Imagine being in so much pain due to an ongoing injury that when you’re putting on a pair of skates, you piss yourself. Jakub Voracek doesn’t have to imagine it.
During a podcast interview, former teammate of Voracek’s, Michael Del Zotto, explained how one time the Czech winger went on for weeks assuming his foot was broken. It turned out to be a case of gout and his foot was essentially grinding up against itself from the inside. Cool! Normally, gout is saved for the elderly, but he was a 27-year-old suffering through it and Del Zotto blamed it on his old-school diet and way of training. Voracek is perhaps the coolest former Flyer out there.
In the Twitter replies to the video of Del Zotto’s story, Voracek confirmed and expanded on the story.
Responding to a fan who mentioned that when he is battling gout (is it that common??) who said that they could hardly even put on a slipper, Voracek mentioned that he was in so much pain because of this that one time, when putting on his skate before the game, he pissed himself.
The legend of Jakub Voracek grows with every single tweet. This man once urinated because he was in so much pain while getting ready for an NHL game. When did this happen, though?
Luckily, we get more clarity with another reply. Fellow teammate Carlo Colaiacovo responded that he witnessed Voracek pissing himself, and then the winger himself said that he still had a goal and an assist after 20 minutes.
While it might not seem like it most of the time, we are journalists at heart over here at Broad Street Hockey. Just the simple mentioning of a specific game where a Flyer pissed themselves before stepping on the ice, and getting clues when that happened, inspired us to truly find out when this happened.
Thankfully there was not many games to go off of. With Colaiacovo being on this team solely during the 2014-15 season and for just 33 games at that, is perhaps the best start you could have in a Very Professional Investigation. The former Flyers defenseman’s first game on the team was Nov. 4 and his final game was April 11, and he missed the entirety of December, along with a couple weeks in both November and January. The games are really narrowed down.
With Voracek being the player that he is, he didn’t score many goals even at his peak. The premier passer scored 22 goals that season, and just nine of those were scored during a game that Colaiacovo played in. Through those nine games that Voracek scored in, there were just three games where he also earned an assist. (God, we love investigative journalism.)
Those three games are Nov. 14 at home against the Columbus Blue Jackets, Nov. 29 visiting the New York Rangers, and April 5 when the Flyers were hosting the Pittsburgh Penguins. According to the limited information that Voracek wanted to give out publicly, we have to assume that it was in either of these three games. The simple solution would be to see when these points were earned, right? Well, Voracek’s memory might have not been perfect when he sent that reply Tuesday morning.
For the first game where this could have happened, Voracek earned an assist on a Claud Giroux power-play goal, but didn’t score his goal until early in the second period. During the Nov. 29 game at Madison Square Garden, Voracek earned an assist on Nicklas Grossmann’s first-period goal to tie the game, but didn’t score his own goal until eight minutes and 45 seconds into the second period. And it was similar with the game against the Penguins. Voracek scored his 22nd goal of the season in the first period, but it wasn’t until more than halfway through the second period when he earned a primary assist on Brayden Schenn’s power-play tally.
It’s a repeating pattern. There was no game during this 2014-15 stretch where Voracek both scored a goal and earned an assist in the first period. So either Colaiacovo is lying about being witness to this historic event (we would too), or Voracek’s memory of what exactly happened after he urinated in the dressing room, is a little bit soggy.
But what if Colaiacovo saw Voracek wet himself but didn’t end up playing in the game? That is a crucial question, but just in case of any mishaps, we went back to the boxscores of any game where Voracek both scored a goal and an assist during that 2014-15 season. Unfortunately, Voracek never managed to score a goal and earn an assist in the first period of any available games.
While we have come out of this investigation fruitless, we can still be pleased to imagine Voracek played this game, or this game, or even this game, right after he pissed himself. What a player.
