Flames RW Darren McCarty
The Detroit Red Wings said farewell to Darren McCarty in the offseason, and there’s no disputing the move could have removed a bit of their collective heart.
McCarty had two years and $4.25 million left on his contract when the Red Wings bought him out after the implementation of the new agreement, which forced Detroit to cut its payroll roughly in half. He signed with Calgary for $1.6 million over two seasons.
After the Red Wings bought him out, McCarty posted a letter on his McCarty Cancer Foundation website, saying, among other things: “Don’t be sad it’s over – be happy it happened. … I don’t know if it’s maturity (’cause if you know me, that’s never been an issue) or the painstaking reality of the past 12 months without hockey. Either way, I’m saddened to leave an organization in a place where I’ve grown up, raised a family, been part of a first-class and first-rate team, won three Stanley Cups and achieved great personal success. But looking back, what I feel is gratitude – thankful for the opportunity to realize a childhood dream to play for my childhood team.” Then McCarty went on to thank virtually everyone in the organization.
Yes, he was at the heart of the worst of the Wings-Avalanche rivalry with his determination to avenge the Claude Lemieux hit on Kris Draper in the 1996 Western Conference finals that left Draper with severe facial injuries. And some will go to painful lengths to establish some sort of parallel between McCarty and Todd Bertuzzi, mainly to argue Bertuzzi’s motivation – albeit not his actions – had a component of nobility. But that’s stretching it, of course. It still seems strange to see McCarty with another team, doesn’t it?
With the Flames: Calgary is playing well after a slow start and seems a legitimate threat to get back to the Western Conference finals.
“We’re playing within ourselves more,” McCarty said after the Flames’ shootout victory over the Avalanche. “We’ve tried to shore up defensively. I think a lot of it was just personnel, with all the changeover and different lines, guys just finding themselves. And we played nine of our first 13 on the road. We used the homestand to get righted, and now we have to get our road record up.”
The McCarty Cancer Foundation: McCarty founded the foundation on Father’s Day 1997, honoring his ill father, Craig, who was fighting multiple myeloma, an incurable cancer of the blood and bone marrow. Craig McCarty died at age 50 in 1999. Before his death, he wrote “Rinkside,” in which he discussed Darren’s career – including some father-son disagreements and Darren’s alcoholism – and his own battle with cancer.
Darren’s mother, Roberta, is president of the foundation, which also has a board of directors that includes Marian Ilitch and Edsel Ford II, and remains based in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak. It has raised more than $4 million for cancer research.
