Over the course of a rambunctious Hall of Fame career, Chris Pronger has always managed to push the limits. Not only is he a Stanley Cup champion, a double Olympic gold medallist, and Hart and Norris Trophy winner, he’s also been suspended eight times and had his heart stopped by a puck. He also worked for the NHL’s Department of Player Safety and as a senior advisor to hockey operations for the Florida Panthers.

Pronger, 51, joined us Wednesday over the phone from suburban St. Louis to talk player discipline, the state of the game and what NHL job would be a good fit.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Sportsnet: Welcome, Arizona Coyotes legend Chris Pronger. How are you now?

Chris Pronger: Yes! Yes, when am I getting into, what is that, the Ring of Honour?

SN: Couldn’t save the team, could you?

CP: They’re gone now. Uh-oh.

SN: So I heard you wrote a book. How did that happen and why now?

CP: I had actually kicked tires on writing a book for 10 or 12 years; it just went down a path and I didn’t like the framework of the book. It wasn’t the type of book that I wanted to write. Wasn’t maybe the right storyline, if you will, or was going to have the right impact. And over the last two and a half years, as I’ve begun to build up my speaking platform and really put some speeches together and start researching experiences and stories and different things that would provide more context for what I was talking about, I started to see a framework for the book. And so, based off that, I started: OK, well, let me see if this is going to work. And, obviously, as a public speaker, you need a calling card, which is the book. So it actually started to make a lot of sense.

SN: I haven’t read it all, but so far, it’s a nice mix of memoir and motivational. There’s the glory, of course, but you also own up to your mistakes, including explaining what happened in Edmonton.

CP: Nobody bats a thousand. We all make mistakes. But we need to take accountability. I talk about that in the book a lot, taking ownership, taking accountability, not only for actions, but go on that next step of learning from them and understanding and how or why we made that mistake, and then making sure that you don’t make that mistake again.

SN: I wanted to get your honest take on a couple of hot topics. First of all, player discipline. You spent time in the NHL’s Department of Player Safety. What did you learn from the time there as an assistant?

CP: When I was there, Rule 48, the hits of the head was really a focal point and a hot-button issue. And every year I was there, we tweaked and changed the rule, and in doing so, there’s always an equal and opposite reaction. So as we tried to explain the rule and show various clips of angles that players could take to make contact and hit people and play with that physical edge, then something else would happen. So as you take a different approach, then we started to see a lot more knee injuries, a lot more shoulder injuries, and that became an issue. We had to really kind of dig into that. And as we changed that angle, players that were about to be hit, they felt like they could get out of the way, so they would drag their leg, or they would have their shoulder in a compromising place. So there’s always an equal and opposite reaction to anything that we do.

SN: Have you thought about taking another job in the NHL?

CP: I’ve had opportunities to talk to some folks, and been asked if I wanted to coach and other things. And I’m open to having a conversation, as I’ve said in the past, and have had many conversations. For a number of reasons, it either wasn’t a fit for them or it wasn’t a fit for me. And I think it needs to be the right fit and the right opportunity for me to want to stop doing what I’m doing. I’ve spent a lot of time getting into broadcasting and doing all this stuff, and it’s fun, it’s fulfilling. And I just want to make sure that if I do do something else, it’s for the right reasons and the right opportunity.

SN: Your name has been circulating for open NHL jobs. So I’m going to ask you straight out, what’s your level of interest in taking a position with the Toronto Maple Leafs, as, say, a GM or as a director of player personnel?

CP: I have not been contacted. So, are you interested? Well, we’ll see. I mean, I’m interested in having a conversation. What does it look like? For me, personally, there’s a lot more that goes into it than just the opportunity. What does it look like? There’s a lot more to it than just, I get to do it. It’s, What does that entail? … Is big brother over your shoulder the whole time, right? How much autonomy do you have? And, when you set a vision and a plan and a course … I would have the conviction. Do they have the conviction? There’s a lot that goes into that. And that’s why I talk about it, is it the right fit? Are they, whichever team, is that what they’re interested in? And it might not be a fit, and it might not be the opportunity that we all think it is, depending upon a number of varying factors.

So for me, it’s not really that cut and dried and not that simple, and that’s why I always say it needs to be a conversation first to really get a read on what the opportunity actually is, and what does it look like, and what are their expectations, right? So there’s a lot of things that kind of revolve around that, where you’ve got to have that conversation understanding what they’re looking to get out of this new hire or this person that’s coming in. And there’s a lot of different expectations that can be varying. So what does that look like? What does success look like to them? I know what it looks like to me.

SN: What does success look like for you? For a team like the Leafs, for example.

CP: Winning means you’re winning it all. You’re carrying the trophy around at the end of the day. That’s it. That’s winning.

SN: What do you think happened with the Leafs this year?

CP: I have no idea. When you’re not there, you’re not immersed in the locker room and immersed in the day-to-day operations, we’re just lobbing stuff at like, well, it could be this. They’ve had a lot of injuries, they got off to a poor start. There’s a lot of things that have kind of taken place there this year relative to last year. And, (they’re) another year older. And, frankly, people think teams just kind of roll along year after year after year. (But) every year is a new year. What happened in the previous year has no effect on that year. If that was the case, then players would just only get better because they’re more experienced and they’ve got more understanding, and they don’t.

Some people have good years, some people have bad years, some people have career years. Finding that inflection point for all those is hard. And so, from an expectations standpoint, what does that look like? And then sometimes when you add injuries in and systems and style, and they lose a player, and Mitch Marner’s 100 points, and they add these guys. And how does that all work? So there’s a lot of nuance to it, and there’s a lot that goes into it.

SN: As a former player, how can you tell if a team is not together, it’s not cohesive, it doesn’t have chemistry?

CP: You grow into those roles, and you grow into learning how to believe in one another. I talk about in the book a lot, you go through a lot of adversity. That’s how you grow. You don’t grow by never being challenged and winning. You grow through adversity. You grow through being challenged and then figuring out what you’re made of and what you’re all about. And so that’s why that part is incredibly important, is to go through adversity together, learn together as a group.

Sometimes it clicks, and sometimes it doesn’t. And that’s the foundation that you need to find and figure out, is this a group that can do that? You speak of Buffalo, there’s been a lot of turmoil. Follow that team around over the last 14 years since they made the playoffs, and how many years did they pick first overall? And why aren’t they getting it? … And now, this year, for whatever reason, they seem to have figured it out, they’re playing as a well-oiled machine and playing for one another and believe in one another and have that togetherness that you need to be successful in this league, because the parity is so close.

SN: Do you see that with the Leafs?

CP: Well, do you see that with the Leafs?

SN: My opinion doesn’t matter here. It seems like they’ve had some issues.

CP: That seems to be the narrative that everybody’s spinning right now. You could look at the events surrounding the (Auston) Matthews incident (where teammates did not respond to a Radko Gudas hit that ended Matthews’ season) and go, ‘OK, what is the problem?’ which they’ve since talked about and tried to, I guess, fix, but the damage was already done. So for me, it would be, ‘OK, what have we learned from this? How can we change not only the narrative, but change how we handle situations like that?’ And it’s not always about fighting. It’s not that type of stuff. It’s … how do we respond in those situations when that happens to our best player, our captain? … It could have been anybody. In that particular case, it was (Matthews) and, obviously, it took on a life of its own.

SN: It seems like last year we were talking about the Leafs not stepping up for each other.

CP: And then that goes into, are they getting it, do they, to your point, do they have an issue? And I guess if you go off last year, then was it addressed, or how was it addressed? When you’re not in the room and you’re not around them, you don’t get the vibe or the understanding of how they’re dealing with these things on a day-to-day basis. Are they just rolling their eyes, like, Oh, here we go again. Are they actually taking it to heart, like, We need to make a change, we need to fix this. … How are they handling these moments where their character is being questioned all the time?

SN: But it seems like the Leafs have had a lot of adversity. They’ve gone through playoff adversity. This group of players has changed coaches, they’ve changed GMs. So you’d think the adversity box would have been checked by now.

CP: And sometimes it’s not in the current group, right? And sometimes it takes one person to come in and change that narrative. All kinds of things can happen. It’s not always throw the baby out with the bath water. There’s mitigating circumstances. There’s other things that happen that can change the narrative real quick.

SN: Changing gears just a little bit. The Stanley Cup Playoffs are right around the corner. You went to three Stanley Cup Finals with three different teams. How would you characterize the playoffs for someone who has never been in them before?

CP: Just the the momentum swings that can happen, the energy in the building, the magnitude of every moment, what that feels like, and how that can take hold of you. … Whether you’re the eight seed or the one seed, this is your opportunity to make your mark and have a chance to win. What I’m going to assume was a dream growing up, to be successful and carry that Stanley Cup around the ice and kiss it and show it to everybody in the crowd, and show it to your family and friends in the crowd and all the rest of that … to show that baby off.

SN: What does success look like in the playoffs, on an individual basis?

CP: When you get in the playoffs, that’s where matchups are incredibly important, finding your matchups and winning your matchups, owning them and winning them. And that part of it was always fun. The other team wants to win just as bad as you do. And, on any given night, you’re either the better combatant or you’ve got to learn and figure out a way to, if somebody’s owned the game, then how do I win now?

SN: Who looks good to you right now?

CP: It’s tight. I think the East is what the West was, in the sense that Tampa, Buffalo, Montreal, Carolina look like they’re the cream of the crop in the East. And to me, it feels like the East is going to beat itself up like the West has over the last number of years. … There’s a lot of teams in the East that I would argue are pretty strong contenders. I don’t know if we could say that about the West.

SN: What do you see yourself doing next? You can only play in so many Arizona Coyotes alumni games.

CP: (laughs) Exactly, right? I’m excited about my direction. Broadcasting has been a lot of fun this year. We’ll see what happens next year. … I’m not sure. I try not to put guardrails up. I’ve been kind of building this on the fly, but one pillar at a time, if you will, and then kind of seeing how it all takes shape.

SN: Sounds like you’re a free agent, and not quelling the rumour mill.

CP: I’m a free agent as it relates to not having a TV contract, but that’s in the process of happening over the next, probably, month or two. And as it relates to, I guess the other part of your question, I mean, listen, I’m not gonna say no when I haven’t been offered anything. What’s there to say no to? Right? I mean, what am I saying no to? I haven’t been offered anything. I haven’t had a conversation. So for me, once you have a conversation, they might say no, I might say no, or I might say, Let’s continue to talk, and let’s see what it looks like on the other end.

SN: Maybe like you’ll have time to dedicate a Chris Pronger statue in front of the Peterborough Memorial Centre.

CP: Wouldn’t that be nice, right? (laughs) Someday, yeah, no doubt.

SN: Thanks for doing this, man.

CP: Yeah, sure, I appreciate it.