Getty Image
There are countless stories about professional athletes who’ve pulled elaborate pranks at their teammate’s expense. While it’s hard to top the Dodgers player who recruited Frank Sinatra for a truly wild stunt, Jeremy Roenick came pretty close with the elaborate joke that ended with one of his teammates jumping through a window.
Most hockey fans are pretty familiar with Roenick, who played for five different teams over the course of a career that spanned 20 seasons before pivoting to broadcasting by taking a job as an analyst for NBC Sports (although the man who was no stranger to controversy during his time in the league also had some missteps on the air).
Roenick scored 513 goals and posted 1,216 points in the 1,363 regular season games he played and was obviously a talented hockey player who was committed to the game, but he had some other interests as well.
That includes the self-admitted gambling habit that saw him embroiled in multiple betting-related investigations during his playing days (although he never faced any serious discipline) as well as a tendency to pull pranks—including one where he might have gone a bit too far when you consider how it ended.
Jeremy Roenick And The Best Prank Ever
Getty Image
In August of 2008, Roenick was gearing up for his second season with the San Jose Sharks and had linked up with a crew of players including Torrey Mitchell and Devin Setoguchi in Las Vegas while taking advantage of the offseason around a week before they were set to report to training camp.
The three men were playing cards in a casino when they were approached by a mysterious man who offered them an invite to a private party. While some people might be suspicious of that kind of offer, they opted to take him up on it and hopped into the limo that escorted them to the mansion where the gathering was being held.
As Mitchell eventually recalled, it didn’t take long for him and Setoguchi to detect a strange vibe after entering the black-tie affair the host described as a “Life Force Party.” The two of them started to wonder if they should figure out a way to make an early exit, but the veteran Roenick was able to convince them to settle down and try to have a good time.
Unfortunately, that was easier said than done based on what transpired next.
A waitress eventually presented the players with shot glasses that appeared to be filled with human blood shortly before a woman wearing only underwear (who was described as the “main event”) greeted every person in attendance.
At that point, Mitchell said he realized there was a chance he’d stumbled upon some sort of human sacrifice, and those fears were seemingly confirmed when they rolled the same woman out on a hospital bed before removing the sheet covering her to reveal she’d been “filleted from the neck down to the waist” with some of her internal organs on display.
At that point, Mitchell understandably decided he’d had enough. He said Roenick ran for the door but was intercepted by a bouncer who pulled out a knife and started to stab him as he begged for help.
He also noticed every other person at the party suddenly had fangs and red eyes, which led to him making a rash decision that probably seemed incredibly reasonable in the moment: jumping headfirst through the nearest window, landing on the grass outside, and running away as fast as he could.
Mitchell says his phone repeatedly rang as he was making his escape, but he ignored it until he felt he’d gotten far enough away. When he picked it up, he was greeted by the hysterical laugh of Roenick (a diehard fan of the television show Scare Tactics), who informed him he was alive and well and told him to come back to the house where he’d just been victimized by a prank for the ages.
Roenick has described the joke as “the best prank ever done in the history of the NHL,” and it’s pretty hard to disagree. If you make a 23-year-old NHL player who’s in the prime of his career so scared that he jumped through a window, you’ve earned that distinction.
I will say it seems like a lot of work for a laugh; Roenick had to hire dozens of actors, rent a mansion, and hire someone who can make a ritual sacrifice look convincing, but when you consider he earned more than $50 million over the course of his time in the NHL, he could probably afford to commit to the bit as much as he did.
There is also allegedly video of the entire thing but the Sharks supposedly went out of their way to ensure it was never released to the public, so to that I say: #ReleaseTheRoenickCut.