Blueshirts Briefs: The Boogeyman’s toughest fight came outside the rink

Welcome to another edition of Blueshirts Briefs, a series profiling individuals who worked a short shift for the New York Rangers.

Derek Boogaard couldn’t score. He couldn’t win faceoffs. He couldn’t skate fast. He couldn’t kill penalties. He was an NHLer with the Minnesota Wild and New York Rangers only because of his size and willingness to drop the gloves. Ironically, it was a fight away from the rink that ended his life at 28 years, 324 days.

On May 13, 2011, less than a year after the Rangers inked the 6-foot-7, 265-pound Saskatchewan native to a four-year, $6.5 million, contract, his brothers found him dead in his Minneapolis apartment. His death was ruled an accidental overdose of pain medication and alcohol.

The Boogeyman played 22 games for the Rangers before suffering a broken nose, shoulder injury, and concussion during a fight with Ottawa Senators’ pugilist Matt Carkner on December 9, 2010. Carkner ended the bout by slamming Boogaard to ice on his head. The exact number of concussions Boogaard suffered during his playing career is unknown, but this one cost him the rest of the 2010-11 season.

Following Boogaard’s passing his family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the NHL and donated his brain to Boston University where scientists studied it for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head. The lawsuit was dismissed, while scientists concluded that CTE had decimated Boogaard’s brain.

According to an excerpt in John Branch’s Boy on Ice: The Life and Death of Derek Boogaard, had the Boogeyman survived, he likely would’ve ended up like Reggie Fleming, a Rangers’ enforcer during the helmet-less 1960s. He died in 2009 at age 73 after battling behavioral and cognitive ailments for nearly 30 years. A posthumous examination of his brain revealed he had CTE.

Fleming was the only known hockey player to have had CTE until Bob Probert’s brain was probed after he died on July 5, 2010. He was 45 years and 30 days when he passed of heart failure. As was the case with Boogaard and Fleming, his brain was ravaged by CTE. Probert racked up 3,300 penalty minutes over 16 NHL seasons with the Detroit Red Wings and the Chicago Blackhawks.

According to hockeyfights.com, Probert had 232 career fights. Fleming had 65, including 26 for the Rangers. Boogaard played 277 NHL matches, recording 589 PIMs and 61 fights, including 45 and seven, respectively, for the Blueshirts.

Up next, a closer look at the Boogeyman’s days with the Rangers.