No Days Off

by Max Domi

  I never had to wait long for my next round on the rink. Most weeks, I would have a two-hour practice on Monday. On Thursday, the team would have a one-hour practice, and then we would typically play games on Fridays and Sundays.

  As a kid, then, Tuesday was the worst day of the week. Each Tuesday, all I could think about in school was that I had nothing to do that night or the next. At least on Wednesday I could tell myself that I had practice the next day. But Tuesdays were tedious.

  To ease the boredom, I spent a lot of time in our garage on Tuesday nights. I would set up my net in front of the garage door, strap on my Rollerblades, and crank up the music. I’d spend hours in there, visualizing the game-winning goals I would score, and working on my stickhandling and shooting.

  That time in the garage was great practice, and that was where I truly fell in love with working on my game. My mom didn’t want me using a puck in case it ruined the walls, so I fired tennis ball after tennis ball at the net. The balls were light, and I would rip them as hard as I could to see how much power I could get. I sent balls all over the garage—they’d bounce off the net, off the back wall, off my parents’ cars. I didn’t give it any thought, until one day, when a friend came over to play some pickup. I took a shot, and the ball bounced off the post and onto the hood of my dad’s car.

  “Oh, my God!” my friend shouted. “Are we going to get in trouble?”

  I gave him a look. “What do you mean?”

  “You hit the car,” he said. I could have sworn he was almost in tears.

  “So what? That happens all the time. The ball doesn’t leave a mark.”

  “So what?” My friend’s jaw dropped open. “That’s a Ferrari.”

  Turns out that all those years I’d been bouncing tennis balls off of the hood of a Ferrari Spider. Needless to say, I didn’t tell my dad about hitting the car that day. Or the hundreds of other times it happened. To be honest, the car could have been a minivan, for all I knew; I was more concerned about perfecting my slap shot than protecting the car.

  When you play AAA hockey, you need to practice. A lot. If I was going to take the next step in my quest to become a pro hockey player, I needed something more than scrimmages in the garage.

  That was when I truly started to appreciate how lucky I was to have a dad who played in the NHL. My dad took me everywhere with him, from lunches with business partners to visits with the media to the rink. His philosophy was that the more I saw, the faster I’d learn.

  “You can learn something from anyone in this world,” he told me.

  He was right, and just getting to be around some of his teammates helped me think about things differently—not only hockey, but even just how to act around other people.

  I knew I was lucky to have the opportunities that I did, but I was a shy kid, so most of the time when I went into the dressing room I would sit quietly and just listen. Most of my dad’s teammates—Alex Mogilny, Gary Roberts, Joe Nieuwendyk—were famous in my friend groups, so I didn’t want to seem too childish or overeager around them.

  I didn’t have anything to worry about. In fact, I thought all of my dad’s teammates were genuinely big fans of my team the same way I was of theirs. Every time they saw me, they’d ask how my team was doing—I thought it was totally normal for a guy like Darcy Tucker to care about the standings in my Peewee League.

  All of the guys were so generous with their time. Bryan McCabe would often come by where I was sitting and crack a joke to make me laugh. Tomas Kaberle always stopped to ask how I was doing. Wade Belak was a gentle giant who was always asking about my family—he was a generous, kind person every time I saw him. And Matt Stajan was one of the younger guys on the team, so I related to him more and I admired his game.

  One day, Curtis Joseph gave me an autographed picture, which I immediately hung on my bedroom wall. It was signed: “To Max, all the best. Curtis Joseph. PS, you still can’t score on me! (Maybe one day).” So many nights, as I went to sleep, I would look at the photo and say, “One day, I’m going to score on CuJo.”

  As amazing as those guys were, though, there’s no question that Mats Sundin had the biggest influence on me when I was young.

  Mats would have a little smirk on his face whenever he saw me. “Hey, Maxie,” he’d say, using his nickname for me. “How are you, buddy?”

  Just hearing those words was enough to make my day. Mats was my favorite player—he was like a god to me.

  “I’m good, thanks,” I would say quietly.

  “How’s your season going?” he asked one day.

  “We’re doing all right.”

  “Scoring a lot of goals?”

  “Kind of. I like passing more than shooting, though.”

  Mats smiled. “That’s a good instinct to have. A great pass can feel as good as scoring a goal. Just remember that sometimes, though, the goalie is waiting for you to pass, so you might need to just shoot the puck.”

  That wasn’t the only time a Hall of Famer told me that I needed to shoot more. A couple of years after Mats passed along that advice, Mario Lemieux said to me jokingly, “Max, in the NHL, they don’t pay you for assists.”

  To be honest, I often heard the same sorts of messages from my dad. But he’d figured out that sometimes, he could get his message across better if it came from one of his Hall of Fame–bound friends than from his own mouth. Still, every single time I talked to one of the guys in the league like that, I would pick up a valuable lesson. Sometimes it was a hockey lesson, and other times it was a social one. I saw how the guys interacted with me and with each other in the room. I would blend into the background and pick up on the little cues, like how guys joked with each other versus how they acted when the coach came in.

  One night, as I was leaving the ACC late with my dad after a game, I glanced down the hallway to the workout room. Almost everyone else had gone home, but Mats was in the gym alone, going full-blast on the stationary bike. He was so locked in that he didn’t even see us go by. He was just giving it his all, sweating head to toe. I realized that if I was going to follow in the footsteps of a guy like Mats, I would have to work just as hard.

  Every now and then, my dad would take me for a skate on the main ice, and if I was lucky, Mats would join us. On a few rare occasions, he would even come watch one of my games. Those were the coolest times for me. I could feel the pressure those nights, knowing that Mats was watching me play—I didn’t want to let him down.

  I loved it when the stakes were high during a game. When I was ten years old, I traveled out to Edmonton to take part in the Brick Tournament as part of an all-star team of kids from Ontario. This was a huge minor hockey tournament—for a ten-year-old kid, it felt like I was playing in the big leagues.

  Each game, we would skate onto the ice like it was an NHL warm-up—there would be music blaring and the crowd would be cheering. Everything felt more intense: the crowds, the pressure, and the plays. There were mascots on each bench, and the games were broadcast by a local TV station. It was the first taste I had of how emotional hockey could get, and I wanted more.

  I only scored one goal in all the games we played, but I ended up leading the tournament in scoring; all my other points came from assists. I was always a pass-first kind of player; I still over-pass to this day.

  Of course, my dad noticed how I played. After our first game at the tournament, he took me aside.

  “You can see the ice and pass better than anyone, Max,” my dad told me. “That’s a gift. Make sure you use it.”

  On a two-on-one in the NHL, most times you shouldn’t be looking to pass—it’s a shoot-first kind of league. But as a kid, my brain was hardwired to get more satisfaction from setting up one of my teammates than by scoring. I could see how happy each of my teammates was when they scored, so I kept setting them up for goals. Giving a guy a tap-in goal on a two-on-one always made me happier than scoring the goal myself.

  On the flight back home, I thought back to that glimpse of Mats on the stationar
y bike. Even though we had made it so close to winning the tournament, we had fallen short. As a team, we felt we could be stronger. As an individual, I knew I had to be. I want to be better, I thought. No, I want to be the best.

  If hockey hadn’t already taken over my life before that point, it did then. By grade eight, any preoccupation I might have still had for school was completely replaced by hockey. The only courses I really enjoyed were the arts, especially drama. Acting in front of a group during a skit never bothered me. But if I had to read in front of a group of people, the butterflies would start dancing in my stomach and I’d be sweating from nerves.

  To make my projects easier, then, I always brought things back to hockey.

  “Max, what are you working on?” my mom asked me one evening as I was doing my homework.

  “An English essay,” I said. “I have to give a speech tomorrow.”

  “What are you going to talk about?”

  “Mario Lemieux.” She could barely stop laughing.

  I needed something that would make my life easier, because 2006 ended up being a tough year for me personally. In June 2006, my dad retired from the NHL. Then, in September, not long after I turned eleven, my parents split up.

  I was in the back of my mom’s car as we drove up to our cottage, when my mom got a call from a friend of hers. I was in the backseat, and my mom wasn’t saying much, but I could hear her friend talking quietly. All of a sudden my mom started breathing heavily, and she pulled over for a few minutes to gather her thoughts. My sisters and I stayed quiet—we knew something serious was going on, but we weren’t sure how to react. Eventually, my mom explained what was happening.

  I didn’t cry when she told me and my sisters the news. I didn’t cry when, a few days later, we talked about having to move. I only cried when I saw my mom cry. That hit me hard. My mom is the bravest and toughest person I have ever met in my life, and it was hard to see her cry. And there was absolutely nothing I could do—I felt helpless.

  For a year prior to my parents’ divorce, I’d had a recurring nightmare. In it, my parents got divorced and my sisters and I had to split up to live with them. I’d wake up from those dreams terrified that it would become a reality. It’s just a dream, I’d told myself. Now it was a reality.

  For a while I wondered if there was anything I could have done to prevent their divorce. I think a lot of kids wonder about that. Both of my parents assured me and my sisters that it wasn’t about us, but it was hard not to let my imagination wander.

  It was hard for my family to manage during that time. It became even harder when the newspapers and other media started to cover the divorce. Every detail became public. We felt like we had no privacy.

  To help me get over my parents’ divorce I did what I always do in tough times; I played hockey. Whenever I was stressed out, I would go down to the basement and start to stickhandle a puck or a ball. I began to look forward to practices and games not just as a fun time with friends, but as a necessary escape. As soon as I had a stick in my hand and was skating around, it seemed like there was nothing in the world that could faze me. I wasn’t a kid who was bored at school or whose parents were getting divorced—once again I was just that happy two-and-a-half-year-old skating laps around the rink.

  While my parents’ divorce sucked, we all adapted. It was the little things that I found the hardest. I was used to coming out of the dressing room and finding both of my parents waiting for me. We’d talk about the game and I’d relive every moment, listening to my dad’s advice and my mom’s encouragement mix together. Now, as part of my postgame routine, I would go over and talk to my mom on one side of the rink, and then go over to talk with my dad on the other. It felt like I was walking from one world to another.

  There were some rough patches, to be sure, but my parents were both dedicated to making sure my sisters and I had everything we needed. After a while it almost seemed like my parents were jointly raising Carlin, Avery, and me; they were just living in different houses. When it came down to it, my family was healthy and we were all a part of each other’s lives—we had all of the important things in life. We settled into our new normal, and I went back to worrying about not much beyond playing hockey and having fun. Outside the change in our family, I was lucky in that I didn’t really have a care in the world.

  But all of that was about to change not long after my twelfth birthday.

  2 NEVER PANIC

  In November 2006, I got sick with a fever. I remember vividly just how terrible I felt, because I didn’t usually get sick, and when I did, I could kick it pretty quickly. But this felt different. My parents had split a few months earlier, and although I’d kept my emotions in check, I felt worn down.

  My mom was concerned, so she took me to our family doctor. Dr. Strachan had been my doctor for years, and he was also a long-time minor hockey coach in Mississauga—he had photos all over his wall of kids he’d coached. Dr. Strachan gave me a full checkup, and he even had some blood work done to be extra safe. When my blood tests came back, they hadn’t detected anything serious, so we figured I had a nasty virus of some sort. I needed to rest and take care of myself. So my usual life of school and hockey continued, although I still definitely wasn’t myself.

  Of course, none of that stopped me from playing hockey. No matter how crappy I felt, I refused to miss my activities, which probably didn’t make for a speedy recovery. I didn’t care how bad I felt, though—I told myself I had to fight through it. I was playing for the AAA Toronto Marlboros, and I didn’t want to fall behind.

  “Max, are you sure you want to go to practice tonight?” my mom would ask.

  “Of course! I’m totally fine,” I would reply, even though I felt like garbage.

  By the following spring, though, I had lost some weight, and my mom noticed I was a little paler than normal. My parents worried I might be wearing myself out, but I was so active that neither issue seemed alarming. And it wasn’t impacting my play—I was having a great season.

  At the end of the season, I was invited to take part in a hockey camp hosted by the HoneyBaked Hockey Club, an AAA hockey team in the Detroit area. The coach’s name was Mike Hamilton, and he ran an incredibly competitive program. Each year, Mike organized an amazing three-day training camp, and he invited top players from across Canada and the United States to Detroit—some guys even flew in from California and Dallas. I got an invite, and so did Darnell Nurse and a few other guys I played with and against in the Toronto area at the time. The whole idea was that we would learn more about the game, push each other hard, and have some fun doing it. So, needless to say, there was no way I was missing that camp.

  Mike brought in specialized coaches to do training and drills, and they even brought an expert to talk to us about mental toughness. It was a big-time experience for a bunch of twelve-year-old kids. I loved it, and it felt first class, with the quality of talent on the ice and the quality of the coaching we were receiving.

  Mike and the coaches pushed us hard for three straight days. Each evening, as I piled my bag into the back of my mom’s car and headed back to our hotel, the only thing I had the energy to say as I slumped into the front seat was, “I’m so tired.” Neither my mom nor I thought too much about how tired I was—the coaches had us players going full-tilt the entire time we were there, so it was understandable that I’d be tired.

  When camp ended on the third day, my mom and I jumped into the car. We hit play on one of her favorite CDs—Shania Twain—and hit the road back to Toronto. As we drove down the highway, I felt my mouth getting drier and drier.

  “Mom, I’m so thirsty,” I said. “Can we stop?”

  My mom pulled over at a gas station and bought me a sports drink, and as soon as I cracked it open, I guzzled the whole thing down.

  We took off again, but as soon as we hit the highway, I had to pee so badly that I felt I was about to burst. I tried to hold it in, thinking it would pass, but it got worse and worse—every bump in the road was painf
ul.

  “Mom, I need to pee.”

  “Max, we just got on the road. Can’t you wait a bit?”

  “No, Mom.”

  We got off at the next exit, and I rushed to the closest bathroom. As I walked back to the car, I started to feel my mouth go dry again. My tongue was like a piece of wood in my mouth.

  “Mom, I’m thirsty again. Can I get another drink?”

  I drained my drink again the moment I opened it and hopped back in the car. That’s better, I thought, figuring I could catch a bit of sleep on the way back. But a few minutes later I was hit with the need to pee again.

  This went on the whole drive back to Toronto. One minute I felt as though I’d swallowed a desert, and the next I felt like I’d been holding my pee for hours. I felt guilty every time I asked my mom to pull over, but every time it felt like I was going to explode.

  It took us forever to get home, and by the time we got there, my mom figured something was up. She called my aunt Trish and told her all about what had happened. The first words out of Trish’s mouth were, “Oh, my God.”

  “What’s wrong?” my mom asked.

  “It could be nothing. But everything you’re saying are symptoms of type 1 diabetes. Max needs to see the doctor first thing tomorrow.”

  My mom didn’t want to alarm me, so after she spoke with Trish she sat me down and calmly explained that the next day we were going back to see Dr. Strachan.

  In Dr. Strachan’s office, we explained what had happened on the trip back from Detroit. Dr. Strachan listened patiently, then excused himself and came back with a testing kit.

  “Max, I’m just going to take a drop of your blood for a quick test, okay? Can I see your finger, please?” he said, holding up a small, rectangular tool with a screen on it.

  He made a small prick to the end of my finger, and I watched a drop of blood appear. There was a white strip inserted into the top of the device, and I watched as Dr. Strachan held it up to my finger and the strip sucked up the tiny droplet of blood. Dr. Strachan gave me some gauze to hold against my finger, and then he studied the device for a moment. It let out a beep, and then Dr. Strachan turned to me and my mom with a serious look on his face.