No. 40: TOM BARASSO / Don't Pass the Wine List to the Goaltender
My unlikely dinner with the NHL's sourest sourpuss.
This excerpt from my Audible Original originally ran back in 2022 and was available to only paid subscribers (back when I had only a dozen of them).
Barrasso at 18 when drafted by the Sabres comes from the eye and lens of Bruce Bennett, Getty’s man and the estimable friend of the SubStack who should be in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
WHEN I covered the Ottawa Senators twenty years back, Daniel Alfredsson, the team captain, asked me if I could recommend a really good restaurant in Toronto. Local knowledge, right? I suggested a place that has since been shuttered: Lolita’s Lust.
Alfredsson, a family man, was puzzled until I assured him that Lolita’s wasn’t a strip joint. It was, in fact, a trattoria with two great selling points for visiting teams, exquisite Mediterranean food, and an opaque front window which would spare them being heckled by deranged fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs and they are legion.
Sold. Alfredsson told me to make a reservation, five plus-one, me being the one. I knew the manager, so I made the call letting him know that an early seating at a table in the back would be preferred. I also spoke to the chef, a hockey fan, who said he’d roll out something special.
Sure enough, that night the chef gave it 110 percent effort, whipping up off-the-menu sharing dishes to serve between courses, entirely on the house. He brought as much ambition to our table as a free agent on a tryout contract.
When we sat down, I assured one and all that my notebook was put away, but with Alfie and his line-mates this was like telling Boy Scouts that nothing would leave the room if they got into sensitive stuff, like the secret of the slip knot.
A great time was had by all and before dessert was served, we agreed that we’d do it all again down the line.
Cut to the Senators’ next trip to Toronto that spring, a playoff match-up, Alfredsson again asked me to make a reservation at Lolita’s
“How many?” I asked.
“Ten.”
Effectively a team meal.
When I told the folks at Lolita’s they were of course over the moon. Another charmed night thought the manager, plenty of notice thought the chef. He couldn’t have been happier if I had told him he was working the head table at the Hockey Hall of Fame induction and sitting at Gordie Howe’s elbow.
Around four o’clock, Daniel Alfredsson called. Uh-oh, I thought, if this is to cancel … but no.
“Can you add one?” he asked.
“No problem,” I said. “Who’s the late entry?”
“Tom Barrasso.”
I had no enthusiasm to mute and considered telling him they only had room for ten in a restaurant that with a back patio sat 150.
Barrasso was famously hostile to the media for reasons unknown. When carrying him, his mother must have been frightened by Red Smith.
The sportswriters have long observed the first rule of professional etiquette in the press box. Nonetheless, sportswriters effected a joyous, silent version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream up in the press box late in the seventh game of the 1996 Eastern Conference Final. In the Pitt net, Barrasso gave up a goal on a soft sixty-foot slapshot by Florida’s Tom Fitzgerald. The series-winner or, more to the point, the series-loser for Barrasso. Ah, such sweet schadenfreude.
Afterwards, a reporter from ESPN approached the Garbo-esque Barrasso off-camera. Perhaps unaware that Barrasso was the career leader in media shut-outs, the mike-holder asked if he could get a word from him. "Someday," Barrasso said. A snappy, if unintentional, comeback.
Because of the large number in our group, the players would be arriving in a flotilla of taxis. And because of the painted-over window the restaurant was easy to miss. So, I stood out on the sidewalk, waiting with Alfredsson. Back in those days there was no missing Daniel. He had a head of red hair only seen at the circus when a VW Beetle pulls up and twelve passengers emerge.
Barrasso was in the last cab that pulled up, alone, fifteen minutes late.
“Hey Tom, I think you’ll like this,” I said by way of the smallest talk possible.
My extended hand went unshaken
“I’ve never read anything you’ve ever written,” he said.
My eyes rolled like a slot machine’s reels and came up two lemons. I fought off the temptation to go into the kitchen and spit in his soup.
“So, you didn’t read that I thought the Sens won the trade when they grabbed you,” I said for no good reason. Which I had thought. Which I had written. Which I had regretted even before we were handed menus.
When we took our seats and mulled over our selections, Alfredsson made his own effort to warm up the goaltender.
“I didn’t think you were going to make it,” Alfredsson said, echoing what had been my prayers unanswered.
“I went for a massage,” Barrasso said.
This drew no follow-up but that wasn’t going to stop him.
“If you need a massage, you look for a place beside a train station,” Barrasso said. “All the best massage therapists set up their practice beside the train station.”
Barrasso offered this up this pearl of wisdom as if privy to only worldly, savvy vets. This supposed location of good masseuses would be news to the Senators who know the Ottawa train station sits in a suburban wilderness. The only ones setting up shop beside the terminal are groundhogs looking for starter holes overlooking the giant asphalt pretzel that is Highway 417 and off-ramps.
No matter. Through the first course Barrasso offered up such acute insights with the authority of the Pope hosting a bingo game.
The insufferable bore saved his worst for the ordering of the second course.
“How about wine with dinner?” he said.
It was a vote he could have carried 1-10.
Barrasso didn’t snap his fingers but only because the attentive waiter rushed over with the wine menu in hand.
Barrasso was looking for a red and someone on our side of the table asked for menu to look for a white.
I was fine with a standard-issue beer, but I glanced over at the bottles listed out of curiosity’s sake. I can’t remember the name of the bottle Tom Barrasso ordered, but doing so, he did put on a French accent that evoked Mel Blanc’s Pepe Le Pew. What I’ll never forget was the price: $700, the most expensive on the menu.
I caught a look from the waiter. He was imagining the night would put his kids through college.
The waiter brought the bottle by for Barrasso’s stony inspection. Then came the sampling.
Barrasso’s swished it about his mouth and then pronounced: “This is bad.”
Apologies were made and the waiter ran to get another bottle.
Another bottle was produced, and the sequence played out once more. Apologies were made as were grimaces throughout the room. I avoided making eye contact with the manager—without my welding goggles his glare would have singed my retinas.
Before the third bottle arrived, a green rookie who should have been fined said, “Gee, Tom, you seem to know a lot about wine.”
The closest thing that Barrasso could get to humble was humblebrag.
“I have a collection that would be $250,000,” he said. “Nothing like Mario’s though. His collection is probably worth three million.”
At this point, Rob Zamuner, a reliable shadow on the checking line, threw some necessary shade on the braggadocious goalie.
“Wow,” said Zamuner, “three million dollars … at five dollars a bottle that works out to …”
Cascades of laughter. This explains how a few weeks later Zamuner ended up with eight first-place votes for the NHLPA’s Ted Lindsay Award. He would have had my Hart Trophy vote if I hadn’t been expelled from the Professional Hockey Writers Association—yeah, they can’t get over one lousy urine test.
Suffice it to say that when the bill came, we all kicked in an equal share. Hey, it’s a team sport and we’re all teammates ‘cept me. Me with my draught beer, Barrasso with his $700 bottles.
Thus, I was subsidizing the wine maven’s hobby and ego stroke. Doubtlessly, Barrasso properly punished the Lolita’s staff with a tip that constituted the barest rounding-up. Leave it to the guy with a fifty dollar per diem to pick up the slack and keep up appearances.