Summer 1994

That summer, I watched "The Lion King" on the big screen at the Quo Vadis Theater, an old school style movie theater with checkerboard-patterned tile floors and vast red carpeting in the halls, vaulted ceilings, an arcade and popcorn stand. On rainy days I played "Putt Putt Saves the Zoo" and "NHL 93" on the heavyweight desktop computer in the dining room, and I watched the Sports Illustrated Year in Sports CD-Rom endlessly, which included Michigan's Chris Webber calling an inopportune timeout in the National Championship game, Alabama's George Teague stripping the ball from Miami Hurricane's wide receiver Lamar Thomas in the Sugar Bowl, Joe Carter, the Dallas Cowboys, and former Red Wings coach Jacques DeMers calling Marty McSorley on an illegal stick, which led to a Kings penalty in the Stanley Cup Finals that helped DeMers and Canadiens goaltender Patrick Roy win a Stanley Cup.

Meanwhile, Bob Probert continued unraveling at the seams. On July 15, 1994, while an unrestricted free agent, he crashed his motorcycles and flipped forty feet over a Lexus at the intersection of Middlebelt and Keego Harbor Road in West Bloomfield Township, a posh Detroit suburb. Probert suffered minor injuries and was transported to a Pontiac hospital, where sobriety tests determined that he was under the influence of both alcohol and cocaine. Four days later, Red Wings senior Vice President Jim Devellano officially declared an end to the Bob Probert era in Hockeytown. "This is the end," he declared to the press, "in my twelve years with the organization. . . we [have] never spent more time on one player and his problems than we have on Probert." Chicago later signed Probert, but his debut in the Windy City was delayed when commissioner Gary Bettman suspended him for his drunk driving offense and ordered him into rehab, again, at the start of the 1994-95 season.