Theo Fleury still remembers his first glimpse of Sasha Lakovic.
Then captain of the Calgary Flames, Fleury had just returned from the 1996 World Cup of Hockey, missing the annual training-camp introductions while skating on the international stage.
Lakovic was auditioning for a job as a physical forward and tough guy at the Saddledome.
“My first day back at the rink, I was walking towards the ice surface and there was Sasha,” Fleury recalled. “He was bald and he looked kind of crazy and he had a bunch of tattoos. And I said to the trainer, ‘Is the WWF in town tonight?