Life is filled with some pretty ironic twists and turns ... and when that scenario skates on the sports playing field, it can be even more pragmatic.
There was, for instance, a day back in late June of 1993, when then-Hartford Whalers owner Richard Gordon walked away from the draft table in Quebec City almost giddy that his team had selected the modern carbon copy of soon-to-be Hall of Fame defenseman Larry Robinson with the second pick in the NHL Entry Draft.
"This," Gordon said, "is the greatest day in Hartford Whalers history."
When the Whalers got the not-yet-grown-up version of Larry Robinson in 6-foot-6, 220-pound defenseman Chris Pronger, he was impatient, immature, with a hair-pin trigger of a temper that often got him into trouble. In his two seasons in Hartford, he was often booed over lackluster play. And as one columnist put it, he was more like Mrs. Robinson than Larry.
A late June trade to St. Louis for power forward Brendan Shanahan didn't bring any immediate sanity to Pronger's life, because of Shanahan's popularity among Blues' fans. But the kid grew up in St. Louis, first under the stern hand of Mike Keenan and then the more understanding tutelage of Joel Quenneville.
Larry Wigge has covered the NHL since 1969. The longtime NHL columnist for The Sporting News, Wigge is now an NHL.com columnist and a frequent contributor to the website.
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In the next nine seasons in St. Louis, he became equal to those Larry Robinson comparisons, if not better in some respects. He had no Stanley Cups like the six Robinson wound up with as a player, but Pronger became the first defenseman since Bobby Orr in 1971-72 to be named the NHL's best defenseman and Most Valuable Player.
And in the rarest twist, Pronger was traded by the Blues to Edmonton last August, because St. Louis, strapped in the midst of an ownership turnover, couldn't afford to give Chris the long-term, big-dollar contract he sought. That trade led him to the Oilers, a team whose reputation in the last decade has been to discard big salaries, not collect them. Yet the trade has given him his best chance yet to win a Stanley Cup.
The juiciest morsel of this twist is that the only team in Pronger's way from winning the Cup is the Carolina Hurricanes, which just happens to be the transplanted Hartford Whalers.
"I guess it's true what they say about how things go around and come around," laughed Pronger.
In this era where we have spoken in glowing terms about defensemen like Nicklas Lidstrom, Scott Stevens, Al MacInnis, Ray Bourque, Rob Blake and Scott Niedermayer, Pronger shows us the best of both worlds. First and foremost, he's a defensive defenseman. He's got a strong stick that he uses as a scalpel like a surgeon to dice and slice opposing forwards. Plus, he's strong, yet quick and mobile. He's got a nasty streak that makes opponent's back off, yet he's very smart and this season has shown more control than any other.
Pronger is a perfect example of a defenseman who can control the flow of a game by breaking up attacks and starting the play back the other way. Just as a quarterback decides the play in football, the defenseman can determine the success or failure of a play by how he starts it in his end of the ice. And that starts with his wide-ranging skills that begin with excellent vision and a keen sense of timing and judgment.
"He has the puck half the game, so that's half the time you don't have to worry about it being on someone else's stick out there," Oilers forward Ethan Moreau said earlier in the playoffs.
"I think he saw more shots than I did," laughed Oilers goaltender Dwayne Roloson after facing Detroit in the first round of the playoffs. "I've never seen a defenseman like Chris who is so good blocking shots in one motion and then either clearing the puck or making an outlet pass to start us up the ice on offense."
"Pronger plays so many minutes that unless you get him and wear him down, he's going to have a lot of success just with his size," said Red Wings coach Mike Babcock. "We tried ... but he just kept making plays, both offensively and defensively."
"There's nothing in the game that he can't do and there's nothing in the game that he doesn't excel at," said Oilers coach Craig MacTavish.
Now 31, Pronger is living his dream that started out in Dryden, Ontario, a pulp and paper mill town of more than 7,000 not to far from Toronto, where Jim, Chris' dad, was an accountant and Eila, his mom, was a school teacher.
From the days of a couch cushion as the net and a plastic puck, Chris and his older brother Sean, who has played for seven different NHL teams over the years, were the typical Canada kids growing up, eyes bulging, thinking they might one day make it to the big time.
Pronger kind of chuckles, when he talks about the long journey to growing up into the tower of power you see on the Oilers' defense today.
"When I was 6, I would always let my temper get the best of me. My nickname was Chaos," he said, with a big smile. "Kids were scared of me, because I would get so mad. I'm not going to lie to you. I was a bit of a hellion, a little crazy as a kid. I still am at times. I have to watch myself."
Even in Hartford, he showed his mischievous side one night in Buffalo when he, several teammates and an assistant coach were arrested in a nightclub after a fight broke out. Pronger was nailed for underage drinking. A few months later, he was arrested for driving under the influence.
The move to St. Louis had a sobering effect on Chris, especially under the iron-fisted rule of Keenan. It was at that point that hockey became a job for Pronger, not a sidelight. Keenan pushed and prodded the youngster and he finally showed what we see today, what Richard Gordon and the Whalers saw, in an intense seven-game, second-round playoff series against the Detroit Red Wings in 1996 that the Blues nearly won.
"He was a force in front of the net and along the boards and his ability to make that first great pass up the ice kept us off-balance," Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman told me at the time. "He grew up in that series and became a presence in his own zone."
Keenan used to always say that if there was a defenseman in hockey who could play all 60 minutes, it was Pronger, because of his size and strength and stamina.
Pronger on his emotions:
"When I was 6, I would always let my temper get the best of me. My nickname was Chaos. Kids were scared of me, because I would get so mad. I'm not going to lie to you. I was a bit of a hellion, a little crazy as a kid. I still am at times. I have to watch myself."
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The combination of playing alongside Al MacInnis and under coach Joel Quenneville made Pronger even better.
"Al was a perfect example of how hard work, even in practice could produce such a high standard of play," Pronger said. "He was great to talk to, but even better to watch and learn the ropes of getting of trying to take my game to another level.
"And Joel was the perfect coach for me. As a former NHL defenseman, he, too, knew how to pick out the things I needed to improve on and how to get me to that point."
"For a defenseman, half of the job is moving the puck out of his zone," MacInnis said. "Chris learned quickly that if the puck isn't in his zone, he's not going to get scored on."
MacInnis and Pronger sparkled in leading a transition game that helped the Blues post the best record in the NHL in 1999-2000. The following season, St. Louis made it to the Western Conference finals before losing to the Colorado Avalanche. That's the farthest Pronger had made it in the playoffs until this year.
"The best advice I got from Al and Joel was to be around the puck, be a dominating force out there," he said. "Over the years, I've had writers try to tell me how I should go on the offense more. But just because I make the simple play doesn't mean I'm any less a defenseman than the guy who skates the puck out of his team's end. I'm not going to carry the puck end-to-end to get a few more votes for the Norris Trophy from a few writers. That doesn't win championships."
Pronger was captain of the Blues at a young age. He never dodged a tough question ... about himself or his team. But sometimes his playful one-liners and challenges to reporters have been taken the wrong way.
Going to Edmonton, much like Brett Hull leaving St. Louis for locker rooms in Dallas and Detroit, where veteran leadership was already in place, seems to have helped Pronger find the best of himself on the ice.
"It's a Canadian city, where hockey is everything," he said. "The city is hockey crazy and really excited about the Oilers. In my estimation, the fans are the loudest in the league. They've been crazy and a big part of this playoff run we've had. The energy and excitement around Edmonton is a fun to be a part of.
"In St. Louis, the Cardinals and Rams were always ahead of the Blues. Here, I've enjoyed the daily challenge of playing for a team like the Oilers with such a rich tradition of winning ... and winning Stanley Cups. I'd like to be part of bringing that back to the Edmonton fans."
This Chris Pronger is the version of Larry Robinson Larry Gordon and the Whalers thought they had, they just couldn't wait long enough for a young defenseman to grow more physically and in his maturity.
Gone are the days when he didn't know how to handle his own life, much less try to stop the Wayne Gretzkys, Mario Lemieuxs and Steve Yzerman's of the hockey world.
"Prongs assumed a lot of baggage," Quenneville said recently. "It was tough on a 21-year-old kid coming to St. Louis, where everybody loved Shanny. It could have broken him. But he went about his business and got better and better."
He also overcome serious injuries to his knee and wrist that caused him to miss all but five games in the 2002-03 season, plus a slap shot in the 1998 playoffs against Detroit that hit dead center in Pronger's chest that had the force of a train hitting a car trying to sneak through a crossing signal.
Play stopped almost immediately as Pronger fell unconscious to the ice. Players on the Red Wings and Pronger's Blues teammates waved for help. Emergency medical staff arrived in the nick of time. Though CPR was not performed, a heart monitor showed Pronger's pulse was skipping a beat. Finally, after 15 minutes, with some of his concerned teammates standing around him in prayer, there was movement. There was a twitch of his leg and arms before Pronger was placed on a backboard and carried off the ice on a stretcher.
"There was no blinding light, no angels coming to take me home," Pronger told me later. "Everyone tells me how concerned they were for me, but I don't remember much of that.
"When I woke up, I thought about Mother's Day and then, when I saw Al MacInnis standing over me, praying, all I could remember were those many stories Al tells me about lobster traps and how he unloaded them for pocket change on the docks in Nova Scotia when he was growing up."
Clearly, Pronger has had his share of twists and turns in his career.
Still, he's become an intimidating, ferocious, steel-beam-sized athlete who average more minutes each game than any other defenseman. He's mobile enough to neutralize the speedy forward whom he dares to get around him and he's mean enough to push aside any power forward.
"Don't forget that boarding-house reach of his," said Red Wings goaltender Chris Osgood, who played behind Pronger in St. Louis for a couple seasons. "I'd swear some nights if he wants to, he can reach from the boards at one side of the ice to the other. He covers that much ground."
You still see the dominant defenseman Pronger has become on the ice nearly every night, defending his net with an intensity and brute strength few others possess. In Edmonton, he's revered for that plus his intuitive play on the power play.
Accountability has always been a key word for Pronger.
"It's just now I have found a team of players who have all bought into the same message, the all-for-one one-for-all theory," he said. "Late in the first round against Detroit, Shawn Horcoff dived in front of a shot, face first, giving himself for the team. Since then, that unselfish, put-it-on-the-line mentality has become contagious. It's almost like we're willing one another to win."
Chris Pronger is already a winner. All that's left for him is to become the champion that he and his brother dreamed of when they were growing ... being like Larry Robinson or Ray Bourque or Nicklas Lidstrom or Chris Chelios or Scott Stevens or Scott Niedermayer in recent years.
Great defensemen who have hoisted the Stanley Cup in celebration.
