Ex-Leaf’s tales from the brink
Longterm substance abuse began in ‘the wild’ 1980s while Frycer played here
Around the time Miroslav Frycer took up hockey in communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960s and early ’70s, his grandfather promised to give him money for every goal he scored. The deal was doomed from the get-go. Times were tight and young Miro, who would grow up to play in the NHL, leading the Maple Leafs in scoring in 1985-86, was obviously a big talent.
So when the kid dominated — 10 goals a game, sometimes — the terms of the arrangement were altered. The boy suggested his grandfather, who ran a news and tobacco stand, give him a cigarette for every goal. Grandpa agreed.
“I started smoking when I was 12. My grandfather was smoking10 cigarettes a day. My father was smoking 60 a day. Cigarettes were everywhere,” Frycer said in a recent interview.
“Booze and cigarettes, they were always a part of my life.”
Frycer, now age 59 and still a smoker, can only surmise that his vices have played a significant role in his remarkable dance with mortality. When Frycer had his first organ transplant — a liver replacement — doctors told him the chance of survival was 20 per cent and the majority of recipients don’t survive beyond 15 years. That was 19 years ago. By the time he had his second organ transplant — he received a new kidney a few months ago — it’s possible he was of the mind the percentages don’t apply to him. As he writes in his autobiography, Miro Frycer: My Wild Hockey Life, he’s currently residing in his own “personal overtime.” You’ll excuse him if he prefers not to think too much about the prospect of sudden death.
“I’m so happy to be alive. I’m looking at every day, every hour, as a new opportunity. I’m just putting the big problems — or little problems, in my eyes now — behind me,” Frycer said. “I did something wrong for 40 years. I was presented with a bill, and I had to pay it. Luckily for me, I’m still alive. And that’s why I’m just happy to be here.”
The odds have rarely been on his side. He was one of the few members of his Czech peer group to escape from behind the Iron Curtain to a new life in the West, first playing with the Quebec Nordiques in 1981 before being traded to the Maple Leafs for Wilf Paiement a year later. When he arrived in Canada he spoke little English, and his skill-first approach, brought to a largely bang-and-crash era, wasn’t always embraced. In his book Frycer recalls roughneck Maple Leafs coach John Brophy dismissing it as “European s-- hockey.”
But Frycer found a way to survive and, at times, thrive, albeit while playing the bulk of his career for an oft-hapless Toronto organization headed by the buffoonish and miserly owner Harold Ballard. He played in the NHL all-star game in 1985, had a 32-goal season a year later. And all along, as he points out often in his book, written with Czech journalist Lubos Brabec and recently translated into English, he frequently received an assist from team-dispensed painkillers and his old friend the bottle. Sometimes homesick for friends and family left behind in his homeland, where news of the NHL success of defectors was banned, life was easier while lubricated.
“It was a smooth transition to Canada — I couldn’t speak much English, but booze was everywhere,” he said. “It was the wild ’80s. The parties were everywhere. In the Leafs dressing room there were two cases of beer after every single game, at home, on the road, win or lose. It was always there. For me, it was easier. At least that part of my life was the same.”
His reliance on the drink got so bad that, playing in the Italian league in the early 1990s, he’d lug around mini Coke bottles filled with red wine for an anytime fix.
When he fell into the illness that led to his liver transplant, doctors told him he had a congenital liver defect that had been exacerbated by rampant excess.
But Frycer, even before his crises of health, always found a way to locate the bright side. Pulled over multiple times while driving drunk in Toronto, Frycer writes that his status as a Maple Leaf usually saved him. But not always. He served about a week in jail for one impaired driving conviction, which only seemed to endear him to Ballard, who’d also spent time in prison.
Forced by a driver’s licence suspension to take the TTC to the Maple Leafs’ Etobicoke practice rink, Frycer recounts being propositioned by so many women en route that his pockets overflowed with phone numbers.
“There was tons and tons of women. It was one of the nicest things to be a Leaf,” Frycer said. “They didn’t want to hurt us. They just wanted to be with us. In a funny way, they were just happy to be with one Leaf at night, or something like that. Trap you? No … But now, for a real popular guy like Auston Matthews, you’ve got to be careful. Now they see a lot of money behind a hockey player. They’ve got cellphones … Now the hockey players are still having fun. But it’s different from our day in the ’80s.”
The Maple Leafs’ fortunes aren’t the only thing that’s changed with time.
“Cocaine was there (in the 1980s), but not as much as what I’ve heard lately in the new era. Our guys, they had drinking problems … But cocaine, it was there, but not as much as these days, I think. I saw it. I was there. But it’s even more now. Back then it was alcohol, alcohol, alcohol. Girls and alcohol.”
One scene in the memoir ends with Frycer’s hand around Brophy’s throat in the midst of a confrontation after a loss in Long Island. It wasn’t long before he’d demand the trade that sent him Detroit in spring of 1988. Brophy was fired early the following year, but not before Frycer, celebrating a two-goal night against the Leafs, famously flipped the middle finger toward Brophy as he skated by the Toronto bench.
“I’m still bitter. I loved Toronto,” said Frycer, who still faithfully follows the club.
Frycer has long been a coach himself, lately with the Znojmo Eagles, a Czech-based entrant in the Austrian league. Due for a hip replacement in the coming months, he’s currently walking the bench with crutches.
“It’s not pleasant. It’s not nice,” he said, speaking of the current state of his health. “But I’m still fighting. I’m still here.”
A twice-divorced father of three now married to his third wife, he said he wrote his memoir as a cautionary tale for a younger generation, and to celebrate the gift of the various reprieves he’s been charmed enough to be granted.
“A lot of the guys are dead already. Teammates, linemates … and I’m still here after two transplants,” he said. “I’ve always said what I think. I couldn’t do that when I lived in a Communist country, so why should I be keeping my mouth shut when I’m in a free country? Why should I be ashamed of myself? Maybe I am. But I have to help somebody else. So I want to warn the younger players they have to be careful. They have to realize they have to be a little smarter. It’s a different era now.
“When you’re young and wild and full of emotion, you think your career will go on like this forever.
“But in the end you realize life is short.”
“I’m looking at every day, every hour, as a new opportunity.” MIROSLAV FRYCER FORMER LEAFS FORWARD