National Post (National Edition)
EMERY’S DEATH REFLECTED A CHECKERED LIFE.
Aday after Ray Emery’s dead body was pulled from Hamilton Harbour by a police dive team, there remains many questions.
Was the former NHL goaltender just jumping in the water shortly after sunrise on Sunday at the end of a late night or the start of an early morning? Did he accidentally hurt himself, or lose his bearings underwater? Did the 35-year-old ever realize he was in grave danger?
But as the tributes from former players, coaches and executives continue to roll in for a life lost far too soon, there is something sadly fitting that Emery’s passing came under a shroud of mystery. The official word from the Hamilton Police Service was they believed his death to be “a case of misadventure.” It’s a term that might also have been used for the latter part of his career.
Emery, a fourth-round draft pick of the Ottawa Senators in 2001, spent five unremarkable years as a professional before, as sometimes happens with goaltenders, he suddenly became a star. He would start 58 games for the Sens in 2006-07, and another 20 in the playoffs as Ottawa rolled all the way to the Stanley Cup final. Next came a three-year contract for $9.5-million, a recognition from the Senators they had found a franchise goalie who was just entering his prime at 24 years old.
As also sometimes happens with goaltenders, the quick rise was followed by an equally quick fall. By the end of the 2007-08 season, he had lost his job, head coach John Paddock had been fired, the team had been unsuccessful in attempts to find a trade partner for him, and the Senators ended up buying out the final two years of that contract that was signed with such promise.
To look back over the coverage of that season is to find that Emery managed to pack an entire career’s worth of misadventures into a few months. There was the alleged road-rage incident with an elderly Ottawa driver near the team’s arena. He was late to practices, he occasionally fought with teammates, he lost the starting job to Martin Gerber. There were rumours of vague “partying” and stories of how as a star athlete with a fat new contract, he had fallen prey to some common vices.
But by the summer of 2008, Emery sounded like he had figured it out. In a conversation with an ESPN reporter, Emery was more contrite than defiant. He said he had fallen into bad habits with a group of enablers and “yes men” — his phrase — around him and that he had realized, belatedly, that he needed to be among different people.
He told the writer Scott Burnside that alcohol wasn’t a problem, but asked to describe his use of recreational drugs, he said, “I don’t want to go into details. I’m not a saint and I’m not in jail, either. I think I’ve learned a lot of lessons.”
It was an unusual acknowledgment from a professional athlete, albeit a tacit one, and it came when Emery was about to take his career to the KHL in the hopes of trying to get back into the NHL. But he was unusually raw when discussing the season in which he had gone from the Senators’ goaltending future to someone they were paying millions to go away. “I didn’t play well,” Emery said. “I didn’t accept responsibility. I ended up with a failing grade on every level.”
It read like the story of someone who realized that his second chance was probably also his last chance.
Emery would successfully turn his one-year KHL stint into renewed NHL interest, and he returned to the league with the Philadelphia Flyers, in a backup role, the following season. He played for the Anaheim Ducks, and then the Chicago Blackhawks, where he won a Stanley Cup backing up Corey Crawford, and then the Flyers again for two seasons.
There were moments of brilliance in there, but Emery never came close to the sustained success of his one great year in Ottawa, when he won a combined 46 games in the regular season and playoffs. His highest win total in any season after 2006-07 was 17 with the Blackhawks in 2012-13, and in the years after the Senators he would win just three playoff games over the remainder of his career.
Emery’s former fiancée, the singer Keisha Chanté, posted on social media on Monday that she was heartbroken about his death, and she alluded to unspecified “demons” that he was fighting.
Whatever he dealt with when the fame and riches came fast, emery was never able to get all the way back to what he had once been.
“I’m not a rock star,” he told ESPN back in 2008. “I’m a kid from Hamilton.”
And now, he’s one gone too early.