30th anniversary of Penguins-Whalers trade: Families happy to remember Zarley Zalapski, Jeff Parker

During the first two chapters of our 30th anniversary retrospective of “The Trade” involving the Pittsburgh Penguins and Hartford Whalers, we’ve tried to talk to as many of the players involved as possible.

Unfortunately, some can no longer speak for themselves because they passed away at far too early of an age.

Defenseman Zarley Zalapski and forward Jeff Parker were both part of the deal. They were sent from Pittsburgh to Hartford in a trade best remembered for who the Penguins acquired — team legends Ron Francis and Ulf Samuelsson.

Not to mention fellow Stanley Cup contributor, Grant Jennings.

But the tale of the trade shouldn’t be told without their stories. As players. And how they were remarkably linked in their later stages of life.

Thankfully, they both had siblings who wanted to share them.

Kyla Zalapski bursts with happiness when she talks about her older brother’s playing days in Pittsburgh.

“Pittsburgh was so much fun,” Kyla said of Zarley’s three-plus years with the Penguins. “The fans were so excited to be there. People yelling for beer. They were cheering and just there to have a good time.

“In Pittsburgh, it was a party … the ‘Zalap-shot.’ The (public address) announcer (John Barbero). ‘Zaaaarrrlley Zaaallapskiii!’ That was the happiest he ever was in his whole life.”

And all that was before the Penguins threatened to win a Stanley Cup. Something it appeared they could do in 1991 as the team managed to stay afloat despite a back surgery for Mario Lemieux that kept him sidelined until late January.

After the team hit a five-game winless skid, general manager Craig Patrick pulled the trigger on his famous trade with the Hartford Whalers on March 4. The swap sent Zalapski, John Cullen and Jeff Parker to the Hartford Whalers in exchange for Ron Francis, Ulf Samuelsson and Grant Jennings.

Cullen described himself as “shocked” and “devastated” by the deal, as he was shipped away during what would end up being his best year in the NHL with 110 points. But Zalapski seemed unfazed.

“Zarley was the type of guy who goes with the flow,” Cullen said. “I don’t think he took it as hard as I did. But we both knew we were leaving a Cup-contending team.”

Kyla said the reason for that was her brother’s “level, even” personality. While he knew that he’d miss Pittsburgh, Zarley saw the move to Hartford as an opportunity.

In Pittsburgh, he wasn’t the top puck-moving, offensive defenseman. Veterans Paul Coffey and recently acquired Larry Murphy could handle those duties. The Whalers had a dearth of such players.

“It gives us the offensive defenseman we so badly need,” Whalers owner Richard Gordon said the night of the trade.

Eddie Johnston was the Whalers general manager at the time. He previously had the same job in Pittsburgh.

“I drafted him in the first round. He can run the point and one-time a puck like very few guys in the game,” Johnston said after the deal was announced.

Zalapski was good in Connecticut but never quite great. He wasn’t the offensive equivalent in Hartford of what Samuelsson was in his own end for the Pens. It was similar for Cullen when Whalers fans compared him to Francis.

Zalapski made an All-Star team in 1993. But his two-way play and physicality didn’t top out at the level Hartford hoped. And he had preference against fighting which, at the time, rubbed some in the NHL the wrong way.

While Kyla said her brother never felt rejected by the organization, he never felt fully embraced by the fan base.

“Zarley was a bit of collateral damage there,” she explained. “(The former Penguins) were not well received. The golden child of the Whalers (Francis) was traded away, so these poor young guys are coming in and it was the opposite feeling of Pittsburgh. They were not welcomed with opened arms by the fans.”

Zalapski did have a love for the game. He played for three more teams (Calgary, Montreal and Philadelphia) over a solid 13-year NHL career. And he skated in European leagues until he was 41.

But he never quite found the joy that he had in Pittsburgh.

“When I look back, he never smiled so much as he did when he was in Pittsburgh,” Kyla said.

As Scott Parker tells the story, his younger brother Jeff never played a game for the Penguins. But he was at least in the locker room long enough to get a shot in at the franchise icon.

“You need some new skates,” Lemieux once said.

“Yeah? Well, you need a haircut,” Parker jabbed back.

I’m sure that Penguins fans who witnessed the mullet flow of Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr in their primes would disagree.

But that’s who Parker was. A tough, gritty 6-foot-3, 200-pound forward who wouldn’t back down from a fight.

“He was physical,” Jeff Parker’s younger brother John said. “He had a few fights. That was expected of him. He definitely wasn’t a heavyweight, but he wasn’t afraid. He had some skill. He could get a few points. A good defensive player who played hard.”

Jeff racked up 137 games with the Buffalo Sabres before being traded to the Winnipeg Jets prior to the 1990 season. A trade that left him even more disappointed than Cullen when he was sent to Hartford.

When he didn’t make the Jets out of training camp, he refused to report to their minor league team in Moncton. He went home to Minnesota with a plan to get out of the game. A move both of his brothers say was a mistake.

Eventually, the Penguins signed Parker and brought him in for conditioning before an assignment to the AHL Muskegon Lumberjacks. After 11 games there, Parker was part of a trade that would go down as one of the biggest in NHL history.

Unfortunately, Parker’s time in Hartford was as star-crossed as the Whalers franchise itself. Eight days after the trade, in his second game with the Whalers, Parker received a concussion thanks to a hit from Washington Capitals defenseman Kevin Hatcher. Parker was out before he hit the ice and fell face-first onto the surface, similar to Penguins winger Kevin Stevens in the 1993 playoffs.

He was on the ice for three minutes. Scott would later say that his brother described his head as “feeling oblong” and that he woke up thinking he was still playing for the Sabres.

Parker came back just two weeks later, though. Then he suffered a career-ending knee injury against his former team from Buffalo. Parker’s Whalers stint lasted just four games, yielded no points and resulted in a minus -2.

“That trade ended up being the end of his career,” John Parker said.

From there, Zalapski and Parker continued to go down parallel tracks in retirement.

Kyla Zalapski would tell The Globe and Mail that Zarley developed dark circles under his eyes and put on weight. She claims he had become “more withdrawn … lethargic … and felt ‘foggy.’”

Scott Parker would tell the White Bear Press that his brother suffered “constant ringing in the ears, headaches from bright lights, and decreased hearing and sense of taste.”

According to the New York Times, Jeff “lost his savings and spent several years homeless around St. Paul. The family lost track of him in the late 1990s before he emerged again. He spent most of the final 15 years working odd jobs, mostly as a bartender.”

They died three months apart. Parker in September 2017 leaving his companion of 10 years, Melina Miller and two children. Zalapski in December 2017. He had two children who live with their mother in Switzerland.

Parker’s cause of death was cardiopulmonary hypertension that brought on heart and lung infections.

Zalapski similarly was ruled to have died of dilated cardiomyopathy — a disease that eventually killed his mother four weeks ago as well — after suffering complications related to an infection. He had been hospitalized two months earlier with viral myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.

Both had their brains donated to science. Both were deemed to have CTE. Parker was one of the more than 100 former NHL players named as plaintiffs in a concussion-related class-action suit against the league.

How much of a connection was there between the diseases that killed both men and their CTE? Is there one at all?

“That’s a question I’ve been asking for two years,” Kyla said. “We don’t know.”

Now the siblings are linked, too. Linked in a struggle of how much they want to blame the game. Or blame the concussions. Not even so much about the diseases that claimed their brothers’ lives. But the quality of their lives before the end.

Kyla played hockey as a youngster and is a fan of all sports. Like Jeff Parker, both of his brothers won hockey national championships in college. Jeff at Michigan State. John at Wisconsin. And Scott at Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

The two surviving brothers both coach youth hockey in Wisconsin. John, ironically, at the Bob Johnson Hockey School—named after the Penguins coach of the 1991 Stanley Cup team. None of them sound as if they are crusading to take down the sport.

“I think hockey saved my brother. I don’t like it when people blame the game. If he hadn’t played hockey, I don’t know what would’ve become of him,” Kyla said of Zarley struggling with depression and mental health issues during his life.

Kyla tends to argue that CTE is being used as a catch-all explanation after the fact. She wants to know why more isn’t being done for players who are dealing with mental health issues and addictions while they are alive. Before the CTE diagnosis can be made.

“I want to see more done for the living,” Kyla said.

Scott Parker agrees with that but also doesn’t want to back off the need to understand what connections may exist between the physicality of the game and CTE.

“There’s no denying my brother’s brain was pretty much a piece of mush,” Scott Parker said. “That’s why we have doctors and we study these things.

“There are two ways of looking at this thing. Are we going to go out there and beat the crap out of each other using our sticks as weapons? Or are we going to teach fundamentals and skills?”

While their opinions and views of the concussion debate weren’t completely consistent, there was one common theme between the three of them.

They were extremely willing to talk. Excited that someone wanted to discuss their brothers in a hockey sense again. Not just about them as figures in the concussion conversation.

The Parkers can talk about Jeff again as the hard-nosed, physical forward that helped win an NCAA title. Kyla can talk about the skills that got her brother onto the 1988 Canadian Olympic roster and into the All-Star game.

“It’s bringing him back into relevance, this anniversary,” Kyla said. “I don’t want everything moving forward to be about (the concussion issue). I don’t want that to overshadow what was his career. That’s just one piece of his story.”

As was the case for Parker. As were their roles in “The Trade.”