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Retired defenseman Chris Pronger played for five different teams during his 18 seasons in the NHL, which included a one-and-done stint with the Oilers. His exit from Edmonton angered plenty of fans due to the five-year contract he’d signed, but he admitted he agreed to it while drunk and needed to do some damage control after failing to consult his wife.
Most NHL players bounce around the league over the course of their career, and Chris Pronger was no exception.
The Hall of Famer is best remembered for his nine seasons with the Blues (where he became one of the rare d-men to win the Hart Trophy thanks to his play during the 1999-2000 campaign), but he made his debut with the Whalers and closed things out with stints with the Oilers, Ducks, and Flyers.
None of those tenures was more short-lived than his one and only season in Edmonton, where he landed via a trade in 2005 in the wake of the lockout that led to the previous season being canceled. Pronger agreed to a five-year deal worth $31.25 million upon his arrival, but only played 80 games before forcing a trade that led to him being dealt to Anaheim.
Media outlets in Alberta’s capital city crafted a narrative that asserted his wife had pressured him into a change of scenery, and while you could argue that was technically the case, he’s come clean about the series of events that led to his exit.
Chris Pronger says he was drunk when he signed with the Oilers without consulting his wife and forced a trade to make it up to her
Pronger, who retired in 2012, has been pretty candid about his playing days since hanging up his skates, but he has never really addressed the circumstances surrounding his fairly messy divorce with the Oilers.
However, he has done exactly that in an excerpt from his new book, Earned: The True Cost of Greatness From One of Hockey’s Fiercest Competitors, in which he implied he turned to the trade to avoid getting an actual divorce from his wife.
The Athletic published the excerpt in question, which involves a conversation he had with his agent after he learned he’d been traded on the evening of August 6, 2005. Pronger says he got the call after downing “a plethora of alcoholic beverages” at a friend’s birthday party and found himself engaged in a conversation about a new contract while buzzed.
Edmonton was not high on the list of potential destinations, and Pronger said he initially told his wife, Laura, that he would sign a one-year deal with the team before making any long-term decisions. She went to bed before he learned the Oilers balked at the $7.2 million salary that was proposed, and was subsequently unaware that her husband decided to agree to a five-year contract at 2 A.M while ” several more beers deep.”
She did, however, learn of that development the following morning and responded to the news by saying, “You made a five-year commitment about our lives without talking to me? While you were drunk?”
Pronger subsequently made it his mission to assuage his “furious” spouse, and he said the domestic situation had become untenable in November to the point where he told his agent he would need to be traded once the season wrapped up (it came to an end with a loss to the Hurricanes in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final).
There’s no telling how things would have panned out if he’d had different priorities, but the couple will be celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary this summer.