Sobering Experience : It Has Been 346 Days Since Whaler Coach Holmgren Has Taken a Drink, but His Goal Is Only to Make It to No. 347

HARTFORD, Conn. —  He can wake up now and not crave a drink, can plan his day without carving out time to steal away, curl his fingers around a bottle and fill the emptiness he could never tell anyone about.

Every day Paul Holmgren remains sober is a victory. But every day is a struggle.

“Today is Wednesday,” the Hartford Whaler coach said. “I can’t take it beyond that. Sometimes you’ve got to break it down less than that--an hour at a time, whatever it takes to get another day behind you.”

Holmgren has been sober since last March 31, when he was arrested and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and evading responsibility after running into a mailbox and a telephone pole near his home in Simsbury, Conn., and trying to drive away.

The next day, Holmgren--who had also been involved in an alcohol-related accident in 1992 while working for the Philadelphia Flyers--entered the Betty Ford Clinic at Rancho Mirage. He checked out on April 28, but his battle never ends.

There are constant reminders. His hotel room might have a mini-bar. Beer is likely to be served on the team flight. There are the beer commercials on television and radio, the advertisements in arenas where the Whalers play.

“I can’t imagine how he does it,” Whaler goaltender Sean Burke said. “It’s amazing, with all the temptations around, and it’s not like all of a sudden you can make all those temptations go away.”

Holmgren says he has not been tempted to drink--not during the 103-day lockout, not during the long hours between practices and games and not in the most frustrating moments of the Whalers’ slow start after the lockout ended.

“It hasn’t been very difficult,” said Holmgren, whose contract contains a loosely worded clause allowing the club to fire him if he slips. “You know, the fear, I guess. My memory is still very good about how I was in the end. I can think about what it would be like if I picked up a beer.”

He had talked about getting help before March 31.

“But I was really trying to hold off until the season was over,” he said.

The accident told him he couldn’t wait.

“The progression of the disease is such that you can’t put it on hold,” he said. “And that’s what I was trying to do. . . .

“For the first three or four days after I went away, I was in pretty rough shape and I didn’t really care about things one way or the other. But then I got better. Physically I was still bad. I was a lot fatter (about 30 pounds) than I am now. Mentally, I wasn’t in too good shape, thinking back.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of contact with anyone outside. Sunday was visiting day and my wife came out. She was there for five days. On weekends you could make phone calls. When I went away, I didn’t even see (his four children). I just went. I talked to them on the telephone, and I wrote letters and tried to explain that I was sick and I was trying to get better and I would come back when I felt better.”

He still isn’t sure how he got to that desperate point.

Holmgren, 39, is from the working-class east side of St. Paul, Minn. For 10 NHL seasons he was a lean, strong winger whose fearlessness brought him leaguewide respect. He also had some skills. In 1980, he became the first American-born player to score a hat trick in the Stanley Cup finals, and he had 144 goals to go with his 1,684 penalty minutes.

As a player with the Flyers and later an assistant and head coach, he had an occasional beer with the guys.

His teammates liked him for his willingness to stand up for them, but none was close enough to see that he was slowly falling into an alcoholic abyss.

“With a lot of people who have that problem, there are hints, a person who is visibly in the bag every minute of the day, and he wasn’t,” said Whaler defenseman Brad McCrimmon, who played with Holmgren in Philadelphia.

Brian Burke was the Whalers’ general manager in 1992 when he hired Holmgren to coach.

“I first met him in the summer of ‘74,” said Burke, who left Hartford after one season to become the NHL’s director of hockey operations. “I fought him in a summer hockey game. We’ve been friends ever since.”

They kept in touch after Burke’s departure, but Burke--who knew of the earlier drunk-driving incident--didn’t know the extent of Holmgren’s drinking.

“I never saw Paul intoxicated. But I’m told that’s common, that people with that problem will hide it,” Burke said. “ . . . As a friend of Paul’s, I still think I should have known.”

But there was no way to know. Holmgren couldn’t be candid with his friends and family because he wasn’t candid with himself.

He was hurt when the Flyers fired him as coach early in the 1991-92 season, and when he stayed on as a scout, his drinking increased. Being hired helped his self-esteem, but the team was a mess. The Whalers weren’t drawing, and their future in Hartford was in doubt. They were 26-52-6 in his first season and missed the playoffs.

When Burke left Hartford, Holmgren tried to be coach and general manager. The added stress made him drink more, and the nature of the administrative work gave him too much time to sit alone and quietly drink. He gave up coaching in November of 1993.

“You miss being around players,” he said. “You’re so far removed from the game. It’s a pretty lonely job, GM. At least for me it was.”

It was a difficult job too. His coaching replacement, Pierre McGuire, failed. Players rebelled and discipline evaporated. Players and coaches were involved in three alcohol-related incidents, including a bar brawl a week before Holmgren’s arrest.

McGuire was fired in May, the team was sold and when the Whalers’ new owners, Peter Karmanos, Thomas Thewes and Jim Rutherford, drew up a list of coaching candidates, Holmgren’s name wasn’t on it. But Rutherford, who owns 10% of the club and took over as general manager, talked to Holmgren and saw how treatment had changed him.

Holmgren, who continues in a follow-up program, has learned the value of expressing his feelings and resolving conflicts, instead of letting them slide by in an alcoholic haze.

“I like to believe that, anyway for today, if I have a problem with something, I’ll bring it up right away,” he said. “I won’t let it keep festering inside me.”

Rutherford had known Holmgren only casually before the team changed hands.

“As I got to know him, I came to realize that he was a very straight, sincere person,” Rutherford said. “I also came to see his love for the game and that his real love was for coaching. I did some homework with players as to what had happened previously, and it appeared the players had a lot of respect for him, almost to the point where they felt they were part of the problem.”

The players stood up for him during an exhibition against Buffalo last September, when Kevin McClelland, tangling with Whaler defenseman Chris Pronger in front of Hartford’s bench, needled Holmgren.

“Right away, McClelland started saying some things to me,” Holmgren said. “I think he said, ‘Are you going to drive the bus?’ At that point, I had my license so I said, ‘I guess I could.’ He didn’t like that retort, so he decided to cut a little deeper and he started calling me a drunk and it turned into a brawl.

“I had prepared for that happening, and I’m sure that’s not the last time. I told (the Whalers) on the bus, ‘I have a particular battle that I have to deal with and am dealing with. I appreciate you sticking up for me, but this is something I have to fight.’ ”

He was uncomfortable fighting this battle so publicly, but to his surprise, he feels better discussing his problems than dodging questions. He recently did a lengthy interview on ESPN, impressing his players with his frankness.

“He’s not the most open and outspoken guy, but he has faced it in front of the media and the fans and that can’t be easy,” goalie Sean Burke said. “That’s why guys respect him. He’s a character guy.”

During the lockout, the Whalers asked Holmgren to speak to local youth groups. He shrugged when asked if he had any impact on them.

“I don’t really relish the public speaking,” he said. “I think when I do it, I do it all right. And the times I did it, I felt better about me. . . . I’m not trying to send a message. I’m trying to get by today, for me.”

People feel compelled to tell him their stories, and he said he gets lots of encouraging letters.

“I got a letter from a girl today,” he said, softly. “She sent me her one-month chip, one month of sobriety.”

Holmgren knows she earned it one day at a time, which is how sobriety is measured.

“For today, anyway, I feel good,” he said. “I feel in control of things. I like the way I’m heading. I feel good about myself today, and I hope I feel this way tomorrow.”