No Days Off

by Max Domi

  After the medals were handed out, they announced the tournament awards, and I was shocked to hear my name called as the tournament’s top forward. As I skated out to accept the award, I heard a rumbling around me. “Domi, Domi, Domi,” the crowd chanted. I felt a shiver roll down my spine. My dad used to joke that nothing compares to hearing your name chanted at the ACC. He was right!

  I was on such a high when I got to the dressing room. We all were. We had a quick celebration, just the players, coaches, and staff, and then we had to go out and do media. I was talking with reporters, ushers, fans, and staff, and I got totally caught up in the conversations. Eventually, I realized I had half of my gear still on, so I headed back to the change room, where I discovered most of the guys had already gone upstairs to celebrate with their families and friends.

  “Oh, no, I forgot to ask everyone for their sticks!” I said. I was a big fan of collecting the sticks of guys that I played with. I took off my skates and ran upstairs, where I went around the room, half of my gear still on, asking guys to sign their stick for me.

  “What are you doing?” Rhino asked. “Go shower and get dressed!”

  I finally got all my sticks and then quickly showered and changed. My whole family was waiting for me upstairs. My parents, my sisters, and my aunt and uncle all gathered me into a huge hug the moment they saw me—I was moved at just how excited they were.

  It wasn’t a crazy party afterward, which gave me a chance to sit back and let it all sink in. My phone was constantly buzzing with messages of congratulations. One of them stood out to me—it was from Mats Sundin.

  Congrats Maxie

  Happy for you, well deserved, enjoy it.

  Mats

  The moment I saw that text, I became a seven-year-old kid again. It meant the world to me.

  Of course, my diabetes didn’t care that it was the greatest night of my life, and I had to take a break from the party a couple of times to check my blood sugar. My attention to my diabetes throughout the tournament had paid off, and that discipline couldn’t suddenly end when it was time to celebrate.

  A few months later, the team got back together at a ceremony to receive our World Juniors rings. It was a great day—it was mixed in with a celebration for the Men’s World Championship, which Canada had also won that year—and we were having a blast catching up. The problem was I was laughing and having so much fun with the boys that I wasn’t paying attention to my diabetes. We went out that night after the ring ceremony, and right when I was in the middle of celebrating and having fun, my blood sugar dropped and I went low. It ended up being a rough night. It wasn’t a fun experience for me, and the next morning I was in bad shape, but thankfully I had people around me to help me out. I was lucky.

  As a person with type 1 diabetes, if I was going to drink alcohol, I had to be smart about it. That night was a reminder that even in the most celebratory moments I could never let things get out of hand, that my health came first and I had to respect my limits. If I wanted the privileges of being an adult, then I had to act like one.

  * * *

  When I got back to the Knights after the World Juniors, I had a new perspective. I was twenty years old, and some of my teammates were only sixteen. I realized that guys like Colin Martin had been right—your time in junior goes by so fast.

  We were a young team but a good one, and we were making a push as we got ready for the playoffs. I often thought back to what Dave Tippett told me before I was sent down that season—“Become a leader.” As the captain of the team, I saw it as my responsibility to help as many young players as possible.

  There’s always a need to earn your stripes, but hockey is a team sport, and every person on that team matters. We needed everyone if we were going to be successful. So, in my final year in London, I made sure not to treat anyone differently just because it was his first year in the league. I tried to listen to each of the younger players and show him that I cared and genuinely wanted to know how he felt about certain situations. Everyone had a role.

  To help bring the team together as we entered the playoffs, Matt Rupert, a couple of other guys, and I decided to pick a haircut that the whole team would get together. We decided to get Mohawk hairdos inspired by Chuck Liddell, the UFC fighter. We thought it would be hilarious, but I ended up looking like a criminal. Still, when twenty-three of us walked into an arena, all with the same crazy Mohawk, it sent a message: we were in this together.

  I found I enjoyed that last period in London so much more because of all the challenges I had embraced. Although we didn’t go far in the playoffs that year—we lost to Erie in the second round—I had the best season of my OHL career. It wasn’t about points, though. At the end of the season, I was honored with the Mickey Renaud Trophy, given to a team captain who best exemplifies passion and leadership. Of course, everyone wants to score goals and win championships and all that. But when you get rewarded for something that speaks to who you are, not just what you can do, that’s just as good. Especially when it represents someone like Mickey.

  Mickey had been the captain of the Windsor Spitfires, but he’d died in 2008 from a heart condition. When I received the trophy, I got to meet Mickey’s parents. It was a touching moment, and it hit home for me—here was a family whose son had wanted to do nothing but play hockey. Mickey had dedicated his life to hockey and to helping those around him, and I saw that I had a chance to do the same.

  It capped off what had been an amazing year. The gold medal at the World Juniors had given me a taste of some of the biggest honors you could win on the ice. And at the end of the OHL season, I was starting to see what sort of leader I wanted to be. I felt lucky to have been a part of those special events. But even with how far I’d come, there was still much more to go. I still hadn’t realized my dream of making the NHL. I’d been given all of the tools and experience I could ask for. Now it was time to put them to work.

  8 PREPARATION IS A SECRET WEAPON

  By September 2015, I was ready for anything. I flew down to Arizona for my third training camp with the Coyotes, and this time things were different. The only realistic options for me were playing in the NHL or with the Coyotes’ minor league affiliate in the AHL. Technically, I could have been sent back to the OHL for an overage year, but the likelihood of that happening was small. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t end up playing in the AHL. I was going to make sure I was in the NHL to stay.

  The moment I stepped on the ice for our first skate, I felt different. I never let my focus waver for a single second of any practice. There was no drill, no shift, and no scrimmage off. By then I knew that I was being evaluated every moment, on and off the ice, and I was going to make sure that the coaches saw the best of me. When you’re under the microscope, you can’t afford any slipups.

  I found it inspiring that the hardest-working guys in camp were the ones who were already guaranteed a spot on the team. I tried to model my behavior after those veterans, people like Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Shane Doan—they showed me that it would take commitment not just to make it to the NHL, but to stay there.

  In the NHL, it’s not just the forty-five-minute practice or sixty-minute game that matters. It is all about what you do twenty-four hours prior to that game or twenty-four hours after; your preparation beforehand and your recovery process afterward. And the timing becomes that much more important when you throw type 1 diabetes into the mix.

  The older guys would often tell me, “You’re going to have a blast, but it is not like junior.” It reminded me of Colin Martin telling me that junior would go by fast. I wondered how this would be different.

  In a lot of ways, I was still in junior hockey mode. In junior, after practice, if the team hung out, it was typically the whole team that hung out. We would all go out and see a movie, eat sushi—whatever we did, we all did it together. Most guys in junior are in their late teens, so other than the fact that some of the younger players have school, we didn’t have many distractions other than ho
ckey or each other.

  I quickly saw that it wasn’t that way in the NHL. Sure, the rookies or younger players on the team would hang out together. But the majority of the guys had a wife and kids at home, so after they were done at the rink, they’d go home to be with their family. Hockey was their job, and they treated it seriously. It was a totally different environment.

  My house turned into a hangout spot for a lot of the younger players. They’d come over to have food or just to chill after practice. I loved it—it gave us a chance to get to know each other, and it helped me with the transition out of junior.

  Of course, at some point I had to have my welcome-to-the-NHL wake-up moment. Every player does, no matter how good they are.

  Mine came during a preseason game against the L.A. Kings. I lost Drew Doughty in our defensive zone and he wheeled behind me, dished a perfect backhand pass to his teammate, and the Kings scored an easy goal. It was clearly my fault, and my first thought was, Shit, so that’s what it feels like to get burned in the NHL.

  I wanted to get my revenge, but we wouldn’t be playing the Kings until a few weeks later, when we’d face them for our first regular season game. But I didn’t know if I’d still be with the team at that point. I didn’t want my reputation to be one of defensive lapses, so I dialed up my intensity the next few games.

  After our last preseason game, the coaching staff made their final cuts. When I discovered the announcements had gone out and that I hadn’t been sent home, it took a minute for my brain to process what that meant: I was going to be on the opening night roster.

  I immediately called my mom and dad.

  “Guys, I made it!” I said. “I’m going to be on the opening night roster.”

  “That’s amazing!” my mom said. “Congratulations! I’m so happy for you.”

  “Now the real work starts,” my dad said. I could tell my dad was happy for me, too, but I wasn’t surprised that he was already focused on the game ahead against a roster full of Stanley Cup champions.

  My whole family flew down to the game in L.A. My mom, my dad, my sisters, my cousin Jeff, my uncle Dash, and a couple of my closest buddies, Robert Adamo and Angelo Nitsopoulos, whom I’d known since I was a kid, were all at the Staples Center in Los Angeles that night when I made my official NHL debut.

  Before the game started, I was caught up in a flurry of nerves and excitement. I was about to play in my first NHL game, something I had dreamed of my entire life. I tried to stay calm. I wanted to be ready in every way, not the least of which included my blood sugar levels.

  When the puck dropped, I tried to settle into a rhythm and keep my head clear—I didn’t want to make another mistake like the one I made in the preseason against Doughty. A few minutes into the second period, I had jumped over the boards and taken a couple of hard strides into L.A.’s zone when the puck got knocked loose and ended up on my stick. The rest of the play was pure instinct. I took two quick steps toward the center of the ice and unleashed a wrist shot that beat Jonathan Quick top corner for my first NHL goal. I saw the puck drop behind Quick and I threw both of my hands up in the air. I didn’t know what to do with myself. The first person I saw was Antoine Vermette, so I just jumped into his arms as the rest of our line swarmed us.

  “Easy game, eh, bud?” Steve Downie said jokingly as we got back to the bench. Truth be told, I was barely processing what was happening to me. The whole thing had happened so fast, it was a blur. Still, it was a dream come true. The guys on the bench were genuinely fired up for me—you only score your first NHL goal once. Even better, we won the game 4–1 to start the season on a high note.

  A few weeks later was an even bigger night for me and my family. It was October 26, 2015, and it was my first game at the Air Canada Centre as an NHL player. I wanted to beat the Leafs so badly. I felt like I had a rivalry with the team because of my dad’s history with them.

  Given that, it felt like an odd sort of homecoming. I told myself all day not to get too caught up in the past and to treat the game like any other, because despite the hype it was just another game we had to win.

  With the way my nerves were flying up and down that day, I ended up testing my blood a few extra times to make sure my levels were good. When I tested my blood just before the game, I was around a 3, which was low for me. Despite all of my efforts to stay on top of my diabetes, my emotions that day had still caused my blood sugar level to drop. Just like every other day, I had to confront my diabetes before I could succeed on the ice.

  I drank some juice to bring my blood sugar up, and a few minutes later I was ready to go. Now it was up to me to just go out and play the game in the building that had been my second home for years.

  At the start of the game, our goalie Mike Smith got me good.

  “Max, you go out there first,” he said.

  “Thanks, Smitty,” I said. I should have seen what was about to happen—it was a classic hockey joke to make the rookie on the team skate a lap by himself when he first played in his hometown. But I was so excited—this felt like my first NHL game all over again—that I didn’t clue in.

  I headed down the hallway, proud and happy, and I leapt onto the ice and started flying. As I came around the net, though, I realized I was alone on the ice. The rest of the guys were laughing like crazy in the hallway as I skated around by myself. I must have had a good eight laps before the rest of the team joined me, and I was so embarrassed that I don’t think I once hit the net with a shot the entire time. But when I got back into the dressing room, I collected myself, and by the time I went out for the anthems, I was locked in again.

  Throughout the next sixty minutes, I could have sworn I was having flashbacks to all the games I had watched from the stands while my dad was playing for the Leafs. In fact, the whole game was a giant flashback. At one point I glanced up at the video scoreboard that hangs above center ice at the ACC. If you look up there, you will see a big maple leaf under the screen. When my dad brought me to the ACC as a kid, I would often go out on the ice by myself with a bucket of pucks right before the morning skate. I’d dump the pucks on the fresh ice and look at the empty seats around me, thinking, One day, I’m going to play here and all of these seats will be full. Being back in the exact same place, looking up at the same maple leaf, it felt surreal that day had finally come.

  Not long into the first period, we went on the power play. I lined up along the boards in the Leafs’ end next to Morgan Reilly, whom I’d played with at a summer World Junior camp a few years prior.

  “What’s up, bud?” he said as we waited for the puck to drop. “Slow down.”

  I laughed—I heard it a lot in the NHL, guys telling me to slow down as a joke.

  “Good to see you, too, man,” I said.

  After the draw, the puck was knocked toward us along the half wall. I beat Reilly to the puck and dropped it back to the point. We set up our umbrella and started to move the puck around. Michael Stone fed the puck back to me. I took a few steps toward the net with the puck rolling on my stick and then, just as I reached the face-off dot, I fired it at the net as hard as I could. I didn’t have time to aim, but the puck flew to the opposite top corner to give us a 1–0 lead.

  I was so fired up, to score a goal at the same rink my dad had called home for all those years. I couldn’t see my family up in their box that night, but I was happy to imagine them cheering and high-fiving. I knew they were as excited as I was.

  * * *

  Early in my rookie season, the older players noticed that everyone else on the team would already be dressed and ready to go by the time I got to the room to put my gear on. I was the same as my dad—I didn’t want to be sitting around with my thoughts before the game. That would only make me nervous, which could throw off my blood sugar. Any extra time I had at the rink before the game I spent managing my diabetes, so putting on my equipment was the easy part of getting ready.

  It all comes down to preparation. When I first get to the rink, I set up my equipment the
exact same way. When it’s time to hit the ice, I start by throwing on my long johns and grab a T-shirt. My pants are in front of me, shin pads and socks on one side and my jock on the other. I put new laces in my skates every game, and I tie my skates tight—I loosen them enough to slide them on and then only have to tighten up the top three eyelets to be ready.

  From start to finish it takes four and a half minutes, and then I’m grabbing my stick by the dressing room door and walking out to the ice with my teammates.

  I break down every NHL game into parts. I treat every period like it’s a mini-game. And within that period, there’s a TV time-out every five minutes, so I divide the period into quarters. Each break gives me an opportunity to check in with myself, see how my blood sugar level feels, and make any adjustments needed to perform in the next part of the game.

  Between periods is also all about routine. I take the top half of my gear off and walk back to the players’ lounge so that I can test my blood, give myself some insulin, or have a little snack to adjust my levels. It’s not that I’m embarrassed to test my blood in front of my teammates, but I like to ensure that it’s not a distraction to anyone else. When I’m done, I take a few deep breaths, and as I walk back to the dressing room, I check in with the guys in the lounge who aren’t playing that night.

  Once I walk out of that room and shut the door, though, the switch goes back on and I am back to game mode, taping my stick and waiting for the coaches to come in for a quick meeting. When the coaches are done talking, I put on the rest of my equipment, wet my face and hair, and then I’m ready to get back to the game.

  The training staff is invaluable, too—they mean everything to me. When I first started in the league, I thought I was high-maintenance because so many people were involved in making sure I was healthy and ready to go. But I quickly discovered that everyone was genuinely eager to help, which I was incredibly grateful for. If it meant helping the team win, everyone was on board. Making sure we’re stocked with everything we need to treat a low and any supplies I might need, they go to incredible lengths to make sure that any potential distractions are out of the way, allowing me to focus on playing the best I can.