Tip of the cap to Sean Avery for putting this on the ol’ radar.
Not that Avery is some paragon of model citizen behavior — nor does he care to be — but he does a fine job breaking down this DUI arrest situation in Scottsdale (while also calling out the player in question for being toilet paper soft during his playing days).
Former NHL forward Alex Galchenyuk evidently thought he could get away with the crime. When that didn’t pan out, he lashed out in anger, spewing myriad profanities and threatening to kill the families of police officers who were on the scene to bring him to justice.
The clip Avery shared is the mere tip of the iceberg from the full 40-minute video of Galchenyuk that dropped recently.
Here’s the key little snippet of Galchenyuk’s verbal tirade:
“One f*cking phone call and you’ll never see your family again. How scary is that? Holy f*ck! One phone call and you’re dead! Your whole f*cking bloodline is dead.”
Trust that there’s more that’s not exactly fit for print. More death threats, racist rhetoric, the whole nine yards of ignorance, hatefulness and tough-guy drunk speak.
All this went down back in July. The Arizona Coyotes were Galchenyuk’s team at the time and wound up terminating his contract. This came less than a month after Arizona traded for him in a deal with the Avalanche, marking Galchenyuk’s third stint in the desert. As if the Yotes didn’t have enough problems in missing the playoffs 10 of the last 11 years.
For his part, Galchenyuk did apologize for his actions once he was let go.
…Just a little hard to bounce back from that, ya know? NHL/NHLPA Player Assistance Program aid aside.
Now, the 29-year-old veteran is back in Russia playing for SKA Saint Petersburg. Any chance he had of ever resuming his NHL career is likely over now that this footage is out there for public consumption. It’s sort of like, now that people have actually seen what went down versus hearing about it, bouncing back from this incident becomes way more challenging for Galchenyuk.
Despite a solid start to his time in the league with the Montreal Canadiens, including a 30-goal campaign in 2015-16, (he also won medals for Team USA back in 2013) Galchenyuk will be hard-pressed to find a team at the highest level willing to take a risk on him.
I’m sure these police didn’t take his threats seriously. Nevertheless, the fit of rage went on for so long that you can’t help but think there is something so broken about Galchenyuk that may never get fixed. Who knows what it is. He learned this type of hate from someone somewhere.
Sean Avery unsurprisingly used some colorful language and leaned into some, eh, you know interesting stereotypes to break down the whole situation. It’s funny to some degree, yet also disturbing in other ways. I don’t know. Kind of feels like Gary Bettman should make sure that Galchenyuk never sets a skate on NHL ice ever again.
Here’s the beginning of the arrest, when Alex nearly got himself shot trying to grab a dip after threatening the officers:
