My nickname was “the Grim Reaper.” Not a bad way to be known for an NHL tough guy.

No one ever wondered what my job was in the National Hockey League. I played 729 regular-season games over fourteen seasons for seven different organizations. I registered seventeen goals and twenty-two assists. That’s roughly one goal every forty-three games and one assist every thirty-three games. But my name showed up on the scoresheet regularly nonetheless. I totalled 211 regular-season fighting majors over my career. That’s a fight every 3.45 regular-season game. My mandate was clear. Teams were not paying me for my offensive artistry and magic.

Between 1988 and 2002, I averaged under five minutes per-game playing time and earned $5,625,930 to be an NHL fighter. That’s over $1500 per minute on the ice. Or more than $2600 for every minute in the box, if you want to look at it that way. (Another way of looking at it: I was paid about $26,000 per fight.) Not that I looked at it that way. But I did look at it as a job.

An enforcer’s job description is more complicated than people realize, but you won’t be able to put its finer points into practice if you can’t kick ass and take names. You need to be able to do that just to get in the door. And I was skilled at my craft. I respected my opponents. Any true heavyweight back then could best any other heavyweight on any given night. He wouldn’t have been in the lineup if he couldn’t. But I estimate I recorded a win or a draw in 80 percent of my fights. I was good at what I did for a living.

I took it seriously. A hockey fight usually lasts under forty seconds, but I wanted it to feel like an eternity when you were fighting me. I was six-feet-six-inches tall and weighed 250 pounds at my heaviest. When I landed one, you knew it. That is to say, I hurt people.

Of course, I didn’t hurt just anyone. I hurt guys who had a fighting chance of hurting me. I hit St. Louis Blues enforcer Reid Simpson hard enough that two guys were required to carry him off the ice. I stepped over his crumpled body to return to the bench before help arrived.

The meek did not inherit the earth in my world. My job was to intimidate guys who by definition are hard to intimidate. If you’re easy to stare down, you’re probably not playing in the NHL. And you’re certainly not taking a shift when the other team’s enforcer is on the ice. When I went over the boards, I knew that whoever I was lining up against could handle himself, and I had to be ready.

While other hockey players were honing their shot or their stride, I was making sure I had the stamina and left jab necessary to stay near the top in the NHL fight game.

Some tough guys were harder punchers than me. Others were more ferocious. But I could stand toe-to-toe against any fighter in the NHL. I never backed down from anyone and I got the better of most of the league’s heralded heavyweights at one time or another. I owned multiple wins against Bob Probert, and one or more wins against Dave Brown, Marty McSorley, Shane Churla, Matt Johnson, Darren Langdon, Craig Berube, Donald Brashear, Georges Laraque, and Peter Worrell, to name a few.

It was a stressful job, but an important one. I took considerable pride in being my team’s “policeman,” the guy who set things right when players were misbehaving on the ice. My father was a Mountie for thirty-one years, and it felt fitting that my primary purpose was to protect my teammates. Fans in every city feel the same way about the heavyweights on their team. They’re often as popular as the team’s leading scorer. When I played in Chicago, fans chanted, “Stuuu, Stuuu, Stuuu” after all my fights. There aren’t many things you can do for a living that feel better than hearing that.

I enjoyed the strategy of the fight game, particularly making determinations about when my team needed me to fight and when they needed me to turn the other cheek. You needed brains as much as brawn to be a tough guy. A good heavyweight can control the momentum of a game if he understands the nuances in it and his timing is effective. But woe to the fighter who makes poor decisions about when to drop the gloves.

The truth is, I look back with fondness on my career as a tough guy. I enjoy a strong sense of fulfillment because I played so long. When I meet guys I fought years ago, I greet them like comrades or buddies from high school.

I love winning. I loved the fans. I loved doing the right thingfor my teammates. So it’s odd for me now to remember that whenI was nineteen I was ready to throw all that away.