Change On The Fly

What vet wouldn't jump at the chance to escape an also-ran and help a Cup contender? Ask new Hurricane Doug Weight

If it hadn't hurt so much, Doug Weight might have smiled at the scene. The centerpiece of a multiplayer deal on Jan. 30 between the Blues and the Hurricanes, Weight was eager to get to know his new Carolina teammates. And so, on their first day off together, he invited the entire team out to dinner in Boston. By the time Weight arrived, 15 hungry hockey players were already seated at a rectangle of pushed-together tables, bulling through a feast of steaks, seafood, potatoes and red wine.

But all the host could do was watch. The night before in New Jersey, Weight had taken a stick to the chin and had nearly bitten his tongue in half. The result wasn't pretty: a mouthful of blood, a jagged row of stitches and a grotesquely swollen and discolored oral appendage that resembled a gutted trout. And every time Weight opened his mouth at dinner, his mangled tongue left his companions repulsed or confused. "I just wanted to get my bearings, enjoy a nice meal and let these guys know I wasn't going to disrupt anything they had going," he says, enunciating perfectly after a full recovery. "But I had this giant hole in my tongue, and every time I tried to speak, nit name nout nike nis ."

Of course, Weight had more reasons than a temporary speech impediment for thinking that he might need a translator to communicate with his new colleagues. As much as in any sport, a lateseason trade in hockey is all about learning a new language—the playing styles, personality quirks and superstitions of unfamiliar teammates—while trying very hard not to upset team chemistry. How well a new guy manages to fit in can often be the difference between hoisting a Stanley Cup in June and hosting a Stanley Cup party in your den.

It would be a big adjustment for most players, but all the more so for one who takes a long time to feel comfortable in his skates. Drafted by the Rangers in 1990 out of Lake Superior State University in his native Michigan, Weight was shipped to Edmonton in 1993 and then to St. Louis in 2001.

In each case, he says, it took him roughly a year to get acclimated to his new digs. In Carolina, he only had 30 games and the added pressure of being a $2.1 million rental. And although the Blues were having their worst season since 1979, St. Louis had even started to feel like home after almost five years. (Weight's wife, Allison, and their three kids are still living in Archtown.) Moving to Carolina was "a bittersweet opportunity for Doug," says Weight's dad, Doug Sr., a corporate quality audits manager for Chrysler who coached his son until age 16. "But I told him, You gotta grab this and run with it.' "

Or try to run, anyway. Weight, a four-time All-Star and three-time U.S. Olympian, didn't exactly wow 'em when he got to the RBC Center. He was tired. It felt like he was skating in applesauce. His gloves didn't fit. He swears the extra piping on his pants made him feel like he was skating in armor. And his tongue throbbed. At times, the 35-year-old would come off the ice after a bad shift and feel himself transported back into the deafening silence of his father's car after a bad practice. "You see all that a team gave up for you," he says, "and with every shift, every pass, every shot, you want to prove to every fan, every teammate and every coach that it was all well deserved."

It's hard not to panic under those circumstances. The first few weeks after a trade are filled with a long list of anxiety-producing questions: Where can I sit on the bus? How do I get back to my hotel? What do we wear on the road? Can that guy take a joke? Who goes out on the ice first? Will I screw up the team's mojo? Will I ever score again?

For Weight, those last two concerns were no exaggeration. The Canes went without a regulation win in their first five games with Weight, and it took him 12 games to score his first goal. During the two weeks before the Olympic break, Weight called Allison constantly. I don't know my way around, he told her. I can't sleep in this hotel. I miss the kids. I'm too old. I've worked too hard to be humbled by the game like this. Did I make a colossal mistake?

Bite your tongue, his wife said. (Okay, maybe not in quite those words.) "Doug, please shut the hell up," Allison remembers telling her husband. "They gave up six players for you. Read your bio. You're a great player. Just go play and have some fun."

But that required the biggest mind-set change of all. Over the past four seasons, the 5'11'', 201-pound Weight had become the Blues' No. 1 center, skating close to 24 minutes a night while taking all the big faceoffs, most of the big shots and much of the camera time. With fast hands, a prescient eye and a quick shot, Weight had quietly morphed into one of the league's best playmakers, scoring 879 points over the past 14 seasons, 18th in the NHL among active players. In Carolina, his job description is role player. "Doug's confidence took a hit after the trade," says Doug Sr. "It's an adjustment for anybody to go from being The Man to just one of many."

And right now, The Men in Raleigh are center Eric Staal, the NHL's third-leading scorer (91 points), and forward Rod Brind'Amour, the team captain, who, at 35 himself, is having a Hart Trophy year averaging 24 minutes a game. After adding Pens winger Mark Recchi at the trade deadline, Carolina now has eight players with 50 or more points. With that kind of firepower, Weight was lucky to get 17 minutes a game. And he's okay with that-to a point. "I'm not the kind of guy who's gonna be looking over his shoulder going, 'Wake up, back there. Get me on the f-ing ice,' " he says. "But there's a happy medium. Because most of us are at our best when our mindset is, like, 'Give me the damn puck!' "

Weight's particular frustration came from trying to have the same impact on a game while playing 30% less. After Weight's first week, Canes coach Peter Laviolette and teammates such as veteran forward Ray Whitney bombarded him with the same message: "This ain't St. Louie, dude. You don't have to score every night for us to win." "I just told him that we're a team already going in the right direction, so the pressure's not on you to move mountains," says Laviolette, who also coached Weight in the Olympics. "Just be Doug Weight, who's a pretty darned good hockey player, and help this team be great."

As it happened, 17 minutes a night was proving to be hard enough. In the Blues' system-dumping the puck in the offensive zone, chipping away in the corners and methodically working to set up a specific play-Weight could burst, coast and catch his breath all in one shift. But with Carolina's high-energy-high-pressure-contest-everythingtwo-men-on-the-puck-the-best-D-is-a-swarming-O (gasp) style, the team is looking to push play up the ice every second. It's a system that tends to wear opponents down, and it's the main reason the Canes are 28—0—2 when leading after the second intermission. "The truth is, in this style, I couldn't play 25 minutes a night right now," Weight says. "They skate so much different here. A shift here is a boom-boom-boom, full-on, 30- or 40-second burst. It's tiring. What I needed more than anything was time to get my legs adjusted, to get myself into Hurricane shape."

Fortunately, the wait for the real Weight to show up ended just as the team was rocked by an injury to Erik Cole, its second-leading scorer. On March 4, Cole suffered a compression fracture to one of his vertebrae after getting crushed into the boards from behind by Pens defenseman Brooks Orpik. Weight quickly filled the scoring vacuum, ringing up six points in Carolina's next five games as the Canes set team records for wins (44) and points (94) with 17 games left to play. "The deal for Doug announced to the outside world that we're in it to win it this year," says Cole, who hopes to be back on the ice for the playoffs. "But inside this room, guys found out pretty quick that we didn't just add a good player, we added the right player. And that's huge."

With his transition a success and his Cup dreams rekindled, Weight is starting to feel more at home in Raleigh than Herb Sendek ever has. Early on a recent morning, Weight sits on the Canes bench in a dark RBC Center with his flip-flopped feet resting on the boards. Above him is a giant Olympic banner with his name on it. Next to him is breakfast: a bottle of Perrier and a bag of Levi Garrett. When a PR person informs him about a photo shoot, Weight deadpans in his best Zoolander voice, "Should I break out Magnum for this one?"

Fitting in will do that for you. "It's a wonderful, never-ending, all-everything grind, and that's what makes the Cup such a treasure to chase," Weight says. "And you know what? I never would have forgiven myself for passing this up. I'm pumped. Because I know I haven't played anywhere close to how physical or how chippy I'm going to play."

That's exactly the kind of attitude the Canes hoped their new center would bring to the arena. The night before, against the Bruins, Weight had kept the game-winning play alive by holding off a defender while mining the puck out of a corner. In the locker room afterward, he was being interviewed on TV when defenseman Mike Commodore snuck up behind him and poured ice water down his back. Weight yelped, doing his best to feign anger, but the look on his face said otherwise.

Just the way good trades are supposed to go: a shock at first, then totally cool.

Print Article . Email Article. Subscribe to The Magazine