by Sean Avery
Detroit gives way to the countryside pretty quickly, and Bob’s house was a beautiful old redone farmhouse with a barn. He also had a guest house in which he’d built a studio, as well as multiple bedrooms and kitchens on the ground floor and in the basement. When we rolled into the driveway, I knew this was going to be a big one. Now, difficult though it may be for some readers to believe, in 2002 there is no Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, or iPhone. Despite these primitive conditions, word had ricocheted around Detroit that Rock was throwing a shake down and the place was crawling with strippers and singers and hippies and roadies and every hanger-on in between.
Rock’s party marked the first time I had seen cocaine and it was a few of the local dancers who were leading the revolution, so to speak. Even though I was at a party that America’s Badass was throwing, I was certainly a little bit shocked. And also curious. This was like a party you’d see in the movies, with couples drifting off into bedrooms, and more coke appearing. It was like the Mark Wahlberg movie Rock Star. Bobby ended up jamming and playing a few songs which Cheli jumped in to sing along with him. As I’ve mentioned, Cheli was an Olympic-class drinker, and so was Rock, and so were a lot of the Red Wings.
I couldn’t drink like these titans so by 3:30 A.M. I was in better shape than most of them, and that’s when I usually did my best work with whatever babe with whom I was planning my immediate future. Remember, I was twenty-two years old and single, and I was hanging with a bunch of legends. Plus I had solid credentials of my own—young and single. I was not going to dismiss such cosmic generosity, and enjoyed the bounty bestowed upon me.
Of course, bounty goes both ways and I soon got my chance to give back to the cosmos at one of the more beloved NHL traditions: the Rookies Dinner. It’s beloved only by those who are not NHL rookies, because they don’t have to pay for it. The Rookies Dinner is a chance for the team’s veterans to get blind drunk on the most extravagant food and wine known to mankind while the rookies pay the freight. And when you’re a rookie on the 2002 Red Wings, you’re buying dinner for a team of superstars with very expensive tastes. I didn’t really mind my NHL initiation, though, because, after all, it was an NHL initiation and not some hazing into a college fraternity.
My Rookies Dinner happened in Vancouver in November 2002, when I was technically no longer a rookie, but it would have been dickish to dwell on that, so I sucked it up. We all went to a restaurant called Gotham in the city’s funky Yaletown district and they gave us a room to ourselves downstairs. I can’t remember what I ate, but I do remember the bill: $22,000. By the time we’d finished, my teammates had bought everything in the restaurant including the fucking steak knives. And here’s the problem: we only had two rookies, me and Jason Williams.
And Jason Williams was my roommate—the roommate from hell.
When I entered the NHL, only guys who’d played 600 NHL games or logged ten years in the league could get their own room on the road. After the 2012 collective bargaining agreement, only kids on entry-level contracts got roommates, and the rest of the team could dance naked to MTV in the middle of the night in a five-star room of their own if they wanted. But back then, pretty much everyone was bunking up.
I had roommates on the road when I started out, and for a while they were a rotating cast, but then I got saddled with Jason. On the surface, we had a bit in common. We played against each other in junior in the Ontario Hockey League, me with Owen Sound and then Kingston, and him with the Peterborough Petes. He also signed with Detroit as a undrafted free agent, just like I did, which is unique. He was a highly skilled center with a huge shot, and at this point in my life, I can’t stand him.
I can honestly say that I would not have shed a tear if Jason Williams choked on a bone at the Rookies Dinner and we lost him. Yes, I know, that is a terrible thing to say, but I thought he was a kiss-ass one-dimensional automaton. Jason Williams was the type of guy playing on a team all by himself who rubbed pretty much everyone the wrong way, and I know something about that. “Williams is a weird dude” was something I heard many times that season, but on this night what I heard from him when the bill arrived was, “How much can you pay?”
I had an upper limit of $8,500 on my credit card, and it was already carrying some charges, and Williams was in the same deep hole, so between us the best we could do was put up $16,000. A difference of $6,000 between what you have and what they want is a little more than you can work off by hosing down plates in the kitchen.
But we got bailed out by one of the veterans, who quietly paid the difference. No one ever stepped up to claim it, but I’m almost positive it was Nick Lidström. The dinner was also notable for the fact that midway through it some beautiful Vancouver women showed up to join in the festivities. They had crossed paths with some of the guys, who’d been out sampling Vancouver’s waters in the afternoon, and showed up at the Rookies Dinner in time for the dessert course.
After dinner the guys wanted to have a nightcap, and there were two expeditions in search of two very different pleasures. A bunch of us went to a sports bar on Robson Street for a drink, while others went to a legendary Vancouver spot—a place that has swallowed hundreds of per diem envelopes over the years—called the Swedish Touch.
They don’t have any actual Swedes working at the Swedish Touch, which is on the fifth floor of a building on Hornby Street. It billed itself as a massage parlor, but its services are rumored to be more comprehensive.
Back in 2002 I was too young to even understand what this place really was, and besides, I had just maxed out my credit card. Plus, I preferred the excitement of going to a bar filled with people who’d be impressed to see the Detroit Red Wings roll in as opposed to a small private room with Ilsa. Some players preferred to have their hangovers massaged out with a trip to the Swedish Touch to standing in a crowded bar with all these adoring people—and working on a new hangover. Even so, at that point in my NHL career I wondered why they hadn’t wanted to come with us and get all that attention. To think that the guys had the balls to go there is mind-blowing, especially these days when even thinking about walking in would somehow result in a photo of your thought on Instagram or Twitter.
It was a great night, though, and the only NHL Rookies Dinner I ever had to pay for. As a measure of how good it was, we got shit-kicked the next night by the Vancouver Canucks 4–1.
• • •
I realized that my identity in the NHL was coming into focus when I heard that GM Kenny Holland had told one of the kids in the system, Nik Kronwall, to stay away from Sean Avery. Kronwall wanted to hang out with me, but the Red Wings didn’t want me to mentor anyone. I took it as a point of honor, as it meant there was only one me, and I couldn’t teach me to anyone.
Of course, it could have also meant not to get too close to me because I wasn’t going to be around for long. I played thirty-nine games for the Red Wings in my second season, but in March 2003, Darren McCarty came back from an injury and I got hit again by hockey math. I was sent down to Cincinnati because we had too many healthy bodies.
I was pissed off, because even though I’ve known since December that I’m an NHLer, I’m still the kid on a roster of stars. Hully said “See you in a few days” when I packed up my gear, and that made me feel better. I went back down and played my ass off. It was actually fun, because I got a lot more ice time, got on the power play, and was able to show off my NHL pedigree in the AHL, confident that I wouldn’t be down there for long.
And I wasn’t. After practice, Danton Cole, who is now the Cincinnati coach, calls me into his office and tells me something shocking: I’m not going back to Detroit. I’ve been traded. I had no idea—no one had told me I was on the trade block, no coach, not my agent, nobody. And even if you know it’s coming, “You’ve been traded” are scary words for any player at any level to hear, because it means your life can get much better—or much worse. And right now, I don’t want to leave Detroit, I want to get the he
ll back to Detroit. And yet . . .
I crave the chance to get a real shot with an up-and-coming team, but I hope to hell it’s not Carolina or Columbus, because I don’t really see my world expanding by playing in either town. But no, I hear three magic words as to where I’m going: Los Angeles Kings. And they’re sending Mathieu Schneider, one of the highest-scoring American defensemen in history, along with a first-round pick, back the other way. It was clear that the Wings were going for another Cup, and so traded my promise for a proven veteran, and I was going to a team that would give me lots of space to shine. Suddenly, I feel like my stock in the NHL has shot way up. Actually, my reaction was more like: Holy shit! Buckle up! I’m returning by invitation to that crazy world I tasted at Cheli’s beach house party, and now it’s going to be mine. All my hard work is about to pay off in the SoCal sun.
8
BECOMING A KING
The LA Kings give me a few hours to drive to Detroit and pack up the rest of my gear. Cheli and Hully and the guys are happy for me, saying “You lucky fucker, you’re going to LA.” They wanted me to succeed, and recognized that I was getting my shot with a young team in a great city. I then caught a flight to meet the Kings in Tampa Bay for a game the next day. I landed late that night, and when I checked in to the team hotel and opened my room’s door, I meet my new roommate: the captain, Mattias Norström.
Now you might wonder what GM would have the balls to room his captain with a twenty-two-year-old he’d just traded for. It was a numbers game. At that time in the NHL, players didn’t get their own rooms, so when I landed, Matty Norström was without a roommate. Matty’s a very cool guy and didn’t seem to be bothered that they were putting him with the new guy, but I couldn’t imagine Detroit doing that to Stevie Y.
It was pretty clear that I was going from a culture of winning in Detroit, with a team of veteran superstars who will do whatever they need to do to win, to a culture of well, not winning yet. Even so, I was excited to be there because I was going to get a chance to play.
Now, here’s a strange thing. You would think that when you change job locations, the new office would welcome you to the fold and introduce you to everyone. I mean, that’s what would happen in pretty much any job you could name. It’s not what happens in the NHL. Trades happen so routinely, and guys get called up all the time, so there’s not any kind of welcoming committee on any team because players and coaches would be distracted from the job at hand. When I walked into the LA Kings dressing room for the first time, we were on the road, and everyone was busy, so I did what all players do: I went and found the trainer and told him how I liked my skates sharpened, what sticks I used, and so on. It was all very businesslike. Then I said hello to the guys passing by me, and then I put on the uniform and played. As I had not played against the LA Kings before, there was no one on the team who wanted to kill me. Yet.
After the first game in Tampa I go out with my new teammates to a local bar around the corner from the team hotel, just like I’d done a hundred times before—hockey players having fun after a game we’d won, 4–2. I wound up pulling one of the waitresses back to the hotel and we start out in the hot tub outside by the pool before eventually making our way upstairs to the room, where we go straight into the bathroom so I don’t wake up the captain, who I’m sure thinks I’m a total fucking nut by now. But he never says a word to me about it. In fact, all he says to me the next day is, “Pass me the black tape.” This is three hours after I was fucking the barmaid on our bathroom vanity.
When I land in Los Angeles, I check in to the Hilton Garden suites beside the practice rink in El Segundo, which is between Manhattan Beach and Venice Beach and beside LAX airport. I immediately start looking for a short-term rental as well as a rental car so that I can dig in to the LA lifestyle. I need a Porsche, but I can’t afford a Porsche. I can afford shorts and flip-flops, and love the feeling of strolling into practice like I’m going to a day at the beach.
I wore No. 16 when I was growing up, but I’m not going to get that number with the Kings because it belonged to the great Marcel Dionne and it’s hanging from the rafters of the Staples Center, never to be worn again. Hockey players generally want to keep the same number, and I’ve always worn 16 because that was Brett Hull’s number. In fact, you don’t usually have a choice about your number until later in your career, or unless you’re a high draft pick. I get lucky because No. 19 is available, and that was Steve Yzerman’s number, and I loved him.
You can’t pick your coaches either. My new coach, Andy Murray, is one very strange dude. It’s as if he’s an alien impersonating a human, and not doing a great job of it. And that’s just my first impression. He seems to think I just wandered in off the street. He has no interest in how I’m settling in. He just tells me to talk to the trainer, and to see assistant coaches Mark Hardy and John Van Boxmeer to go over the power play and penalty kill. And that’s it.
I find a place to live right on the ocean on the border between Venice and Santa Monica. It’s a fully furnished short-term rental that I can pay month-to-month. I also rent a Cadillac Escalade, which—I know, I know—is not the best car for Cali because it’s a real gas guzzler and you have to drive everywhere in LA, even to get a jug of milk. But I need something to drive, and I realize very quickly that this town is all about the show and that the valet parking game is where it starts.
This means that the vehicle in which you pull up to the club or restaurant usually dictates how long you wait for your table or if you even get past the velvet rope which lets the chosen enter the magic kingdom—and I don’t mean Disneyland. This kind of social management would not fly in small-town Ontario, but here it’s the cost of doing business.
In LA, I connect with some of my oldest friends, guys I grew up playing hockey with and against since I was eight years old, and I meet some new ones, Canadian guys working the LA game. Many of them had recently moved to LA to build their respective careers in the music/movie/agent game. Almost everyone started as an assistant and was learning the ropes from grizzled Hollywood vets who had the boys versed in the art of the hooker and coke dealer before their new California tans had even set in.
There was Cody Leibel, whose dad, a real estate guy in Ontario, had created a travel team for Cody to play on with good players who were Toronto kids, including me. If we had a big win, he would come into the locker room and peel off crisp $100 bills for us. We were twelve years old. Cody was in LA making his way as a professional money spender.
Joey Scoleri was another Toronto guy, a VJ known in his Toronto life as Joey Vendetta and now a music executive, and I met him when I got traded to LA. Same with Matt Budman—his father Michael created Roots Canada. He’s become a big-shot film producer.
Blake Leibel was Cody’s brother, and I lived with him for a couple of months in LA while I was waiting to close the deal on my own house. He became a film and TV director and in the summer of 2016 he was charged with torturing and killing his girlfriend, who had just given birth to their child. (At the time of writing, the trial is still pending.) I’m relieved to say that he seemed totally normal when I bunked with him, but apparently he was anything but.
And then there was Lawrence “Larry” Longo, who I’d played hockey with for most of my life. He’d quit playing when we were teenagers because he liked food and girls too much, and he became my best friend in Los Angeles. Larry was the guy who was game for anything and who lit up any social situation. Very rarely would he not be there when I walked out after a game, and we’d go and have dinner, or to a party, or a concert, or whatever LA had to offer. I didn’t live in the Kings’ compound in Manhattan Beach (Luc Robitaille was the only other guy who didn’t live there), and would venture outside the herd as I got to know my new hometown. I was here because I played hockey, but I knew that I wanted to be much more than a hockey player.
It looks like success was going to happen on the ice for sure. With ten games to go in the
season, I am truly focused on helping this team make the playoffs because that will mean they made the right choice in dealing for me. I want to give everything I have to the Kings, so when any of my teammates score a goal I stand up and cheer with 100 percent authenticity, which I can promise you is a rarity in the NHL. You may want the team to do well, but you don’t necessarily want your teammates to do well.
In the NHL, you get paid first and foremost for putting up good numbers. The other thing you get paid for are the intangibles—drawing penalties, winning a well-timed fight, or making a big hit that shifts momentum. Let’s just say you make a lot more for tangibles than intangibles. So a player like me is never going to be fully happy when a fellow third- or fourth-liner scores a goal, because that just made him more valuable than me. And when you hang ’em up at the end of your career, it’s all about how much money you can make during that career, one that can end in one quick moment in a game or even in a practice when you get that injury from which you never come back. So yes, hockey was a game I loved when I was eight, and it’s a game I love still, except now I can make—or lose—my living by how I play it.
Don’t get me wrong. To be paid handsomely for playing a game I love is no bad thing. Only the most selfish players make this seem like a chore, and that reality usually catches up with them when they stop producing and become dispensable. The best pros are the guys who figure out the balance of wanting personal success versus wanting team success. I don’t think my teammates ever questioned my desire to win, and I honestly think it hurt me on occasion with some guys because I was hard on them for not playing hard enough or for bailing on taking a big hit to make a play.