received a DUI after commandeering and unevenly resurfacing the ice in a Zamboni.
He was demoted to the "Grind Line," but that experiment failed because he misinterpreted the role and refused to stop freak dancing and pursuing pelvic-to-pelvic contact during shifts.
He was demoted to the "Grind Line," but that experiment failed because he misinterpreted the role and refused to stop freak dancing and pursuing pelvic-to-pelvic contact during shifts.
After years of severe alcohol abuse and physical punishment, it’s tough to tell where future scientists will place Jaromir Jagër within taxonomy.
He barely speaks english, but after a few rounds of Jagër, he barely speaks anything coherently anyway.
He’s perfect for garbage time though. Just a vulgar, slovenly, slobbering and dirty drunk flying around hitting anything he thinks is also moving. He’s cross-checked referees, stick-butted opposing defenseman, and once even crapped in his helmet and chased his goalie with it. All the while carrying a dopey and incongruent smile strewn across his visibly inebriated face.
This, in the margins of a column, is Jaromir Jagër.
A cancer that’s suffering from rapid-onset cirrhosis of the liver. A volatile and liquored-up journeyman that can easily find a handle of ‘meister in the shadiest of burroughs, but not a handle on his life in the loftiest of living.
A path of destruction unfolding in our nation’s least-watched major sport. A sport of “Boys will be Boys,” that now needs added policing. A disruptive booze-sponge of a player that needs to be held in Czech.
