After nearly 1,000 games, Haydar’s back for more
In an award-gathering, 14-year professional career that took him from the American south to the north of Croatia, he played nearly 1,000 games.
Each one saw him get hit and slashed and knocked down and battered by pucks as happens in hockey. It’s a tough game.
Yet even with that daily pounding, he never got hurt. Hardly ever, anyway. He broke his ankle in a freak collision with a goalpost one time. Nothing too serious. He had a couple concussions. And he tweaked a groin in training. Still, he was Mr. Durable.
So Darren Haydar was more than a little shocked at the injury that finally ended his career.
“I hurt (my back) picking my son up out of the bathtub,” he says.
Yes. Parenting finally took him down.
It was strange. His boy wasn’t even a big kid then. Maybe 30 pounds soaking wet, which he was. Dad had been at the gym lifting dumbbells heavier than that earlier in the day. But that’s what happened.
Three of his discs went kaput. Haydar figured his screaming back would get better in a few days but it never did. Weeks turned to months. His plans to head to Norway to keep the career going faded away.
The 38-year-old can laugh about it now. He’s found a new career in real estate in Milton where he grew up. He’s helping coach the top-ranked minor peewee AA team in Ontario. Plus, it’s meant one less move for his wife and two young children, which is, honestly, a bit of a relief.
During his career, he moved from Milwaukee to Chicago to Atlanta to Michigan to Cleveland and back to Chicago. Once he’d moved to Munich, the kids started showing up. And they came along with him the rest of the way. First to Croatia, then Austria and then back to Germany.
It was a little nuts. Returning home one time they brought 21 pieces of luggage with them. Plus a dog.
“We looked like a circus coming through the airport,” he laughs.
He’s also able to have a chuckle about it because things have improved to the point that he has decided to come back and play senior hockey this season for the Dundas Real McCoys. After general manager Don Robertson bugged him for a year — “He’s been calling a long time,” Haydar laughs — he finally relented.
In a league that doesn’t feature as much physical play as some others, he feels he can contribute without risking his health. Plus, he just loves the game and misses it.
Twenty years ago, he was a scoring star with the provincial junior A Milton Merchants. One year, he collected 140 points in 51 games. From there he played at the University of New Hampshire and was drafted in the ninth round by the Nashville Predators.
The trouble was, he’s small. At five-foot-nine and 170 pounds, he didn’t fit the oversized mould of the late-’90s National Hockey Leaguer. So he found himself stuck in the minors. Year after year he produced yet never got much of a chance. In 2007, he won the AHL league scoring title and was named MVP. That earned him 16 games in the big league the next season.
Then he was sent right back down.
Before that stint was done he did manage to collect his lone NHL goal, though. Coming down on a two-on-two, he took a pass from a teammate …
“I closed my eyes and it went high blocker on Martin Brodeur,” he says.
He’s joking about the closed eyes. But yes, his one goal was on the winningest goalie in NHL history. That puck now sits rather proudly in his office.
He should’ve had more. Had he come along 10 or 15 years later, the opportunities for diminutive guys like him would have been greater. He almost certainly would’ve had much more of a shot to stick in the big time and scored many more goals. “I’d like to think so, too,” he says.
It’s not quite the same, but he’ll get plenty of opportunities with the Real McCoys. He picked up a goal and an assist in his first hockey game in 18 months or so last weekend.
According to Robertson, he probably had another couple assists that weren’t credited to him, he was that good.
He gets his next chance to fill the scoresheet Friday night at 8 p.m. at Harry Howell Arena when Dundas hosts the Hamilton Steelhawks. The key to that game, though? He felt fine. No pain at all. At least, not in his back. “My legs were sore,” he laughs.
sradley@thespec.com 905-526-2440 | @radleyatthespec Spectator columnist Scott Radley hosts The Scott Radley Show weeknights 7-9 on 900CHML.