Chris Pronger was a great hockey player and an awesome teammate. But once, he almost lost it at goalie legend Grant Fuhr, but to be fair, he kind of had it coming…
Pronger was a guest on the Missin’ Curfew podcast earlier this year and shared a hilarious story about how Fuhr almost cost him a million dollars just by deliberately playing badly in a game.
Who wouldn’t get angry if someone was about to cost you that much money? But Fuhr eventually handled it perfectly, and it’s impossible not to laugh when Pronger speaks about the incident today.
This happened when Fuhr and Pronger both played with the St. Louis Blues, and it just so happened that Pronger, one of the biggest stars in the NHL those days, had a whopping bonus of $1 million depending on his plus/minus rating for the season.
He told his teammates about the bonus heading into a game, and Fuhr wouldn’t let the game go by without having Pronger sweating a bit about it.
Pronger didn’t exactly love how Fuhr was in terms of puck-handling and passing, and this game was perhaps worse than ever.
”Arguably one of the worst puck playing goalies of all time, terrible with the puck,” Pronger said. ”And I go back, and I go into the corner, and I’m like ‘Fuhrsy, Fuhrsy!’ and then boom! He smokes me in the chest with the puck.”
Fuhr knew exactly what he was doing.
”And then you can always see him laughing,” Pronger added. ”You can see his head bobbing up and down and he’s laughing in the net … he’s just giving me grief.”
When Pronger was on the ice, Fuhr gave up an easy goal, and Pronger went livid. He had so much money on the line and depended on his goalie to play a great game.
”We’re late in the game in the third period, and Fuhrsy lets in a s***ty goal,” said Pronger. ”I’ve already prepped everybody. It’s a meaningless game other than that bonus and I’m like ‘Hey! You know what this means man, c’mon!”
Grant Fuhr had the most legendary response ready for Pronger.
”Oh! Hey Prongs… is there a bonus on the line? You want me to funnel another one in?” Pronger said, laughing with a hilarious imitation of Fuhr.
What a story!
