No Days Off

by Max Domi

  I had just finished my rookie season in the NHL, so I knew I would be playing behind a lot of veterans. But still, I was excited to represent Canada again. As I packed for the trip, walking through my usual checklist once again, I thought back to the tournament I’d played in Slovakia as a teenager. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to run to a local pharmacy and find exactly what I needed if something happened with my diabetes. I knew to think ahead, so I worked with the Hockey Canada staff to make sure we had every contingency planned for.

  I was thrilled to be playing for Team Canada again, but I had a different role than I was used to. Sam Reinhart and I were wearing the maple leaf together again, but we were the extra forwards on the team that year. Before our first game, our coach, Bill Peters, came up to Rhino and me.

  “You two know you’re the extra forwards,” he said. “How do you want to do it? Do you two want to rotate games? I feel bad about the whole situation.”

  Sam and I looked at each other. “Can we think about it?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Peters said.

  I told Sam that I didn’t mind being an extra forward, but I didn’t want to be a healthy scratch.

  “I get it—Corey Perry is playing ahead of me,” I said. “I don’t mind getting very little ice time.”

  “Me neither,” Sam said. “But I’d rather have a little than none at all.”

  “Agreed.”

  So we went back to Peters and said we were good with being extra forwards and that we both wanted to dress for the games, even if it meant sharing a role and only playing two or three shifts a game.

  It was the first time I had experienced being the extra guy on the bench, and it was a great learning experience. My attitude was that I should just focus on having fun and making sure I was ready whenever the coach tapped me on the shoulder.

  When I did get on the ice, I had to make it count. In one game, I had three golden opportunities and I didn’t shoot the puck. I was known as a pass-first player. In practice, I almost never shoot the puck. The boys would chirp me, “This kid won’t shoot the puck. You can’t score if you don’t shoot the puck, Domi.” Eventually, even Coach Bill Peters joined in on the fun. I’d laugh along with them—I didn’t mind, and I knew my role.

  In our game against Sweden, though, Sam and I found ourselves on a two-on-one. Rhino slid me a pass that I was able to bury for my one and only goal of the tournament.

  The boys on the bench were so excited when I scored. When I got back to the bench, one of them yelled at me, “About time you shot the puck, Domi!”

  We beat Finland in the finals to win the gold medal that year. As we were skating around the ice with the trophy, I noticed a guy with a hat on standing near the edge of the ice. I thought, That guy looks a lot like Vladimir Putin.

  “Hey, that’s Putin!” Brad Marchand yelled, at the same time that Brendan Gallagher said, “Check out Putin.”

  I turned to the two of them. “Let’s go say hi,” I said.

  “No way,” they said, shaking their heads.

  “Fine, I’m going to say hello.”

  I wheeled out of the pack of players, and sure enough, Marchand and Gallagher followed behind me. We each shook his hand, and Putin just stared at us and nodded slightly. Needless to say, it wasn’t quite as good a story among my friends and family—I think they preferred meeting Justin Bieber.

  I might not have had my first pick of a role on the team, but winning the whole thing made it all worth it. And one thing was for certain—after that tournament, I developed a whole new sense of respect for players who only get a few minutes of ice time every game. It’s a hard role to fill, but I saw that it was a more important one than I’d ever realized. The right guys there could be game-changers, the difference between a championship and an early exit.

  As a kid, I used to tease my dad because he was a fourth-line player. But you forget how hard it is for a hockey player to sit that long, his body getting cold, before he has to jump on the ice. And it isn’t just tough physically—it’s hard mentally, too. When you’re not on the ice very much, it’s tough to stay engaged in the game. Being able to make an impact every time you set foot on the ice, no matter what happens before or after—now, that’s a skill.

  As I flew back home after the tournament, it hit me just how far I had come in a short period of time. It was only a couple of years before that I had been throwing up on the ice in the middle of a shift because I didn’t have control of my diabetes. Now I was coming out of a year when I’d played eighty-one games in the NHL and been part of Team Canada at the World Hockey Championships, in Russia of all places, far away from my usual routine and the comforts of home.

  I was twenty-one years old, and I had a full year in the NHL under my belt. I had also been living with type 1 diabetes for almost a decade. Nine years earlier, I had asked Dr. Strachan if I could still play hockey if I had type 1 diabetes. Not only was I still playing hockey, I was playing in the NHL. I’d finally made it.

  9 ASK FOR HELP

  When you’re in the NHL, calling the summer the off-season is a bit misleading. There’s no such thing as an “off” season. Each game in the season had made me a better player—I was getting smarter on the ice, stronger on the puck, faster on my feet. The high that came with it being my first year in the NHL had worn off, and I began to see how much work was ahead of me in all facets of my life. That summer, I decided to hit the reset button when it came to managing my body.

  The first part of the summer of 2016 was all about rest and recovery as I addressed any injuries, imbalances, or weaknesses. Once I had those taken care of, it was time to get stronger and faster, so I put a plan in place with my trainer, Andy O’Brien, to get me ready for the upcoming season. Andy was one of the best in the business—he was the strength coach for the Pittsburgh Penguins, and he’d just helped the team win a Stanley Cup the year before. He also understood the impact my diabetes had on my body, so he would tailor the structure of my workouts accordingly. For Andy, it wasn’t about working hard as much as it was about working smart.

  I tried to bring that attitude to the rest of my conditioning that summer. One of the things I added to my workouts was Pilates. My trainer, Lisa, helped me work my body in ways I had never pushed it before. I was incredibly eager to know why I was doing each exercise and what the purpose of it was, so I was constantly pestering Lisa with questions.

  I carried the same curiosity over to my diabetes management.

  After I had met Charlie Kimball a few months prior, I took his suggestion seriously and reached out to Dr. Anne Peters, the Los Angeles–based diabetes specialist he recommended.

  “Charlie filled me in a bit on how you helped him to develop a strategy and an understanding of how to approach his diabetes as a professional athlete,” I said to Anne. “Can you help me come up with something similar for my hockey?”

  Anne laughed. “I can tell you, it won’t be similar,” she said. “But I can definitely help.”

  Anne explained to me how, even though Charlie and I were both professional athletes with type 1 diabetes, our challenges and needs were completely different—what worked for Charlie would never work for me.

  “We’ll come up with a plan that we know works for you,” she said.

  After talking with Anne, I knew she was a perfect fit for me. She was committed to helping me get back on track when it came to managing my diabetes.

  * * *

  When my second season with the Coyotes started, I felt more confident than ever. I was strong, healthy, and ready to put my new skills to use. We started off on the right foot, winning our first game in overtime. But we lost our second game. And the one after that. And then the one following that. We were having trouble getting our season on track.

  Worse, I felt like I wasn’t doing my share. I wasn’t able to score or set up plays. I started thinking about what I was doing on the ice rather than just doing it. Every game that went by without improvement had me more and more panicked
. I was supposed to be calm, cool, and confident that I could make a play in any situation. But I was turning over the puck, bobbling passes, or just chipping the puck down the ice. I was beginning to lose every bit of confidence I had so carefully built.

  Instead of taking responsibility for my play, though, I looked for easy ways out. I tried to change everything at once—I changed the curve of my stick, I bought a new house, and I started soliciting from anyone and everyone. And when that didn’t work, I blamed the tools I was using or the advice I was getting. Nothing seemed to fix the problem, and it was driving me up the wall. No matter how much I complained or pointed the finger elsewhere, I couldn’t bring myself to see that the real problem was in my head.

  “I don’t know what to do to fix this,” I said to my dad during one of our regular phone calls.

  “Keep working hard,” he said. “Be a good teammate, and you’ll get out of this funk, I promise you.”

  My family and teammates’ support gave me the most important thing I needed during that time: confidence. If you have confidence in the NHL, you can do absolutely anything that you want. More than that, if you have confidence in life, you can do anything that you want. But as soon as you question yourself and doubt creeps in, it’s over. Rebuilding confidence takes time, and it’s a difficult process. But a necessary one.

  So I took a step back and tried to slow things down. I focused on taking things day by day. When I wasn’t at the rink, I would go for hikes, relax in my backyard, and hang out with my teammate Jakob Chychrun, who was living with me at the time. I had volunteered to take in Jakob and help him work through the grind of being a rookie in the NHL. But when it came to making it through that period, Jakob helped me as much as I was able to help him.

  And on top of those helps, I had the number one best stress relief of all time: my service dog, Orion. Orion came into my life as a DAD, or a Diabetic Alert Dog.

  My mom was the first person who discovered that there are service dogs for people with diabetes. I was still a teenager at the time, and she was doing some research online on new information about diabetes when she called out, “Look, they have dogs for people with diabetes!”

  I looked over her shoulder at the website, and the moment I saw the photos of all the dogs, I knew I wanted one.

  “That would be amazing!” I said.

  “A service dog could be very helpful in managing your diabetes,” my mom said as she scrolled through the website. “Someday when you are living alone, the dog could help keep you safe.”

  The organization was called Canine Hope for Diabetics, and they were based in California. I read the stories about several people with type 1 diabetes and their service dogs. When a person with diabetes’ blood sugar level is out of normal range, their saliva gives off a different scent. These service dogs were trained to detect that scent from the saliva. If the dog smelled that the person’s blood sugar was off, they were trained to alert the person, who then knew to test their blood. Sometimes lows can happen quickly, or they happen while you’re sleeping, so having a trained service dog would be another helpful management tool.

  “How do you get one?” I asked as soon I’d finished reading the stories.

  “It’s a long application process,” my mom said, looking through the requirements.

  We immediately started putting together everything I’d need to apply. I had to provide detailed personal information, as well as write a series of essays just to even be considered for one of their dogs. The first essay I submitted was about why I felt I needed a service dog. The second one was about the relationship I would have with the dog—what was I expecting out of it and what could I provide for the dog. And in the third essay, I had to explain what I did for a living, how having a service dog would impact my life, and how I would take care of it.

  I wasn’t overly eager about writing essays—it felt like applying for a job—but I knew this was something special. I submitted the paperwork, but after some follow-up discussions with the organization, I found out that the trainer in California wasn’t able to accept my application. The trainer needed to be able to remain involved in the service dog’s training after placing them with a person, and Canada was just too far away for her to do that.

  * * *

  After I was drafted to Arizona, I figured it was time to revisit my application, since I was going to be so much closer to California. My mom reached out to Canine Hope for Diabetics again, and I was excited to hear that Crystal Keller, the founder of the organization, remembered my original application. My challenges of being an athlete living with type 1 diabetes, as well as my passion for dogs, had stuck with her. She was happy to hear I would be moving to Arizona in the future and she suggested that we fly to California to meet with her and her partner, Joanna, in person and discuss whether a DAD would be a good fit.

  I still can’t believe this happened, but when I met with Crystal and Joanna, my blood sugar levels went low. We were at a restaurant, and they had brought two dogs with them—one was in training, and the other belonged to Joanna, who also had diabetes. After we ordered our food, we were in that awkward stage where you are waiting for your meal to arrive and you’re just trying to make small talk.

  As we chatted, the dogs were lying quietly under the table, as they’d been commanded. I was confused, then, when Joanna’s dog got up and put her head on my lap. I didn’t know what to do, so I looked at Joanna.

  “Is it normal for the dog to be putting her head on me like this?” I asked.

  “She’s acting strangely—something must be up. Maybe I’m low,” Joanna said. She tested her blood and frowned. “That’s weird, I’m totally fine.”

  Crystal and Joanna glanced at each other, and then Joanna asked, “Have you tested your blood lately, Max?”

  “Not in a few hours,” I said. I pulled out my glucose meter and pricked my finger. “Wow, this is crazy. I’m low.”

  We all stared at the dog, who was just looking up at me with her deep brown eyes. I knew right then and there that a DAD was going to be an amazing help.

  There was still a long process ahead, though. The training period for a service dog was over two years, and it wasn’t until January of my last year in London that I received the news from Crystal that I’d been waiting so long to hear.

  “Max, I have the right dog for you, and he will be perfect for your lifestyle,” she said. “His name is Orion, and I would like to bring him to meet you in London.”

  I was beyond excited, but I warned Crystal, “You’re coming from California. It’s freezing here, and we have tons of snow. Will he be okay?”

  “He should be fine,” Crystal said. “What’s more important is how the two of you get along.”

  The organization took great care in making sure the dog and person were the right match for one another. So I understood why it was so important that Crystal come to visit with Orion so we could meet. Orion was almost two, and he had completed all of his public access training and scent work. Now I just hoped that we’d have the right personality fit.

  Luckily, I had nothing to worry about. I fell in love with Orion instantly! We did some basic training that weekend, which flew by. It was hard saying goodbye to him a few days later, knowing that it would still be another six months before he was mine. I was already looking forward to the additional training we’d be doing that summer in California, after which I’d finally be able to take Orion home.

  Once Orion and I were reunited and he started living with me permanently, I quickly learned that he was so much more than just a DAD. In public, Orion is a much different dog than he is at home. When we’re in public, Orion is all business—he’s entirely focused on the task at hand. As a service dog, he has to wear a vest, which allows him to go with me anywhere. When he’s at home, Orion doesn’t wear a vest, but he’s still working. That being said, if the time is right and I give him the green light to play, he’s the same as any other dog.

  It was that second role that made Orion s
o important to me during my early struggles that season. Although Orion was vital to me as a help for my diabetes, that season he was just as valuable to me as an emotional support.

  Everyone says that a dog is man’s best friend, but you don’t realize how true that is until you have one. I would have loved to have had Orion with me all the time, but having to pack for and take care of a dog while we were on the road just wasn’t possible—it wouldn’t have been easy for either one of us. Luckily, I had great support. My family helped out, and I had a special dog-sitter named Tiffany, whom I relied on. And a few times during the season, when I was heading out on a ten-day road trip, Crystal would fly or drive to Arizona to pick up Orion and take him back to California, where he’d brush up on his training. Having a service dog was an incredible privilege, and it came with a huge responsibility, so I was very grateful for the support everyone provided.

  I always looked forward to coming home after a road trip so that I could see Orion again. He was my family—the moment I saw him, he’d take my mind off of the frustrations of a rough game or a long trip. I often talked about it with other guys on the team who owned dogs. They all said the same thing: No matter what’s going on or how pissed off you are, your dog always looks at you the same way.

  I needed that support, because the season didn’t get any easier. In December 2016, we were playing the Calgary Flames. With just a few seconds left in the second period and the game tied, Garnet Hathaway of the Flames and I got into a fight. Hathaway is a tough guy, and we were both just throwing as many punches as we could as hard as we could. When the dust settled, I came away with a cut above my eye and a broken thumb.

  It was my first major injury. I needed surgery to repair the damage, which meant three months off the ice—I wouldn’t get back until February 2017. I was so angry with myself. There was no way I could help my team when I was injured.