No Days Off

by Max Domi

  A lot of those fun moments were with Jared Knight at my side. Jared was like an older brother to me, and I followed him around everywhere. When he and I hung out, though, we didn’t exactly make the brightest decisions. A lot of times, we were straight-up out to lunch.

  One day we decided to try dying our facial hair. The only problem was that neither of us had much facial hair to begin with. I had a bit of peach fuzz, and Jared didn’t have much more, but we spread the jet black dye across our faces, trying to color whatever hair I had. I started from my ears, went down my neck, and up to my cheekbones—it looked like I had a thick black beard of ink. Jared only put a little bit around his face, but he still looked like he had a black goatee.

  We went downstairs to show Gail and Scott. They both looked at us like we were from another planet

  “I want it to be darker,” I said.

  “Be careful with that stuff,” Gail said.

  Jared and I went back upstairs. After a few minutes, he turned to me and asked, “Do you feel it burning?”

  “I thought it was just me!” I said.

  “My face is on fire,” he said.

  “Let’s see who can keep it on longer,” I suggested.

  Jared didn’t last long. “I can’t take this anymore,” he said.

  We both started to rinse the ink off . When I looked up from the sink to dry my face, I was horrified to realize that my face was still black. I tried not to panic, but then Jared picked up the box.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “We were only supposed to keep it on for five minutes. I don’t know how you’re going to go to school looking like that.”

  Jared and I went running back downstairs.

  “We need some help,” I said.

  “Gail, what are we going to do?” Jared asked.

  “Come here,” she said. She mixed together some dish soap and rubbing alcohol with water, and she started scrubbing my face with a brush. She kept trying to wash off the ink, but even with her help, the dye just wouldn’t come out. The three of us were laughing hysterically as she kept washing and scrubbing.

  The next day, I went to school and my face was so raw, it was beet red. I must have walked around for another three days with some bits of dye still stuck in my skin.

  You’d think I would learn from that, but there were countless incidents like that where Jared and I weren’t the brightest duo. That being said, Gail and Scott were always there to make sure we didn’t fall too far out of line.

  * * *

  School might not have kept me all that captivated, but playing hockey was something totally different. The second I pulled on a Knights jersey, I felt like I was home.

  I will never forget my first time walking into the arena in London. The moment I entered through the doors, one of the older guys on the team, Colin Martin, called me over.

  “Welcome to the Knights, Max,” he said. I just smiled as I shook his hand—I was excited that he even knew my name!

  Colin started showing me around the rink and dressing room and where everything was. It was all a blur—I couldn’t believe I was really there. At one point, Colin caught me looking up at the banners in the rafters with a goofy grin on my face. He stopped, looked at me, and said, “It goes by fast, kid.”

  I heard the same thing from four or five other older players that same day. I tried to listen to what they were saying, but it was hard. I’d just arrived—I had tons of time, right? Plus, there was a lot to learn about my new team, and that was just on the ice. Off of it, I was struggling to get my health in order.

  Being a sixteen-year-old kid with diabetes in the OHL wasn’t easy, but being a celiac wasn’t a walk in the park, either. My rookie year with the Knights was probably my most frustrating time as someone with celiac disease.

  Like any teenager, I was constantly forgetting things when I packed for a road trip. Of course, I would always remember my iPad and headphones. But the important things—a snack for the bus ride or juice boxes—seemed to slip through the cracks more often than not. It wasn’t a big deal when we were playing a team nearby, but some teams were hours away. When you are playing junior hockey, you can spend a lot of time on a bus.

  Each trip, we would inevitably stop at a Tim Hortons, which was fine for my teammates. They could just run in and grab a sandwich or whatever snack they wanted. But for a long time, all I could order from Tim’s was hot chocolate. I got really excited when they started offering strawberry-banana smoothies. Before that, though, if I forgot my gluten-free snacks, I would just be left sitting on the bus, sour and hungry.

  Every time it happened, I would be so mad at myself for forgetting and putting myself in that situation. I would swear that I’d be better the next trip. But I kept doing it! I blamed my personality—I was so in the moment that if I was talking to someone, I would completely forget whatever I was supposed to be doing.

  It took until the halfway point of that first season with the Knights for me to finally realize that I needed to take my nutrition more seriously and pack some food. Making sure I had something to eat on the bus had to take priority over hanging out at home an extra ten minutes or talking to the guys in the dressing room. I had to be more disciplined to leave that conversation and go get some food that I knew was safe to eat on the trip.

  The list of foods that were safe for me wasn’t long. Sometimes my billet mom Gail would make me chicken and rice. I would bring that, or a Tupperware container with gluten-free pasta in a red sauce. I was happiest when we pulled into one of those big ONroute highway stops because they had a bunch of good options—yogurt and nuts—that I could eat. Whenever we stopped at the ONroutes, I was the guy coming back to the team bus with $40 worth of healthy snacks. My teammates would all be holding bagels and staring at me with looks that said, What the hell are you doing?

  In London, there was a big market—called Covent Garden Market—right across from the arena. I discovered this one restaurant in the Market that served chicken souvlaki with rice, Greek salad, and a little tzatziki. It was gluten-free, and I got it almost every single day I was in London. There was also a salad bar that I went to when I needed to change things up.

  I was a big believer in routine. Once I found something that worked, I kept eating it. I knew where to go and what was safe. With both my diabetes and my celiac, if I didn’t prepare for what was ahead of me or if I let my guard down, I’d be playing catch-up all day long. I knew the pattern—one screwup leads to another, and just like that, you’re behind the eight ball, chasing your blood sugar. That was never a good place to be for any person with diabetes, let alone a semi-professional athlete.

  If you are not calm, collected, and understanding your physical situation, you can run into trouble. You can’t just go with the flow. I hated that—I always wanted to be the guy who could just roll with things. Finding a way to balance what my mind wanted and what my body needed took some practice.

  One thing I found helped was music. Hockey was always number one in my life, but music was never far behind. It was my escape—the right song could take me to a good moment down memory lane in just a few bars. My music selection was inspired by the people around me, so my song choices were never consistent. I might have a whole bunch of Top 40 hits, followed by EDM, followed by hip-hop, followed by classic rock, followed by country. One of the hardest jobs on a hockey team that no one tells you about is being the team DJ, which I was. I took pride in catering to all of my teammates’ needs when it came to music.

  One of our rookie duties was bringing movies for bus trips. Usually, we’d stick to new releases, but you could never go wrong with one of the classics. I would howl along with the other guys when they put on Caddyshack or Happy Gilmore. The time I spent on those bus trips with my teammates were some of my most treasured moments from my junior career.

  I loved being on the road. It was rare for us to stay overnight in a hotel. But whenever we did during my rookie year, my roommate was Bo Horvat. Bo and I had been friends ever since we played ag
ainst each other as kids. We’d had a rivalry on the ice, but it had been a respectful one, and we’d gotten along well when we talked after the games. Bo was the perfect roommate. He was like Jonathan Toews—he was Mr. Serious, always humble and hardworking. He’d had the same haircut since he was nine years old. He was incredibly responsible, too, which was probably why Bo was the one the coaches asked to partner up with me and make sure I was taking care of my diabetes on the road.

  Every night before we went to sleep, Bo would look at me and ask, “Are you all good?”

  “Yes,” I’d say.

  “All right, good night, buddy,” he’d say, before rolling over and turning the lights out.

  There’s no self-help book about how to deal with diabetes, so I was glad to have such a close friend watching my back. There was so much to learn and experience that first year with the Knights, and I didn’t have a playbook for how to handle every situation. Sometimes the only things I could do were listen to the voice inside my head and trust the guys on either side of me.

  Early into the season with the London Knights, the older players held a rookie initiation. It wasn’t that bad and there was nothing offside—they don’t haze rookies like the old days anymore, thank goodness. It was basically just a party to welcome the new players to the team. That isn’t to say I didn’t have some anxiety about that night.

  I was so nervous about our rookie party because I was going into a foreign situation with alcohol involved, and I wasn’t totally sure of how the alcohol would affect my blood sugar levels. That was what gave me anxiety about the night. I wanted to have fun with my teammates and bond with them, and I wanted to enjoy the experience. But my parents had always told me that with my disease, I had to be extra careful if I was going to drink. They didn’t approve of me drinking, but they wanted me to be prepared if I ever found myself in that situation.

  I was also nervous because I didn’t want the boys to be mad at me if I wasn’t participating. It turned out I had nothing to fear. Jared Knight was one of our best players—he’d already been drafted into the NHL—and he’d earned a lot of respect among the team. Early into the night, he’d looked at me and said, “You don’t have to do anything. If anyone asks you to do something you don’t want to, just stick by my side.” He filled in our captain at the time, Jarred Tinordi, and a couple of other teammates, Scott Harrington and Michael Houser, and they all agreed to keep an eye out for me.

  I made it through the night without any problems, and later Jared ended up being the one who showed me how to have a couple of drinks now and then, but just be smart about it.

  That kind of support from my teammates meant the world to me. Scott Harrington was two years older than me, and he and I ended up spending a lot of hours together driving to practices and games during my time with the Knights. Scott, or “Harry,” as he was known, was an assistant captain by the time I joined the Knights, and he did a good job of showing me the ropes. I couldn’t believe how welcoming and considerate all of the guys were at every step. I was thankful for it, as it made my rookie year even smoother than I had expected.

  What I didn’t find out until well after the rookie party was that, before the season had started, my dad had also pulled Jared and some of the older guys aside. He’d told them to watch out for me and make sure I was taking care of my diabetes.

  When one of the older guys let that slip, I saw red. I called my dad right away.

  “You shouldn’t have got involved,” I yelled into the phone.

  “Your mom and I are just watching out for you. We don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

  “I can handle myself,” I shouted as I hung up.

  Even to this day, if my dad knows I’m heading somewhere for the first time, he’ll try to call ahead or send word so that whoever I’m meeting knows about my diabetes.

  When I eventually cooled down, I was able to see that my dad was just doing what any parent would. My parents had taught me how to be more mature than most kids my age. But that didn’t change the fact that I was still their kid. I was trying to carve out my own space as an adult, but I knew they’d never stop looking out for me.

  The closer we got to the playoffs in my first year, the more thankful I was for the support of my family and teammates. My first year of playing junior hockey had felt like the longest season ever. I had never played that much hockey before. Every day was fun, and we were playing in front of nine thousand fans at every home game. The whole season was a blur, and although those words from the seniors—“It goes by fast”—sometimes echoed in my head, the season felt like it was never going to end.

  Once the playoffs started, we were all laser-focused on every single game. The older guys in the dressing room set the tone. Bo Horvat and I sat on either side of Austin Watson. It was an unusual setup—typically, the older, more experienced guys sit together on an island in the middle of the room, and the farther away you are from them, the less experienced you are. But when Austin showed up halfway through the season after a trade, he picked the stall between Bo and me, two of the youngest guys on the team.

  My first impression of the older veterans was that they didn’t mess around; hockey wasn’t just a game to them. I took note. I was still making small mistakes, on and off the ice. But seeing the way those guys carried themselves and prepared, I was starting to realize just what it meant to be a pro.

  For the first couple of rounds in the playoffs, we were pounding the opposing teams. We swept two of our three series—it seemed like nobody could stop us. We rolled through the competition and into the finals, where we beat the Niagara IceDogs to win the 2012 OHL Championship.

  The victory was amazing, but we had our sights on a bigger goal: the Memorial Cup, given to the overall champion of the Canadian Hockey League. The champions of each of the three junior leagues—the Ontario Hockey League, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, and the Western Hockey League—and a host team all face off for the chance to be called the best junior team in the country.

  At this point, the season was wearing me down. My diabetes made every day a struggle, but my focus on each game was so intense that I knew it would be fine.

  The Memorial Cup tournament started well. We won two of our three round robin games, so we went directly to the championship, where we faced the Shawinigan Cataractes. It was a close game as we battled back and forth. We took the lead in the first period, but Shawinigan tied it up in the second. Neither of us could pull ahead after that, so the game went to overtime. With only a couple of minutes left in the extra frame, Shawinigan managed to work the puck in front of our net, where they scored to win the tournament.

  We were devastated. In the dressing room after the game, I was shocked to see that guys were crying. To that point, I had viewed the older guys on the team as veterans who were so tough, it was almost like they were made of stone. I thought of our captain, Jarred Tinordi, as though he were a thirty-year-old man. To see those older players in tears after losing let me know just how much that game meant to all of us.

  As a team, it was tough to lose that way. That had been our chance to win it all, and now we would have to start all over again. Sitting there, my sweaty gear still stuck to my body, my mind flashed back to a road trip to Sudbury we’d taken in February. The weekend had been exhausting. It was a six-hour drive one way, and all weekend it had been absolutely freezing. My mind fixated on the memory of all of us sitting around tables in a fast-food restaurant, eating the same bad food, each wearing the same team tracksuit, trying to keep our spirits and energy up to power through and get home.

  I couldn’t get that image out of my head. All the sacrifice and dedication we’d shown that year, only to lose our final game in overtime. I was so drained that it was hard to imagine how we could do it all over again. But as I looked around the room and saw the guys I’d battled beside for months, I told myself, We’ll be back.

  * * *

  It helped that I didn’t have time to dwell on our loss. Ther
e was more hockey to come, even before the next season began. In August 2012, I took part in the Ivan Hlinka Tournament, an annual international hockey tournament featuring the best under-eighteen-year-old hockey players from the countries invited.

  The tournament took place just before I was supposed to arrive in London for my second training camp with the Knights. The timing didn’t worry me, but something else did—this would be the first time I traveled overseas since I’d been diagnosed with diabetes.

  The tournament was held in Břeclav, Czech Republic, and PieŜťany, Slovakia, that year. It was my first time playing for Team Canada, and when I was handed my jersey, I traced the maple leaf on the front in wonder. Team Ontario feels a long way away, I thought. I was both immensely proud and nervous at the same time. Proud, because the tournament was a sign that I was entering a professional atmosphere, and I wanted to represent our country well. Nervous, because I didn’t want my diabetes to stress anyone out or cause me to make mistakes.

  The team officials were clearly on edge, too. When I got to the hotel cafeteria for my first meal, a team trainer came running up to me.

  “Max, I’ve prepared a list of the foods that you shouldn’t eat here,” the trainer said.

  “Thanks,” I said with a smile. I’d already scouted ahead and knew exactly what was safe for me to eat, so I wasn’t concerned.

  “Just go grab a seat and I’ll bring your food to you.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said. I was mortified—no one else on the team was being served their food.

  “No, no, I insist.”

  I tried to argue, but it was no use, so I made my way over and sat down with the boys on the team. A few minutes later, the trainer dropped off a plate of food. On the edge of the plate was a name card with “Max” on it.