Enforcer Calls Off The Offensive Equally Celebrated And Reviled, Kerry Toporowski Leaves Hockey Behind
The left elbow will never again function normally.
The hands, broken five times, befit a much older man.
The jaw was once wired shut for five weeks.
Trauma to various body parts induced blood clots, none actually life-threatening but all thought-provoking.
Kerry Toporowski woke up one morning not so long ago and decided he wouldn’t - couldn’t - play professional hockey anymore. His role in five leagues in seven cities never changed. The big money never materialized.
Yet in looking back, Topper would go through it all again, playing the tough guy, for what it all meant.
For the winning, for the competition, for the friendships. To meet all but the highest goal he laid out for himself as a kid growing up in northern Saskatchewan.
He looks back knowing he gave more than he took, even though at the end he was using his head more than his fists, since he skated through the final nights of his career with another broken hand.
Kerry Toporowski was a hockey enforcer whose ferocity belied a soft-spoken gentleness. His career spawned stories that fans and teammates from Spokane to Moline, Ill., have blown up into legend.
And now it’s over. Topper retired this spring at 27.
He came to prominence in ‘91, winning a championship with the Spokane Chiefs. He leaves the game after winning another title with the Quad City Mallards of the United Hockey League.
Even as Toporowski made plans to return to Spokane with his young family, the Mallards were hoping, that somehow he’d recant and show up again in September, for training camp and another run.
But by late spring he’d taken stock. The toll on his body, the time away from his family, the call to a safer, saner profession all conspired against pushing on.
Topper on home ice was revered, just as he was vilified in rival rinks across the continent. He made a living trading knockout punches. After playing in Spokane, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Glen Falls, N.Y., Chicago, Portland (Maine), Birmingham and Moline, Ill., with Quad-City, he could no longer ignore his body telling him it was time.
He and his wife Joy and two children have returned here, where Toporowski plans to work in financial planning for American Express.
Former teammates might sense a connection there. American Express. Don’t leave home without it. In this case the it is the aptly named heavy artillery - Toporowski’s fists and iron will that provided protective cover for teammates and spread anxiety through opposing locker rooms.
He took skating lessons. They never seemed to help very much.
So he did what he had to.
“Some of the stories are a little exaggerated but my reputation was well-known,” he concedes. “It was a role I filled throughout my career. I tried to go at it punch for punch. I didn’t mind taking a punch to give one.”
A story that isn’t exaggerated paints a gruesome picture. It happened seven years ago this December, a couple of months after Toporowski as a rookie had stuck through most of training camp with the NHL Chicago Blackhawks. He was sent down late, to Indianapolis in the International League.
He and a guy named Steve Fletcher had scrapped earlier that season. When their second fight broke out, what seemed like routine extra-curricular activity suddenly turned ugly. For reasons Toporowski still can’t fathom - a reaction to fear, maybe, or just meanness - Fletcher went off.
The two went down on the ice, Fletcher on top. Linesmen moved in. Toporowski remembers the rest.
“He basically tried to rip my arm off,” he said. “He put his legs on both sides of my arm. Using his legs for leverage he tore everything in my elbow.”
The initial report was discouraging.
Time doesn’t heal all. The arm will never be quite right. The act was senseless.
“They thought it could be a career-ender,” Toporowski said, “but I worked hard and the doctors were good.”
Good enough that Topper got a long-awaited return shot.
The league, he said, didn’t do a whole lot about the incident. So when the two met again, Topper skated out to right a wrong.
“It was a good fight,” he remembers. “I won. At the end of it I was trying to get him some more. After that, the league decided to put a suspension on both of us.”
The league kept Fletcher out of Indianapolis and ordered Toporowski to stay home when the Ice ventured out to play Fletcher’s club.
But of course the damage was done.
“He ruined my career,” Toporowski said. “I have no idea why. I didn’t really know the guy. When we fought earlier that year it was a good fight, nothing cheap. The second time, I slipped on the ice, the linesmen were trying to break us up and he didn’t give up.”
There’s a gladiator’s code in this game, unwritten, that frowns on cement-headed mayhem.
“I’d fight if I had to - stir things up if I had to - but I never tried to injure anybody intentionally,” Toporowski said. “It was the left elbow, my dominant arm. I’m a right-handed shot but I’m left-handed. It’s about 70 to 80 percent. It’s nothing major but at times it bothers me. It’s a permanent partial disability.”
Another regrettable moment involved another enforcer who played junior hockey here, although only briefly and with less distinction and far less popularity than Toporowski.
Brantt Myhres. He was in Spokane for two months after the trade deadline in January, ‘94. Hockey fans ruminate over who was the toughest of the Spokane tough. Mick Vukota? Dean Ewen? Kevin Sawyer? Myhres? Toporowski?
Topper served almost as many penalty minutes here as McDonald’s served burgers - 505 in the ‘90-91 season alone. He and Myhres were certainly among those who came through Spokane with pop in their punch.
“I had a run-in with Myhres (in the International League),” Toporowski said. “He sucker-punched me from behind. It wasn’t even a fight.”
Toporoswki finished that game in more than a little discomfort. He had headaches. It hurt to talk, to eat, to open his mouth.
He played a second game, hoping the pain would ease. It didn’t. He had a broken jaw.
The two former Spokane Chiefs - Toporowksi with Indianapolis, Myhres with Atlanta - never met again. Before Topper’s jaw healed, Myhres was called up to NHL Calgary.
At the risk of skating on the thin ice of editorial judgment, it was probably in Brantt Myhres’ best interest that Topper never got a crack at him.
Goon hockey? To remember Toporowski as a hockey goon is to miss the point. Coaches here remember him as a winner who picked his spots - the ultimate teammate - and that’s the way he went out.
Adam Woden handles media relations with the Quad City Mallards. He’ll remember Toporowski playing smart down the stretch, hinting at mayhem but not above turning turtle to save what punches were left in his scarred hands, and to stay out of the penalty box.
“The highs of a career obscure the lows,” Toporowski said. “The dream of every kid in Canada is to play in the NHL. I never actually got there, beyond exhibition games, but I came close.”
Drafted by the San Jose Sharks after the Chiefs’ ‘91 drive to the Memorial Cup, Toporowski was traded to the Blackhawks. They took a long look before sending him to the I-League. With the arm injury he never came that close to the NHL again.
“I was pretty much sent down the day before the regular season opened,” he said. “All along they’d been telling me that I’d be staying. At the last minute they sent me down, told me to work on my skating and everything. That December I hurt my arm.”
Toporowski played the tough guy as well or better than anyone who ever skated through here. But he has entertained thoughts on what he’d do differently if he could live it again.
“I’d play the same role but I’d try to improve my skating,” he said. “I started working on it too late. It’s tough to change your style.”
Not that tough, at least in one sense. Toporowski might play a little local rec league hockey. Maybe somebody needs a sniper.
“I’ll wait and see on that but if I do I wouldn’t play the same,” he said. “I don’t think anybody in Spokane has to worry about that.”
Coaching kids may lie in his future plans.
“I don’t want to coach on any kind of serious basis,” he said. “Just minor hockey, when my son gets older. Kids. If somebody needs some help.”
Toporowski says he’ll continue to follow the game.
He’s just weary of leading.
“I’m happy it’s over,” he said. “It really wasn’t a tough decision. I’m sure I’ll miss it but it was time, time to settle down.”