In this exclusive interview with The Sidearmer, NHL Hall of Famer Chris Pronger discusses his career, overcoming adversity, and his new book, ‘Earned’
By Jason Fink | April 17, 2026 | @TheJasonFink on X
Booooooooo! Boooooooooo! Booooooooooooo! Chris Pronger is no stranger to booing. If he played for your team, you absolutely loved him. If he played against your team, you absolutely despised him. For three straight years, Pronger was booed on a nightly basis. Not only by the opposing fans, but by his very own. It’s hard to imagine the guy who was a multi-time all-star, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, a Hart Trophy and Norris Trophy winner, a Stanley Cup champion, and ultimately a Hockey Hall of Famer was peppered with disdain by his own home fans for the first three years he was in the National Hockey League. But he was.
Pronger’s new book, Earned: The True Cost of Greatness From One of Hockey’s Fiercest Competitors, hit bookstores this week, and in it, he talks about setting daily standards for yourself, dealing with adversity, and about owning your circumstances in life. I talked to him via phone as we took a trip down memory lane to that first year in St. Louis when he was dealt to the Blues from the Hartford Whalers in exchange for fan favorite and fellow Hall of Famer, Brendan Shanahan.
The Blues dealt Shanahan to Hartford in exchange for Pronger on June 27, 1995. The deal was immediately met with scathing criticism and anger by Blues fans, except for a select few, one being this writer. Unless you were a die-hard hockey fan, not much was known about Pronger. He was a teenage defenseman who built his reputation in Peterborough of the Ontario Hockey League. He had two stellar seasons with the Petes, and word got out about the special player he would eventually become.
When he was drafted second overall by the Whalers in 1993, Pronger was compared to players such as Ray Bourque and Larry Robinson, two defensemen with seven Norris Trophies and seven Stanley Cup championships between them. Both eventually went into the Hall of Fame. Huge shoes to fill when you’re an 18-year-old kid, and you have yet to play a second in the league. Pronger, who hadn’t met expectations with Whalers management, was happy to get a new lease on life in St. Louis after two tumultuous seasons in Hartford.
“I was ecstatic,” Pronger said. “I was super pumped. Not knowing a ton about St. Louis, but I think after everything I had been through in Hartford and the ups and downs and everything that had transpired there, I was just mentally fried.”
But while Pronger thought he was getting a new lease on life, he didn’t realize he was out of the frying pan and into the fire. That’s because the man who traded for him was Mike Keenan, the Blues coach and general manager at the time.
Keenan, who had a reputation for playing mind games and tearing players down to motivate them, immediately put more unneeded pressure on Pronger’s shoulders when he said Pronger would be another future Bourque, Chris Chelios, or Brian Leetch. Add two more Hall of Fame defensemen to the list. When Pronger didn’t meet Blues fans’ expectations early on in that 1995-’96 season as the second coming of every great past and current defenseman rolled up into one, the boo barrage came down with a vengeance.
“I think the expectations, number one, and then who I got traded for, and then who Mike was comparing me to, I think in the beginning it was, this is the type of player he will become, not currently is, and they may have heard it differently. At that point, I wasn’t quite there yet and had a lot to learn,” Pronger said.
The major sticking point with Blues fans was the fact that Keenan had traded away a two-time 50-goal scoring power forward in Shanahan for an unproven commodity in Pronger, and they would let Pronger know this on a nightly basis at the then Kiel Center.
“I was very naïve to what I was walking into with respect to the pressure and expectations,” Pronger said. “I didn’t realize at the time that Brendan Shanahan was kind of surpassing Hullie (Brett Hull) as the face of the franchise, the favorite player, and all the rest of that, so that took me a little bit by surprise when I walked into the storm that would soon be my life.”
That storm would continue for months. Fans forget that athletes wearing jerseys on the ice, field, or court are actual human beings. Human beings with feelings and emotions. Human beings with families. Pronger talked about how the non-stop verbal abuse from fans in Hartford and St. Louis affected his mom and dad.
“Anytime your parents are in the crowd, and your son is being booed relentlessly, it’s never a fun moment,” Pronger said. “But they know, and they’ve seen I’m my own worst critic, and I would let those fan interactions eat away at me and drive me down even further, and when you’re hard on yourself like that, it’s very difficult to pull yourself out.”
Pronger would eventually find himself in a popular St. Louis bar after games, where he would befriend a bartender by the name of Jon Hamm. Yes, that Jon Hamm. Before he became an Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor, Hamm was Pronger’s sounding board while he tried to drink away the agony of what he was going through on and off the ice.
Pronger had Keenan threatening to trade him regularly while he had 18,000 Blues fans verbally ripping into him night after night. Was there ever a point where he did his best Denis Lemieux from “Slap Shot” impression and told Keenan to trade him?
“No. I certainly thought when is it going to stop?” Pronger responded. “I was to a point where I was like, you know what? Go ahead, trade me. Stop threatening me. Stop with the threats. It’s not working anymore. I think that’s when he knew I was probably at my rock bottom, and he needed to start building me back up. When I had finally given up, from the sense of (expletive) it, then trade me. If you don’t like me, you don’t want me here, then move me. You’re the GM. You have control, not me.”
When Keenan realized he pushed too far, he knew he had to build his young defenseman back up before it went to the point of no return. While on a team flight in the middle of the season, Keenan summoned Pronger up to the front of the plane and handed him a slip of paper. It was the name of a sports psychologist whom Keenan also used. He told Pronger to call him, and when he finally met the psychologist, that’s when Pronger realized rock bottom didn’t have to stay rock bottom forever.
“When he gave me the note with the doctor’s number on it, I think that’s where things changed a little bit,” Pronger said. “He had seen the beaten dog, and that I was on the very bottom, and he needed to probably start being a little more positive and build me back up and help me pull myself out of the depths of darkness that I was in.”
Things always work themselves out in the end, and for Pronger, there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel and a Great One, in the form of “The Great One” Wayne Gretzky. Keenan had been wearing down the Los Angeles Kings since December of 1995, attempting to get Gretzky to St. Louis. After months of speculation, the deal became a reality on February 27, 1996, when Keenan dealt forwards Craig Johnson, Patrice Tardif, Roman Vopat a first-round and a fifth-round pick in exchange for the NHL’s all-time points leader. The 500-pound elephant was slowly starting to get off Pronger’s back as he could now fly under the radar with all eyes focused on Gretzky.
“Once we got Gretz, that really took the fans’ attention away from me and they were solely focused on him and the excitement surrounding his acquisition and that gave me a little more time to find my game, myself, and then obviously be able to learn from watching him, how he handled himself, the notoriety, the scrutiny, fan interaction and how he prepared for practice and games,” Pronger said.
While Pronger observed how Gretzky dealt with the ins and outs of being in the spotlight, there were other mentors along the way who helped Pronger while he was going through his journey, starting with the late Brad McCrimmon, who was his teammate in Hartford.
“With Beast (McCrimmon) in Hartford, I was very young. There was a lack of maturity, or maybe I was naïve to expectations and pressure, and maybe a little happy to be in the moment,” Pronger said. “He’s trying to instill these messages and these ideas about how to be a pro and what it takes to be a pro and hoping some of it will soak in at some point. It’s there, marinating in your subconscious.”
Pronger went on to add that when he finally got the opportunity to be in a leadership position with the Blues, he had McCrimmon to credit.
“Years later when I’m in that role, I’m doing the same thing as he did and trying to pay it forward and to poke and prod to show the young players you’re trying to mentor number one, how good they can be, number two, what it takes to get there, and number three, what it means to be a pro. You’re trying to make sure you leave that next generation in a better manner than you were.”
Pronger’s career came full circle when he played his 1000th NHL game on February 20, 2009, against the Detroit Red Wings. Who happened to be on the Wings’ bench as assistant coach? None other than Brad McCrimmon.
“It was very fitting [that] he was there for my 1000th game. Game one with Beast to game 1000 and all that,” Pronger said.
In Earned, Pronger talks about the formula of standards plus adversity plus ownership. Pronger spoke of why it’s a difficult process for some when certain individuals hit their low point.
“There’s always that willingness to quit and that question of is it worth it?” Pronger said. “Do you trust the process? Do you trust the direction you’re headed? We’re always looking for a shortcut. Getting rid of that victimhood mentality that all of us have in one form or another and making sure you’re invested, you’re holding yourself accountable, and you’re taking ownership of how you’re showing up and how you’re accountable to your actions and decisions.”
At the end of Earned, there is a letter Pronger wrote to his younger self. He tells his 19-year-old self, “that the fans booing you is a gift and you won’t unwrap it for five years.” When the Whalers drafted Pronger in July of 1993, he gave an interview with a local Hartford newspaper. The scribe informed Pronger of the famous quote Ottawa Senators number one overall draft pick Alexandre Daigle made after he was drafted by the Senators.
“I’m glad I was drafted first overall because no one remembers number two,” Daigle told the media at the time. When the then-18-year-old Pronger was informed of Daigle’s statement, he responded in classic Chris Pronger fashion, which would eventually make him a fan favorite with the Blues.
Pronger laughed at the beat writer and replied, “We’ll see what happens in five years.”
Four years after that interview, Pronger was named the youngest captain in St. Louis Blues team history at 22. In 2000, Pronger not only won the Norris Trophy as the league’s best defenseman, but he also took home the Hart Trophy as the league’s Most Valuable Player. Only one other defenseman had won the Hart before Pronger, and that was the great Bobby Orr of the Boston Bruins. Not bad company. And as for Daigle? He ultimately became a journeyman who was out of the league at 30. Did the comment Daigle made light a fire under Pronger at the time?
“He got a fair amount of love taps every time we played,” Pronger said. “Let’s just put it this way, he paid for those comments with bruises and whatnot. I think it added fuel, and those are the quotes and comments over the course of my career I would use relentlessly, whether it was training in the summer or the dog days of winter when I needed to push myself. Those sat firmly on my shoulder and were there to really push me.”
Blues fans were angry at Chris Pronger when he arrived from Hartford, and they were angrier ten years later when the Blues traded him to the Edmonton Oilers for defensemen Eric Brewer, Doug Lynch, and Jeff Woywitka. Pronger had gained their love and admiration and became one of their own. In their eyes, he went from one of the worst trades the Blues made on a player acquisition to one of the worst trades the Blues made on a player departure.
His number 44 now hangs in the rafters of the Scottrade Center alongside other former Blues greats. He was named one of the top 100 players in NHL history. Pronger didn’t ask for patience. He didn’t ask for understanding. He took it, he wore it, and turned it into something that couldn’t be ignored. It’s a reminder that respect isn’t given in this game. It’s earned.
Earned is in bookstores now.
You can purchase it on Amazon, Audible, or at www.chrispronger.com
Jason Fink is a writer, husband, and dad of two based in St. Louis. A sports fan for over 40 years with a tremendous love for the St. Louis Blues and St. Louis Cardinals, he writes with the perspective of someone who’s lived every high and low. His work blends insight, storytelling, and the kind of opinions every fan has—but doesn’t always say out loud.