Flyers' Ian Laperriere All Smiles as Cup Finals Begin
(from the NHL Fanhouse)
By Anthony L. Gargano
NHL Fanhouse
May 29, 2010 - CHICAGO -- Beneath the playoff beard, the face of the man they call Lappy parodies the old Gerry Cheevers goalie mask decorated in stitches. Above it, there's a fresh scar that sliced his eyebrow in half and spiders around his right eye, a pirate's patch scar, stemming from a slapshot that could have left Lappy a vegetable. It's still pink with healing, and so it's not as distracting as Lappy's nose, situated Tea Party right of his mouth. So right it can appear an illusion from a certain angle.
Is Lappy sniffing his ear?
Lappy's face needs a title.
Portrait of a Hockey Grunt.
Ian Laperriere's face is wholly a Flyer face, a product of bodily sacrifice and "hard work, boys" -- the way Philadelphia aims to upset the highly-skilled Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup Finals.
Even though it's his first season out of 15 in the NHL with the Flyers, Lappy, Philadelphia GM Paul Holmgren says, has always been one of them. It's why when everyone last fall gushed over the acquisition of Chris Pronger -- and rightly so -- Holmgren always interjected, "And don't forget Ian Laperriere."
Because Laperriere is a foxhole player. An energy player. A heart player. The kind of support player you need to win a Cup.
By all rights, Laperriere should be seated up in the rafters of the United Center with the rest of the injured and the scratched. Well before the Flyers could fathom this run, way back in the first round of the epic NHL playoffs, Laperriere took that bullet slap shot square in the right eye in Newark. The resulting wound, which spilled blood on Devils ice and took 70 stitches to close, wasn't the issue. Laperriere was a veteran of those. Just this past November, he laid down in front of a Jason Pominville howitzer and the thing hit him square in the mouth.
Close to 100 stitches, that one needed. And he lost four teeth in the second-period blast. The Flyers' longtime oral surgeon Guy Lanzi said at the time, "I don't rate them, but this is as bad as I can remember. He had a big laceration inside and outside his mouth. His lip was totally split."
Stunningly, he returned for the start of the third period and played wearing a protective cage mask. That night, though he couldn't talk, with his mouth full of gauze pads. After, he boarded a team flight to Nashville and played again the following day.
But this one against New Jersey was different. He couldn't see initially after the shot.
"I actually started to panic a little bit," he said. "Slowly though my vision started to return. When I started to see shapes, I felt a little better. I knew that was a good sign."
But the prognosis wasn't good. Broken orbital bone. Brain injury.
And so Lappy, the affable French Canadian with the nickname that suits him so well, suddenly thought sobering thoughts. He pondered a bleak future, and what of his wife and kids?
Thought like that crept into his mind, even after the doctors told him he was out of the woods. An injury like that always elicits fear, even for a fearless bloke like Lappy.
Then the doctors told him, "We have great news."
"What do you guys mean?" he asked. "Great news I can come back this year or great news I'm going to have a normal life?"
Start skating, they told him. The brain injury healed.
"It was a little miracle," he said.
Something inside him, even though all of the frightening scenarios and the ghost stories he told himself about life at 50, if he made it that long, allayed his fears.
"You know," Laperriere said, "Pain, I've had before. I can deal with pain. The thing bugging me the most was I had vertigo. I've never had that before. We know our body. Every athlete knows their body. I knew it wasn't from my brain. It's weird to say -- I knew it was something else. I kept telling my doctors. I know it's not from anything I had before. Can we check anything else?
"And they found something. The crystals in your ears, the ones that tell your body if you're laying or standing, -- our balance gauge – mine were off because of the impact of the puck. And they did a procedure. Almost looked like a voodoo procedure. They spun my head for five minutes and I was fine. It's been three weeks now and no more vertigo."
And so there he was in the Flyers' closeout game against Montreal, doing what he's always done, diving in front of slap shots and those cannons from the point.
"My thinking is I play that way my whole career," he said. "If I'm going to second-guess my style of play I might as well retire. Because I won't be effective. People asked me why I just wait until next year. If I'm ready, I either come back now or don't come back at all."
That night against the Canadiens, Laperriere's boyhood team, he blocked four shots, two on dives in front of the shooter.
"If I don't block shots out there," he said, "I might as well watch the game from the stands."
For now, the face is protected. He's wearing a full shield that makes him look like, he said, Gazoo from the Flintstones.
"I never thought I'd play again this year," he said. "This is something I'll never forget. When I was a kid growing up in Montreal, I played on the street and I won the Cup playing on the street a couple of times. But never the real one. I've never been this close. I'm so grateful."
Lappy smiled.
Portait of Smiling Hockey Grunt.