Ice Hockey: Grim tales from Joe Grimaldi

Joe Grimaldi - now there’s a name from the past.

It’s four years since the  helmet throwing, spearing, fighting coda to his EIHL career which resulted in an 18-game ban and his contract with Edinburgh Capitals being torn up.

This week he featured on a podcast broadcast by Fourth Line Voice, and listening to him was a bit like hearing a dinosaur roar.

It also sparked a Twitter spat with Dave Simms who was angry enough to call him out for his derogatory comments on British hockey, the refs, coaches and fans. 

It was difficult not to compare Grimaldi’s narrative with another podcast featuring Matt Nickerson, a player who would have eaten him for breakfast.

The former Fife enforcer spoke with humour and warmth and a clear love for the game, even when things all got a bit crazy.

There was no joy whatsoever listening to Grimaldi’s tales of life on the road.

Littered with obscene language which drained the life out of everystory, he belittled the UK clubs which employed him, dismissed his coaches in the most derogatory of terms - none of which I can, or would wish to, use in print - mocked the fans’ knowledge, the quality of the kit, the lack of a sponsored car. The roll call of whinging went on and on and on.

Had the host dug deeper, and stripped away the bravado, he may have unwrapped the many layers to this story of a guy’s disillusionment with the sport which had given him a life and career in the minors and taken him around the world.

But, all the podcast wanted was the dirt, and Grimaldi obliged.

Tales of scraps and crazy nights on the road were followed with anecdotes about the out of control characters who all give ice hockey its two-dimensional image.

And the strange thing was, the stories didn’t really come across as much fun for the  participant, even less for the podcast listener.

His Nottingham meltdown said much about Grimaldi, the player and the man.

He’d just recovered from a concussion, and touched fleetingly on the disorientating and debilitating effects on the injury - noisy restaurants sparked a sense of panic, the LED screen of his phone was too bright to study.

He kitted up as Edinburgh Capitals went to Nottingham, one of his former teams.

He got nailed four feet from the boards.

His response was, in his own words, animalistic: “I’m gonna take someone’s head off…. I see one of their guys, a French skater, looking backwards. Typical French. 

“That was my signal. Three steps, drop my shoulder and, as soon as he turns, I tattoo him.”

The hit was head high. Grimaldi, a victim of concussion, thought it was good because he led with his shoulder.

He knows retribution will come. He’s ready.

“If they come after me tonight, they’re messing with the wrong dude. They’ll eat my stick. I was ready to baseball bat them.”

With a job secured in Germany outwith hockey, Grimaldi was done with the sport - “all I worried about was not ending up in jail.”

Panthers import, Max Parent, skated towards him, and Grimaldi speared him in the stomach.

“Anyone who knows hockey, knows when you square off you take your bucket (helmet) off. I always did,” said Grimaldi.  A cursory flick through the many fights on YouTube suggests otherwise, but its his story so he can rewrite history.

When Parent didn’t, Grimaldi threw his own helmet square into his face.

“Yeah, it was dirty, but at that point I was done with this game and everything that goes with it. Why not go out with a bang.”

Grimaldi did. It was his last game as a pro hockey player. He was barely 28 years old.

It was a wretched, and wretchedly sad, way to end a career, but sympathy for how it ended diminishes as you listen to him denigrate and dismiss the whole of UK hockey.

On this evidence, hockey gave him some wild, hairy, crazy, funny  moments, but maybe not the fulfilling joy he craved then, and, I suspect, still does.

In his own words he “played like a rat” and worked to get players to focus on him - part of the sport’s dark arts for sure, but one which, in the long run,  leaves you with fewer friends in the locker rooms.

** You can listen to the podcast at http://www.4thlinevoice.com/episode37/

This  article first appeared in Fife Flyers match night programme