by Sean Avery
The union had set up a world-class feast for us—lasagna and steak and fish and every salad and vegetable dish you could think of—and after guys had put themselves in a food coma, the meeting started. By the way, the corporate world does not serve up spreads like this before big meetings because they know it sinks concentration levels to what they’d be just before you fell asleep, once that food settles in your gut.
But finally, we had 200 NHL players sitting in a big room, each guy with his own binder of papers detailing the potential deals. We’re finally going to get down to business and sort out our livelihood.
And then it happens . . .
Those big banquet-room doors swing open and the Westin Harbour Castle’s most attractive female wait staff are rolling in big gray hampers that are usually used to transport laundry but are now filled with the only ice the guys in this room have seen in eight months, and tucked into the ice is the coldest Canadian beer in the country at that moment.
The beer works its magic, and pretty soon voices get louder and opinions get harder. And it’s not long until attention focuses on Tie Domi and Krzysztof Oliwa. Domi, the Toronto tough guy, wants to accept the deal, and he has a lot of friends in the business world, so some guys think he knows what he’s talking about. Oliwa, the six-five enforcer now with Calgary, is an NHLPA hard-liner who does not want to settle, and as they argue they’re getting closer and closer to each other and louder and louder, and then they’re basically squaring off at the front of the room and having to be restrained by guys before they start punching each other. Then those big doors opened again for another beer delivery. I stopped counting how many beers Keith Tkachuk had had after I watched him polish off eight cold ones in thirty minutes. And he was by no means alone in setting beer-drinking records that night.
It was apparent that this meeting was a very well-executed event designed to get us drunk and bloated and to result in absolutely nothing productive getting done. And so nothing was.
More meetings were scheduled for most of Saturday, but I decided not to go. I wasn’t going to learn anything new, and yesterday’s beer fest/shouting match wasn’t something I wanted to do again. So I took a cab out to Pickering to spend the day with my parents. We talked about the state of the NHL, and my genuine fear for the future. I mean, these were the people who heard me when I first said I wanted to play in the NHL when I was a little kid, who drove me to every practice on every grim winter morning, who took me on travel team trips, who supported my belief that I could make it, and who wiped away my tears when others said I didn’t have a hope in hell of making it. Now, though, my mom and dad didn’t really know what to say. We had arrived at the point where the unthinkable was on the verge of happening, which taught me—and small consolation, this—that if you can think it, it can happen.
My parents always believed that I had a plan and things would work out, but they were clearly worried about me, so they came back into Toronto and we had dinner at the Keg. I went to the restroom to take a leak and two guys walked in, and while waiting for my stall to open one of the guys started talking about how much of an asshole I was as a player. It would be a better story if I said I swung around and decked them both for insulting the company my parents kept, but I didn’t. I just walked away. They didn’t even see me.
• • •
On February 16, 2005, the NHL became the first professional sports league in history to cancel an entire season.
Pat Morris finally called me and said he had an offer for me. In Finland. Lahti, Finland.
Lahti is a city of about 100,000 on the same line of latitude as Whitehorse, Yukon. Sixty degrees far north. And the Lahti Pelicans are at the very southern end of the standings in the Liiga, the Finnish premier professional hockey league. What’s not to like? I signed for the remainder of the season with the Pelicans, and got on a flight to Helsinki, which was followed by an hour-long car trip north to Lahti, which is a pretty town on a bay.
Hotels in Finland are a cut below what we’re used to in the NHL. The rooms have twin beds with mattresses as thin as a pillow. The electricity runs on a different voltage from North America, and the TV features a whopping eight channels. All in Finnish.
The breakfast buffet at the hotel offers boiled eggs, pickled herring, caviar in a squeeze tin, and a ton of bread, and by my fourth day in the country I actually liked it. Before each practice we would put team tracksuits on and go for a mile run in this winter wonderland. The temperature outside was sixteen degrees and everything is white. The city’s perfectly manicured sidewalks have snow neatly piled four to six feet along their borders, and the Lahti Sports Center has these giant ski ramps eight stories high. Ski jumping is a major sport in Finland. I don’t know anyone here, and all the men and women look the same—blond and bundled up against the cold that’s worse than Canada’s. I’m as far from LA as I can be.
On my first weekend with the Pelicans—teal jerseys, lighter than those of San Jose, with black and white trim and a pink pelican head logo—we have two home games at Isku Areena, which seats 5,500 fans. I don’t know anyone on the team and I’m the only NHL import, but everyone’s cool with that—I mean, no one wants to give me grief for taking some Finnish player’s spot. They’re happy to have me, and I’m very happy to score a goal during our first game that Friday. Despite my happiness at being back on the ice, I definitely feel like it’s been months since I’ve played hockey at a high level, which, of course, it has been.
My lungs are screaming after my first shift. No matter how many quarter-miles I’ve run to stay in shape, you cannot replicate the burn you get from playing your first game in months. For me, it’s the best pain in the world.
Actually, it’s the second-best. After a shot of Toradol.
After my lungs yell at me, my legs are next. I don’t have the quick first step on this Finnish ice that I know I have in the NHL. It’s not noticeable to the fans, but as a player you know. Milliseconds of delay feel like days, and the demons start to collect inside your brain, spreading their gossip of worry.
Has he lost his step?
Will he ever get it back?
Maybe this lockout is the end of him . . .
The good thing is that while you’re on the young side of your career you can literally count how many days, games, and practices it will take before the switch goes off and your legs are back. And thank God you are back. But you also know that the moment that step doesn’t come back is the moment you need to start thinking about what the next sixty years hold for you.
In my second game for the Lahti Pelicans I score two goals and get kicked out of the game for fighting Jarkko Ruutu, a guy who plays a similar game to me but at a much, much lower level. I have the puck as I’m skating out of our zone on the left, and make a cross-ice pass to our winger. Ruutu tries to hit me late, so I put my hands and stick up to defend myself and wind up cross-checking him in the side of the head. Then I drop my gloves before he has time to turtle and go after him. My teammates love it and so does the crowd, because no one ever fights here. It seems from the fans’ cheering of my win over him that even the Finns don’t like Ruutu.
He was a guy that NHL players talked about with disgust, which is different from the way they talk about me. They talk about me with hate.
As I’m taking off my equipment after the game in a room full of strangers here in dark, cold Finland, I feel alone. And I feel sad.
I should be celebrating in the dressing room of Staples Center after my Gordie Howe Hat Trick just helped the Kings win 4–3 in overtime, and I need to hurry up because my hot movie star girlfriend is hungry and wants to jump shotgun into my Porsche 911 Turbo for the fast ride through the streets of LA with the top down as I smoke a cigarette with an ice bag wrapped around my knee which doesn’t get in the way of the glorious blow job I’m getting because my girlfriend enjoyed the great game I played.
Instead I end up in a sauna in the bas
ement of a bar in Lahti, listening to a bunch of people talk in a language I don’t understand, soundtracked by music that was in the Top 40 three years ago in America. This is another reason the owners will always beat the players in a CBA negotiation, because once you’ve had a taste of the NHL, it’s the best taste in the world.
I woke up on that Sunday morning and I just knew. I had the hotel shuttle bus drop me off at the arena, where I told the caretaker I’d left my cell phone in the locker room. I quickly packed up my equipment and hurried out to the waiting hotel shuttle and told the driver to drop me off at the bus station. I bought a ticket to the Helsinki airport and didn’t feel any relief until I landed in Norway to switch planes for my flight to New York. I didn’t call Pat Morris for a week, but I had a pretty good idea that the Finns would have told him I’d left. When we did finally catch up, he said, “The over-under in the office on your staying in Finland was a week.” Then he laughed. I guess he won the bet.
When I landed in New York I discovered that it was Fashion Week. Well, I actually knew that it was. I was paying a lot more attention to style. People have to look good in LA, and so you kind of inhale it. But I also like to look good, and had started reading GQ and Vogue and finding their fashion pictorials as fascinating as any book. I loved the buzz of Fashion Week in New York, and enjoyed checking out the shows, which last about fifteen minutes but have months of prep, very similar to pro sport. I loved the champagne parties, and the interesting, accomplished people from fashion and business and culture, and that same overwhelming sense of possibility I first felt when I came here to model tuxedos on Good Morning America. This time, though, I felt like I belonged more to the city. I have made progress in defining myself off the ice, and feel that I can move at New York speed. The city, for a week, makes me not forget my problems, but file them away.
But I don’t live in New York. I live in Los Angeles, and so the party ends and I fly home to confront reality. Things with Rachel are not great. She’s her wonderfully understanding self but I feel like a failure. I feel like I’m not giving very much back to her. I know it’s from the effects of this lockout. I’m twenty-four years old and I don’t have a job and I’m living with my girlfriend and this ramps up my insecurities about working again, and being good enough for Rachel. I mean, I’m dating a famous divorced woman with two kids who is so good at keeping everything on an even keel. Everything except for me.
I’ve just finished running the stairs at Drake Stadium on the UCLA campus in Westwood when my phone rings. I’m wiping sweat from my hands so that I can swipe the iPhone to answer this call from the Godfather. Even though what he’s telling me is almost unbelievable, I know Chris Chelios doesn’t waste time playing practical jokes so I perk up and listen very carefully. The owner of the Motor City Mechanics was willing to sign Cheli, Derian Hatcher, Brian Smolinski, Kris Draper, and the former No. 42 of the Detroit Red Wings—that would be me—to play in the United Hockey League.
Cheli had already negotiated our deals: I was to get a $20,000 signing bonus and we would get $2,500 for each win and $800 for each loss. And on top of this unexpected bounty, we didn’t need to play away games. Cheli is such a shark that he realized we couldn’t get a piece of the gate at away games, so he negotiated us not having to play them.
Two things were certain: I needed the money and I really needed to play some games to clear my head and keep myself sharp so when next September came around and this labor madness was sorted I could hit the rink at as close to NHL full speed as possible. Even though I’d bailed on my Finnish hockey adventure, I really need to play hockey. Cheli saved the day.
Cheli told me that I would stay in his guestroom, which made sense considering we would probably be hanging with each other day and night—make that late night—as we did not so long ago. To be honest, I was relieved as I said goodbye to Rachel and the kids, because I was sure they would enjoy the break from my daily frustrations. We didn’t know when we’d next see each other but I was hoping that my renewed lease on life—and a little distance—might help get things back to a more balanced place with Rachel.
Cheli lives in a big house in Bloomfield Hills with his four kids and his wife, Tracee, whom he married young. She’s just great—very down-to-earth and tolerant, which she’d have to be with a brood like that. Each of the four kids was polite and respectful, but they had their father’s competitive edge, and the house was a lively place to be. I had a room on the ground floor, next to the kitchen, so I heard all of it.
It feels great to be with Cheli every day, and it reminds me of the old days (two years ago . . .) when we were driving to the rink together for practice or going for lunch at Cheli’s Chili Bar. We do workouts in the sauna in Cheli’s basement and somehow, despite all this, we still find ourselves out on the town a few nights a week.
The Mechanics only started to play in the UHL in the fall of 2004, so they haven’t even completed a full season yet, and when I roll into Detroit they have eighteen wins and thirty-nine losses (a few of the latter in shootouts). When I turn it on I can pretty much dominate the game, and while it doesn’t feel great to say I’m dominating the low-level minor pro league that is the UHL, it does feel great to be playing. Just being able to skate with the puck and make moves with speed around players is a great shot to my confidence.
I’m also playing a pretty nasty game because I have a ton of simmering anger about the lockout that I need to blow off. And I need to play this way so guys think twice before they take a run at me. In the NHL you have many more options as an agitator, with words being one of your foremost tools. But here in the UHL it’s the deed that makes the point. My stick is a sword and when any guy comes near me they need to know that if they’re going to make a move on me then they may lose an eye or a few teeth. I’m not fucking around in this league as I have way too much to lose.
We’re playing the Flint Generals and they have a guy who’s a real shit disturber named Kevin Kerr. He was drafted in the third round of the 1986 NHL Entry Draft by the Buffalo Sabres but, like many guys good enough to make it to the NHL, never did. Kerr is pissed off that guys are losing their UHL jobs because these hotshot NHLers are slumming it in the UHL while their billionaire owners argue money with their millionaire player reps. I don’t disagree with him, but it reminds us all that this game is a business, and the Motor City Mechanics are taking advantage of a market opportunity.
I can’t remember what exactly our coach, Steve Shannon, said during intermission, but apparently he put a $200 bounty on Kerr’s head. Somehow this bad decision ended up leaving the dressing room and wafting into public knowledge, and the UHL president Richard Brosal suspended Shannon for the remainder of the season. Kerr was a little bit shaken by a clean check in the game but no one tried to take his head off. I mean, who’d want to be on the other side of injuring a guy for a $200 prize?
The thing is, coaches say “Take his fuckin’ head off” about opposing guys all the time (without putting a bounty on it). Do they mean it? Sure. They just don’t want you, or them, to get caught. Steve Shannon got caught because he made it a hockey crime with the cash bump for the hit.
I did feel guilty about not playing road games with my fellow Mechanics, and decided to play my first away game in Flint, which was not the easiest place to play. I’m hated in every NHL away arena I play in, but in the NHL we have some protection in place, a buffer zone between the players and the fans. In the UHL that protection does not exist, and the fans are waiting when our bus pulls up. I hear the usual bullshit as I walk in: “Faggot-Pussy-Bitch-Faggot.” I’ve been known to get in the faces of these individuals and enjoy watching them shit their pants as I approach them with a pep in my step. They always back off.
I think I may have made Cheli feel guilty about staying home while the team is away, too, because he agrees to play our next road game in Kalamazoo. Since we don’t have a replacement coach yet, Cheli is bringing Bob Ritchie to coach the team
. So incredibly, Kid Rock ends up standing behind the Mechanics’ bench with a beer in a brown paper bag, calling out line changes. He’s having the time of his life and the players on our bench, and even the guys on the Kalamazoo Wings, are absolutely loving it. This is the closest thing to Slapshot I’ve ever seen.
Even so, I’m feeling guilty about the amount of money we’re making under the table, and I’m not going to mail in my game. But a couple of games later in Detroit, what I feared could happen, happens. Looking down at my right index finger as I skated to the penalty box after laying a beating on some poor guy in a small scrum during the game, I could see the bone of my knuckle. The skin on both sides had peeled over like a blooming onion. My punch had landed flush on the guy’s two front teeth and now my finger was in bad shape, worse than any other injury I’d taken to my hands in previous fights.
I skated directly to the dressing room and the doctor came down from the stands to check me out. He quickly decided that I needed to go to the hospital to have X-rays and then hopefully a good plastic surgeon would be around to stitch me up if I didn’t actually need to have surgery.
I started to sweat more in the car ride to the hospital than I was sweating during the game because this was serious. A hockey player’s hands are very important for obvious reasons, but the complicating factor here was that any injury that a player sustains while playing in a league other than the NHL during the lockout would cancel that player’s guaranteed NHL salary for next season.
Whenever that next season was going to happen.