“You called Thorty a middleweight?” Mark Recchi asked me with bewilderment in his eyes and voice. “Oooo.”
A few minutes later, Shawn Thornton came through the Bruins’ dressing room.
It was the morning of March 18, 2010. That night, the Bruins were playing Pittsburgh for the first time since Matt Cooke dropped Marc Savard with a life-changing hit to the head.
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Everyone knew what was coming. Somebody would challenge Cooke to a fight.
Cooke was 5-foot-11 and 205 pounds. It wouldn’t have been fair for the Pittsburgh agitator to take on battleships like Zdeno Chara or Milan Lucic, as much as either would have enjoyed the responsibility. I had written in The Boston Globe, then, that it would be up to Thornton, who, at 6-2, 217, was closer to Cooke’s weight class.
Which I described with a poor choice of words. And which Thornton didn’t appreciate.
According to HockeyFights, Thornton concluded his NHL career with 141 scraps. He took on some of the toughest men in the world, from Colton Orr to Georges Laraque to John Scott. Appropriately, his primary task is in the title of his new book, “Shawn Thornton: Fighting My Way to the Top.” The book was released Tuesday.
In the book, written with NESN’s Dale Arnold, Thornton goes deep on fights, including the Cooke one, and other parts of his blue-collar career. Thornton, now the Florida Panthers’ chief commercial officer, expanded on seven of these stories in a recent call with The Athletic.
He had forgotten that I had described him as a middleweight.
I was in no hurry to remind him.
The Cooke fight
Thornton was nearing the end of his first shift when Cooke rolled over the boards. The right wing approached his opponent. Both players dropped their gloves. Thornton got the better of Cooke, landing a few shots on his way down.
Behind the scenes, communication was critical to ensuring everything went smoothly.
Before the game, Thornton, Chara and Recchi talked about what had to be done. Thornton told his teammates he wanted the responsibility.
During pregame warmups, Recchi approached Pittsburgh’s Bill Guerin, who was a friend. Recchi told Guerin that Cooke had to answer to Thornton. Guerin agreed. Guerin said he would tell Cooke what had to be done.
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In retrospect, had Guerin not encouraged Cooke to fight, the geared-up Bruins might have taken out their anger on some of Pittsburgh’s other players. This would have put the game on high boil.
“When we talked to Rex, he brought up Billy’s name. Of course,” Thornton said. “That’s exactly who he should be talking to. He’s the super-vet in that room. He’s exactly the one that should be having that conversation. Because he gets it, too. He played in a different era. He really understood what the ramifications would have been had it gone the other way.”
After the fight, Thornton approached Eric Godard and Mike Rupp. He asked Pittsburgh’s tough guys if things were good. They said yes.
“Just to make sure,” Thornton explained. “It was what was agreed upon. Just wanted to double-check. If not, everybody needed to know it wasn’t done and get mentally ready for what was coming. Not that that’s what we wanted. But just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. I had fought both those guys multiple times too. There’s always a mutual respect factor 98 percent of the time between enforcers. I thought it was the right thing to do.”
Domi’s donation
Thornton is from Oshawa, Ontario. The Maple Leafs drafted him 190th in 1997. In 1997-98, Tie Domi, an ex-Peterborough Pete like Thornton, would score 28 points and lead the Leafs with 275 penalty minutes. You could say, then, that Thornton looked up to Domi.
After his second year with St. John’s, then the Leafs’ AHL affiliate, Thornton received an invitation from Domi to an offseason dinner and drinks in Toronto. As they parted ways, Domi hugged Thornton, stuck his hand in his pocket and told him to accept what he was giving him. It was $2,000.
Thornton called Domi that night. The Toronto tough guy explained that Mark Messier had once done the same for him. Thornton, Domi suggested, should use the money for whatever he needed and pay him back once he made it to the NHL.
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“I used to train in the summers in Toronto. I was broke as a joke,” Thornton said. “We were out for a beer one night and he stuffed it in my pocket. He said, ‘Pay your bills. You better not spend it on a single drink. You take care of yourself. Mark Messier did it for me in New York, and I always wanted to pay it forward.’ The problem was, later in my career when I wanted to pay it forward, everyone was making more than me. So I couldn’t even do it.”
Thornton used the $2,000 on rent and his summer gym membership. Later, when he was a full-time NHLer, Thornton saw Domi at the Garden. Thornton ran back into the dressing room, got his checkbook and paid Domi back.
“It took me eight more years to actually make it full-time to the NHL. He definitely didn’t expect it back,” Thornton said. “Now, he cashed it when I gave it to him. As he should have. I don’t know if anyone else believed in me. Maybe Al MacAdam, my coach in St. John’s. But I’m not sure there was one other person in the world that believed I was actually going to make it at that time.”
The Therrien rivalry
When Thornton played for Peterborough in junior, Michel Therrien was behind the bench for Granby. The two did not get along.
Peterborough played Granby in the 1996 Memorial Cup. Thornton didn’t get a shift in the finals. The right wing, however, was tasked, along with all of his other teammates, with skating around the Peterborough Memorial Centre ice to help clear the fog mid-game.
“The dehumidification equipment in the old Peterborough barn, probably not what today’s standards are for sure,” Thornton said. “Every time I was out there, he’d chirp me. Like, ‘Hey, first shift, Thornton!’ ‘Hey, you got another shift, Thornton!’ I’m an 18-year-old kid, first year of junior in the Mem Cup. Why the f*ck are you yelling at me?”
The rivalry continued in the AHL. Therrien was coaching Fredericton, then Montreal’s affiliate. The Canadiens and Leafs participated in an eight-game exhibition series in camp that ran through Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland. Thornton fought in every game.
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“That carried on all the way through retirement, really,” Thornton said.
Years later, Therrien coached against Thornton with Pittsburgh and Montreal. When Therrien was at the Garden, he sometimes smoked in the coaches’ room. Thornton instructed James and John McCorkle, who work security at the rink, to tell Therrien they’d kick him out of the building if he didn’t put out his cigarettes.
“The McCorkle twins,” Thornton said, “are good people.”
The 15-game suspension
On Dec. 7, 2013, Brooks Orpik flattened Loui Eriksson, giving the winger a concussion. Thornton asked Orpik to fight. The Pittsburgh defenseman declined.
But Thornton felt like he had a job to do. So later that game, after Brad Marchand was hurt by a James Neal fly-by, Thornton grabbed Orpik, pulled him to the ice and punched him in the face. Orpik suffered a concussion. He was taken off the ice on a stretcher.
Thornton was suspended for 15 games. He learned of the suspension on Twitter, not via then-general manager Peter Chiarelli. It was the most emotional he had ever been in the NHL.
“I screwed up,” Thornton said. “But I thought it would be between eight and 12 games. That’s where I thought it would land. Fifteen just seemed like a little too much. Then for someone to post it on Twitter before anybody from the league had reached out to Peter, anyone had reached out to me … even (TSN’s Darren Dreger), not doing the decent thing and giving me a shout, saying, ‘I just heard this from somebody, can’t tell you who, I’m going to go with it.’ …
“Yeah, we’re athletes. We f*ck up, we deserve to be punished. But we’re also human beings, right? I’m a blue-collar guy that’s about to lose a lot of money relative to me. At the time, I didn’t know about my partial pension being gone for the rest of my life (because the length of the suspension was above a certain threshold). It just felt like I was getting the book thrown at me — now, I’m biased; it’s me — for a guy that had ridden the line his whole career for 15-16 years at that point and never crossed the line.”
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Thornton and Orpik were friends at the time. They worked out together in the offseason. They had been involved in the 2012-13 lockout discussions, taking the train to New York to participate in NHLPA meetings. The incident changed their relationship.
“We were really tight,” Thornton said. “We’re friendly still. I ran into Brooksie in New York. We had our fathers’ trip. I was sitting at the coffee bar, waiting to go to our game. They were coming in, just landing. He came over and started talking to me. His teammates were like, ‘Hey, you f*cking talk to that guy?’ Brooksie’s the same type of guy. If everyone hated me for every stupid thing I did out there, I’d have zero friends. He gets it. He knows it was a mistake. But it took us a while to get past it. I think we’re in a good spot.”
“One more organization”
Thornton was 28 years old at the conclusion of the 2005-06 season. He was an unrestricted free agent. He had appeared in 31 NHL games for the Blackhawks. Thornton wasn’t sure how much life was left in his skates.
Thornton was doing ride-alongs with Toronto police friends. Wife Erin had completed her policing test. The two were considering full-time law enforcement after one more season.
“I want to try one more organization,” Thornton recalled thinking at the time. “But at that point, I’d be 30 years old. No formal education. Making a decent buck in the minors. But I was thinking, next step, ‘I can’t be 36 and trying to get on the police force. Or go back to the factory.’ Not a lot of AHL guys were getting coaching jobs. Definitely not sports business jobs on the other side. I was just thinking, ‘OK, if it doesn’t work out, what are the next 20, 30 years going to look like?’ That seemed to be the best option at the time.”
Thornton signed a one-year contract with Anaheim. In 2006-07, he appeared in 14 games for Portland, Anaheim’s AHL team.
“I’m looking around and I’m like, ‘I had a nice bottle of wine last night,’” Thornton said. “There isn’t one f*cking person on the ice, other than a coach, I could talk to about this. They’re all kids. They’re probably drinking Pepsi with their steak.”
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He played 48 games for the Ducks. Anaheim won the Stanley Cup. He scored a three-year contract with the Bruins the following offseason.
Calling an All-Star an idiot
Thornton held John Scott in high regard. On Jan. 31, 2013, the monstrous Scott tagged Thornton behind the ear. Thornton fell to the ice and was woozy in the penalty box.
Three years later, Thornton was pleased that Scott was the 2016 All-Star Game MVP. Thornton, who was playing for Florida that season, was about to congratulate Scott on the ice. It was April 5, 2016, and Scott had been recalled to Montreal for what would be his final NHL game.
Just before Thornton was about to give Scott his props, the strongman asked him to go. Unlike the Bruins-Sabres game in 2013, there was no reason for a fight. So Thornton called Scott an idiot. They didn’t fight.
“I’m super happy for all the success he had at the All-Star Game,” Thornton said. “I thought it was great for the game, great for guys that played the game the way we did. I was about to say, ‘Congrats on your career. Good luck.’ Then he asked. It’s like, ‘The f*ck’s wrong with you, man?’ I’m 38 years old, playing for the Panthers, meaningful minutes. We’re trying to get into the playoffs. Maybe I overreacted a little bit. But it just struck me the wrong way.”
The call from a friend
On Aug. 15, 2020, Thornton was in his car when he got a call. It was from Tuukka Rask, perhaps his closest friend from when he was in Boston. Rask was calling before boarding his flight from Toronto to Boston. He explained to Thornton that he was leaving the Toronto bubble prior to Game 3 of the first round against Carolina.
Thornton listened as a friend.
“Being an ear for him to bend, someone to lean on if he needed it,” Thornton said. “He didn’t need it. But if he needed it, I would have helped justify the decision he made. He’s my friend first and foremost, just like a lot of my teammates. Teammates are secondary. Family’s more important than the game. He called, I picked up the phone, asked how he was doing. That was it. We talked for 5, 10 minutes. Then he was getting on the plane.”
Rask has been on the ice in Brighton as he recovers from offseason hip surgery. If Rask is returning to the Bruins, Thornton isn’t about to share.
“I’d know if he’s coming back,” Thornton said. “So I can’t tell you.”
(Photo: by Brian Babineau / NHLI via Getty Images)
