All the Way (7 page)

OFF THE ICE, my first two years in Brandon were really tough, in part because of the people I lived with. I was assigned to a billet family, which is the way it works in junior hockey. They are paid by the team to provide room and board. They had two kids who were younger than me, so their focus was on their kids and billeting me was just another income for them. At dinner or lunch, there was only enough food for them. And there was never any extra food around the house. I ended up going to my teammates' places to hang out because at least I knew there was food there.

So, I was miserable. Everything about the situation was killing me inside. Terence was still playing with OCN in The Pas, and when he'd come down to play in Dauphin, I'd just fuck off and go watch him because I wanted to be out of that house.

In August, after my second season in Brandon, Terence came down to visit me at the house. Everyone in the family was out. There was this other billet family I knew about—the couple's names were Neil and Jeanine. They were great people. Neil owned a golf course and a printing company, so they weren't housing players for the money. Neil was a real hoot to be around, the life of the party. He was a family guy who enjoyed life. And Jeanine was a passionate mother who always made sure there was food on the table. Her own boys came first, but she treated her billet players like they were part of the family. They'd had a twenty-year-old player living with them the season before, so he was going to be gone because he was overage. I knew that when the new season began, the Wheat Kings would send them another player.

So I grabbed six garbage bags and I said to Terence, “Help me pack up, I'm out of here.” He said, “What are you doing?” I told him I was bringing my stuff to Neil and Jeanine's. We were going home to Rankin Inlet for a couple of weeks, and I figured I would just leave my stuff with them and stake my claim. So we packed up everything and I called Neil and Jeanine and asked them if I could store my stuff there until I got back. They said, “Okay, but aren't you living at Nigel and Kim's house?” I told them I wasn't happy there and that I was going to tell Kelly when I got back. Of course, Kelly caught wind of it before that and said, “No way you're going to move where you want to go.”

By this time I was a star with the team, and I wasn't afraid of using my status to my advantage. So when I returned to Brandon I didn't even call my old billets. I had no contact with them. I was done. Instead, I walked into Neil and Jeanine's house and they said, “You need to call Kelly right now.” I got on the phone with him and he blasted me: “Who the fuck do you think you are?” I told him that I didn't like it over there. I told him: “This is where I want to live; I'm going to live here. End of story.” I know now how immature and selfish that was, but I didn't care about anyone else. I was telling the general manager what I was doing—as a kid—and who does that?

But in the end I got my way and ended up staying with Neil and Jeanine, and life was great. I ended up there for the last two years of junior. Their place was out in the country a little bit and they had two boys who were a little younger than me, and everything just clicked perfectly. I was a lot happier, and they were a stable family. Slowly I started opening up to them. They
had a better understanding of me and the shit I'd been through. It was like a weight lifted off my shoulders. They actually cared about me. I realized they would go to war for me. I felt loved. I felt part of a family again. I have to thank them for giving me the opportunity to open up and be myself.

THERE WAS ANOTHER THING I liked about my new billets: they loved having parties. Sometimes we'd have team parties at their place, so I figured it would be the perfect spot for me, because by then partying had become a big part of my life.

I was fourteen when I first tried alcohol. It was just us kids drinking out behind a building in Rankin Inlet. I'd be watching my parents drink: it's a Friday night, Dad's getting off work, and it's building up. So I'd steal a couple of shots just to warm up the blood a bit. Then in The Pas, when I was playing for OCN, I hung out with Terence and the older guys and could do pretty much whatever I wanted, which included a lot of drinking.

When I got to Brandon, for the first two years I was still in high school, so I was a bit controlled and life at a billet home is structured. But even then, every once in a while I would get fucking blasted. At the beginning I was really shy, except when we had team parties. Then I would light 'er up and stories would start getting out. But all of those stories would go away after I scored a hat trick.

Then during the last two years of junior, because I was out of school, an older guy, and a top player, I figured I could get away with a lot. Which I did.

The way people drink back home influenced my drinking when I went down south. It was always drink until you're drunk, drink your sorrows away so you don't fucking have any pain and you don't remember anything and you just forget about everything. Up in Rankin, you drink until the last drop's gone, and then you find someone else with booze. You figure out the consequences later. That's the way I was.

Not that anyone in Brandon would have understood that. They thought I was the life of the party. I was on top of the world. I was playing junior hockey in a place where it was the biggest game in town, I was the best player on my team, the leading scorer, and drinking was already second nature to me. I figured that no one was ever going to give me shit about what I did off the ice, and if they did I'd fucking prove them wrong. That's what I've been doing all my life.

In Brandon I could always find friends to party with, and I always thought I could handle my booze. I was a guy who drank a lot, but I wasn't a guy who would start fighting when I drank. I was a happy drunk. I had seen all the negativity and anger in my family when they started drinking, and I didn't fucking want to be like that.

I felt invincible; I was scoring goals and leading my team and the fans loved me. The fans didn't know anything about my other life; they didn't know that I partied hard. Only my teammates and friends knew. My parents didn't know—if they had, they'd have fricking killed me. They would have told me that I was disgracing our family name and shit like that.

I knew that when push came to shove, hockey made up
for anything I did in my personal life. I was fucking dominant on the ice. If I stayed dominant, the people running the team didn't care about anything else, because ultimately you're there for hockey. So I was living two lives. And as for my billets, it was like this: I'd bring a case of beer home and they'd say, “What are you doing?”

I'd tell them that I was going to sit in the basement and have a few beers.

“No, you're not.”

“Fuck you, I'm not. I am. Fucking don't tell me what to do.”

And that was that.

My standard routine was to pick up a twelve-pack and get half cut. If we had team parties it was like, “Toots is just going to get ripped tonight. Fucking A.” And in the off-season, when my brother was around with our buddies, it was four- or five-day benders. Party all night, sleep all day, regroup, do it again, send home a couple grand to shut my parents up for the week, then back at it again. Life was good.

As a hockey player, I could get away with it. I knew I was good and that compensated for whatever else I did. If I went out partying and missed curfew—fuck it, I'm going to score two goals and three assists tonight, so that will block everything out. And that's exactly what happened. In juniors I would party hard and be fucking hung over, but I just battled through it during games because, growing up, I was mentally tough. I battled through a lot of shit because that was in my blood. Even when I turned pro, it was the same thing: play five or seven minutes in a game, get in a couple of fights, and it's all good.

I got called into the office by Kelly McCrimmon countless times. I had countless battles with him. It got to the point where it became one long fuck-you match. I remember one time specifically the Tragically Hip was in town to play on a Saturday night. Kelly scheduled a practice for eleven o'clock on Sunday morning because he didn't want the guys who were going to the concert to stay out all night. Of course, I went to the concert and ended up meeting a broad and didn't even go home. I slept through practice. Well, fuck, I woke up in this broad's house and it was 12:30. There were a bunch of missed calls on my phone from Kelly, and the assistant coach, and my agent. I went home to my billets and they were worried sick. They told me I needed to go see Kelly right away. I called my agent first and gave him the lowdown. And then I called Kelly and he lashed out at me, said I'd better get my ass down to the rink right away. So, of course, I was in panic mode—and not for the first time. I was shitting my pants. But when I got there, I sure didn't act that way.

Kelly pulled me into his office and started yelling: “What the fuck are you doing? We're going to send you home! This is not right! We're taking the A (for alternate captain) off of you! You're not a good leader!” He told me he was suspending me for a week for partying and missing practice. I said, right to his face, “You're sending me home? Then trade me right fucking now. I'm out of here; I'm done. You're not going to tell me what to do. I'm the man here. I'm the fucking leading scorer, and I've got a beautiful girl by my side.” I was so pissed off I was going to fight three guys that night—fight, do my shit, get half cut, and it's all
good. That was my attitude. And, of course, there was no way they were going to trade me. They needed me.

But, sure, that was a bit of a wake-up call for me. For a minute I thought,
Holy fuck, I can't be doing this.
But it didn't stop me. Because I knew at the end of the day that if I did my job on the ice and we won a few games, all would be forgiven.

A few hours later, Kelly called me to cool things off. But I was suspended for the week. I couldn't even go to the rink. People noticed that I wasn't around and that I missed a couple of games, but the real story never got out.

The truth is, I owe Kelly McCrimmon a lot. All of the stuff about my drinking stayed within the organization. It didn't even get out to my parents. If my parents had got wind of it, I knew I'd be in deep shit. I was always scared of my parents. And it didn't get out to the NHL scouts who were coming to look at me. I can't thank Kelly enough for that. If he weren't a truly genuine guy who cared about his players, I wouldn't even have been drafted. For some reason, he saw the good side of me.

WHILE I WAS PLAYING in Brandon, Terence would come down and stay with me after his season ended, and then we would go home to Rankin Inlet for a couple of weeks. And that was a whole other scene, back there putting up with the parents' drinking and listening to their sob stories about not having enough money. I don't think my parents ever understood how much partying I did, and I sure didn't tell them. The less
I told them, the better my life was, because they had their own shit to worry about. I'm their son, not their parent.

There were daily phone calls between me and Terence when he was in The Pas and I was in Brandon. “Did you call Mom? Dad?” “No, you call.” Neither of us wanted to have to listen to their bullshit. We moved away from town to get away from that shit. But it was constantly with us, because we were always worrying about what was going on. Is Corinne okay? She had her own family by then and the next thing you knew, her kids were growing up around my parents; it was an unhealthy environment.

Not a lot of people know that I even have a sister. Corinne's one tough cookie. She had to be to put up with so much mental abuse and physical abuse. Her being as strong as she is today is unbelievable. When I was a young kid, it seemed like she was always in the doghouse with our parents. It was hard for me, as a younger brother, to see my sister be in shit all the time for no reason. When my parents were partying and drinking, they'd bring everything on Corinne. She did her fair share of drinking in her early teens as well, but ever since she had her first kid when she was twenty-one, I don't remember her drinking. Now she's got a happy, healthy family, a husband, and four kids. She's sober and her husband is sober.

When my brother and I left home, there was a void there for my parents. Then Corinne started having kids and that filled the void. When she started having kids, my parents kind of took over and started looking after them. Seeing my nephews and nieces having to deal with my parents' old-school mentality …
that's not how it's supposed to be anymore. But when I say stuff like that to Corinne, she laughs and says, “Imagine living here every day and seeing the shit that goes on—you wouldn't know what to do.”

The truth is, Corinne is my best friend. I can call her any night of the week. She's the only one who has known me through thick and thin. We talk every other day, and I'm not afraid to talk to her about anything. We've always been close. She kind of took me under her wing when I was a little kid. We talk to each other when things aren't going well. She says, “You're my little brother. I can give you shit just like Mom does.” She's someone I look up to a lot.

For her, having to deal with everyday life living in the north and with our family situation is tough. Sometimes she'll bitch about how it sucks up there and complain that this is all we've got. But she's not going anywhere. Terence and I got out, but Corinne always says that she's a lifer. She would never leave Rankin Inlet.

MONEY WAS ALWAYS a big issue for my parents, and it still is. Sure, it's expensive to live in the north. My parents both worked—my dad is retired now, but my mom still works as a school janitor. But it wasn't about buying gas or groceries. It was about the booze, and about the fact that they always expected things to be given to them because they figured they had made us.