Official Site of Darcy Hordichuk

I know you’ve all been waiting for this one and I’ve been kind of excited to write this too. Obviously, you know that I get into a lot of fights but that’s my role and I love it but like most things, I had to earn respect doing what I do and I think the first time I really made a statement was when I was 19, back in the IHL.

I was sent down to the Solar Bears from the Thrashers camp – I was 19 and should’ve gone back to juniors – and I was used to guys who were 16-19 and I wasn’t sure what I was in for as far as fighting and how tough guys were at that level. Now, I was fighting men when I was used to fighting kids. So in a game against the Manitoba Moose I was running around being physical so pretty much the whole team wanted to fight me but having just come out of juniors, nobody knew who I was.

I didn’t really have the respect in the IHL at the time so I just asked who their toughest guy was and they ended up throwing him out the next shift. It was Mel Angelstad. We were just teeing off for maybe a minute and at the end of the fight, I looked like I was dragged on the pavement and he looked like I dragged his nose from one side of his face to the other.

The coaches pulled me aside after the game and were just laughing and said ‘You probably just took on one of the toughest guys in the league, not every fight’s going to be like that.’ I went on pace that year and got in 27 more and fought him a couple more times too.

After being in almost 100 NHL fights, the fear of squaring off with someone starts to go away but I mean it’s only human to be scared when you’ve got a big 6’5 220-plus pound guy running at you with fists. It’s like swimming towards a shark when you have a bloody nose – scary, right?

The best way I can describe it, I guess is that I feel like I almost blackout in a fight. I don’t really remember too much what happens when it’s happening, I just go in throwing them – almost like I’ve done it so many times, it’s like a routine that I’m just comfortable in. I always so something different in my fights but there are definitely those things that you continue to do just because it’s familiar – I guess that’s how I feel about what I do too.

I grew up fighting since I was 13 years old so my parents are used to it although my mom sometimes jokes with me and says ‘Try to score some more goals’. That’s good advice too – I’ve already got more than my last two seasons so she should be happy. It’s like anything else, the first couple fights in juniors or in the NHL, my parents get worried but they understand I can handle myself out there. They’re just excited that I’m in the lineup and playing.

My wife, Lisa, is really great about it too but I think she probably has to deal with it more than anybody because I ask her to massage my hand or my neck – sometimes it feels like you have a little whiplash and she’s been wonderful through it all. But what’s great about all of them is that they understand that’s my role and that’s why I’ve been in the league for as a long as I have because I know my role.

I train really hard at what I do and I’m always researching and watching other guys’ fights to see how I can improve and to watch what they’re doing. I’m told that my summer training with Chuck Liddell created some buzz and here’s the story. Lisa’s best friend was getting married in Lake Tahoe and we had another wedding in San Francisco but there was a three-week span between the two so we just stayed on the coast, and The Pit is located between the two.

Lisa’s friend, Joey, trained there at the time and asked would you mind working with a hockey player and he said he’d love to work with an NHL player. I think the biggest thing that I took from that was he just told me to relax a little bit more because when I used to go into fights, I was really tense. The more relaxed you are when you go into a fight, the quicker and harder your punches are going to be. It was fun but it was so short – just two and half weeks.

My trainer, John’s been able to watch some of my hockey fights so now we’re going to focus more on hockey stuff as opposed to UFC stuff. Those guys are great, they definitely know how to make me a better fighter. It’s different on the ice than what they do because it’s so fast and it’s 30 seconds of you throwing as fast as you can and guys are off balance.

I think that people don’t realize that a lot of these guys that we fight, we definitely know each other and we respect each other. A guy like Chris Neil, who I grew up fighting because we were both trying to get to the NHL, I’ve fought him maybe 7 or 8 times now. It was funny, in Nashville, we went to dinner the night before the game and then the second shift of the game, we ended up fighting.

In a game like last night, where we’re up 3-0, I normally wouldn’t fight but I owe it to a guy like that, where if we’re in their building and I need to get my guys going, maybe he’ll fight me too. Let’s face it, you won’t have a job in this League very long if you can’t get your team going so you kind of need to pull favours once in a while even if you don’t want to fight a guy because the timing’s not right but you do it because you’re going to need that favour one day.

Still with me? That’s just a little insight into hockey fights but this is just the surface, maybe I’ll reveal more another time.