PHILADELPHIA _ Keith Jones knew that he would become Craig Berube's best friend, that he had to become Craig Berube's best friend, the instant he saw him take out his teeth.
It was in the Washington Capitals' locker room on the first day of training camp in 1993. The Capitals had acquired Berube in a June trade with the Calgary Flames. Jones had witnessed the trade go down. He had been home, watching the NHL draft on television, when the cameras caught Washington general manager David Poile mouthing the words Craig Berube.
Jones was ecstatic. He had just finished his rookie season, scoring 12 goals and piling up 124 penalty minutes in 71 games, establishing himself as one of the league's great irritants. That was how he had earned playing time _ by jabbing opponents in the belly with his stick or talking smack to them, by drawing penalties, by trying to swing the momentum of a game in his team's favor. With that style of play, without being much of a fighter, he needed a bodyguard.
"I knew the trade would be a great thing for me," Jones said. "I had a lot of guys who wanted to kill me. In the brief time I played against him, he was one of them."
Berube wanted to kill a lot of guys back then, and he tried to. Over his first six years in the NHL, four of them with the Flyers, he already had fought 116 times. His final dropped-gloves tally, after 17 years in the league, would be 241. Jones had 23 fights in his nine-year career. Berube had 23 fights in a season twice. He had a reputation, and he served a valuable purpose in that era of hockey, and he gave everyone an indication of the cost of serving that purpose by standing there in the center of the locker room, popping out the partial denture that he wore where his six top middle teeth had been, and letting his naked gums speak for themselves.
Wow, he's the real deal, Jones thought. And he introduced himself to his new teammate. And what is now the National Hockey League's most powerful friendship was born.
