Ice Capades

by Sean Avery

  Dean comes straight to the point: he tells me that I’ve been traded to the New York Rangers, and he gives me Glen Sather’s phone number. He tells me I have to get in touch with Slats to organize my trip to New York.

  My call with Glen was like any call you have with him (as I would learn): direct, to the point, and quick. “We’re happy to have you,” he said. “Get here as soon as possible, mix things up and get our guys going.”

  My life path is about to change, and the disappointment that my mom and nana feel about me having to fly to New York tonight turns into pleasure when they realize how happy I am. We take a taxi back to the hotel so I can get my bags and head to the airport. I kiss them goodbye and walk off to a new beginning as a Broadway Blueshirt.

  15

  I LOOK GOOD IN BLUE

  When you start with a new team, there are so many moving parts that you usually don’t remember much when the dust settles. But this time, I remember everything. My senses were on high alert, just as I imagined they would be when I pulled the Ranger jersey over my head for the first time. It felt like a second skin. The blue matches my eyes, and red is my favorite color. And the Rangers have restored the hockey cosmos to its proper order: they’ve given me No. 16. The number I wore until I made the NHL. I take it as a sign that I’m in the right place.

  Seeing Shanahan in the dressing room feels good. This is the first time I’ve seen him since the trade, though he texted me once the deal was done to say “Get ready!” He’s his usual suave self, as if this is just another day at the office, but I think I detect a wink. Seeing Jaromír Jágr there makes me kind of starstruck. He comes up to me and shakes my hand and says, “Nice to meet you.” Before the trade Jágr asked New York management why they needed to trade for me, because he thought I was a goon. After our first game together, he said he wanted me on his line.

  The game is across the Hudson River in New Jersey, and I’m getting my first taste of how different road trips are when you play on the East Coast as opposed to the West. In New York you can take the bus to games in New Jersey, Long Island, and Philadelphia, and everywhere else in the East is a short flight away. Even Florida. Playing on the East Coast can literally add years to a player’s career.

  My first game was to be across the Hudson against the Devils in New Jersey. I was fired up the moment I hit the ice for our warm-up. A weird thing always happens in hockey when a new guy arrives with his new team: he scores a point in his first game. It happens so often that no one is surprised by it.

  Tom Renney is our coach and he throws me out on the power play, and just like that I have my first point as a Ranger—I get an assist fifteen minutes into the first period, a little more than a minute after the Devils open the scoring. Game on.

  In the second period, a new game begins, one that will play out for my entire career as a Ranger. I snag a turnover at center and then turn up ice, stickhandling around a few Devils. I take D-man Colin White wide and make a nifty move to the inside and it’s now just me and the Devils goalie, Mr. Martin Pierre Brodeur.

  I don’t have much room after I beat White, and Marty plays it perfectly, like the Vezina-Hart-Stanley Cup–winning goalie he is, taking most of my angle away. I bury a shot in his chest and actually try to pull up before I get to him but we both go down. We get to our feet and Marty pushes me with both hands and I remember thinking, “This fucking guy, I actually tried to pull up,” and I plow my stick into Marty’s solar plexus. You might say that the Devils fans instantly saw me as Public Enemy No. 1, and one of the greatest New York Ranger feuds was born with our friends in the Meadowlands. The night was February 6, 2007, and my new mission—after taking Manhattan—was to find out every personal detail on Marty Brodeur that I could get. For the next time we met.

  All I really knew about New York was that it was a place I wanted to live—but I had no idea where. The handful of players who stayed in Manhattan all lived on the Upper West Side because of the easy access to the West Side Highway, which was the route to the Rangers’ practice rink about an hour’s drive north of the city near Tarrytown, New York, and where the team’s owner, James Dolan, whose family used to own Cablevision, kept his fleet of airplanes and helicopters.

  Every NHL team has a guy that handles team travel, hotels, and meals on the road, as well as helping players find a place to hang their hat. In New York, Jason Vogel is the go-to guy for the Rangers, and the Knicks and he helped me with the hunt to find a furnished apartment to rent for the remainder of the season.

  Despite Jason’s friendly warnings, I wound up choosing the worst place a person could live in New York City: Times Square. The place is a total assault on the senses—from the streets constantly jammed with people going to Broadway shows and the tourists getting their tongues sunburned from walking around with their mouths open in astonishment to the neon signs and video screens that light the place up like it’s high noon when it’s actually midnight.

  Even so, this choice was about me staying on theme, which was to absolutely immerse myself in New York City. What better place to live than the center of it all? So I moved into a furnished one-bedroom apartment sixteen floors above the M&M’S store in Times Square. It was as far from LA as I could get.

  I didn’t have a car in New York, so I relied on carpooling to practices with Jed Ortmeyer and Ryan Hollweg. They were gritty, hard-nosed Rangers who were both good guys. Hollweg was a California kid who liked to party hard and to play video games and guitar in his spare time, but he worked his ass off at the rink. Ortmeyer was from Omaha, and had played for Red Berenson at the University of Michigan. He was a grinder as well, with the work ethic of a champion. He drove to the practice facility in Tarrytown in his black GMC Denali, and since both guys were usually as tired as I was from being out the night before, the ride wasn’t exactly Fury Road. It was a very quiet forty-five-minute trip coming and going, because after practice, we all just wanted to get back home to go to sleep.

  On my fourth day living in Times Square, after treating myself to some local cuisine—my first New York pastrami sandwich from a classic New York deli—I was pickpocketed on my walk home. Welcome to New York.

  Once I’d recreated the contents of my wallet—which included a three-hour detour to the Department of Motor Vehicles, a true New York initiation—I purchased a new wallet that was attached to a chain which clipped onto my belt loop. But I had to admit, I was starstruck—I even loved getting pick-pocketed in this city.

  What I do not love is where things stand with me and Elisha. Not good, in short. Elisha is great, and she’s a Canadian girl, so she gets hockey. She understands the game and the players, and she knows that this is a big step up for me, and she couldn’t be more supportive. But her life is in LA and mine is here. And from the moment I got to New York it’s been like being in a bullet train. Non-stop New York. I was totally focused on succeeding here. As much as I loved Elisha, I knew I wanted to stay in New York for the rest of my life. Elisha and I have about two months left in the tank at this point, and our phone calls become less frequent as we both stop sacrificing sleep to make up for the time difference between us. When we broke up it was over the phone, and Elisha had contempt for me because she thought I was bailing on the relationship. And in truth, I was bailing, before things got really bad between us. I needed to follow my New York dream and Elisha needed her life in LA. Of course, karma would soon come back to punch me in the face.

  On February 9, 2007, I made the ten-minute stroll from Times Square to the Garden to play my first game in Manhattan against the team I was supposed to play against when I got traded here, the Tampa Bay Lightning. I feel like it’s the Stanley Cup Final because I’m on top of the world.

  The old dressing room at MSG was so small and cramped that you could touch the ceiling. The trainer’s room had three tables and a cold tub/ice machine in the back. The guys who worked helping with laundry and hauling water bottles and moving sticks from the
dressing room to the bench were real New Yorkers. These guys were Teamsters who also worked on movie sets in the city, and they talked with heavy accents like they were straight out of a Scorsese movie. “Fuck you” was a term of endearment from these guys.

  The hallways of MSG were lined with photos of the legendary performances the place had seen over the years: Zeppelin, the Stones, Aretha Franklin, Steve Martin, Sinatra, Messier in 1994, Joe Louis, George Harrison, Billy Joel (sixty-five times), the 1976 Democratic Convention, the Jackson 5, Wrestlemania, Ali vs. Frazier (three times).

  The moment you walk into the Garden, a feeling starts to tingle in your veins, like the buzz of it is going to lift you up into the air. This is no longer a place where I come to play in once a year or every few years. This is now home.

  Holy shit, this is special.

  About halfway through the game, I take a Michael Nylander pass from the half-boards. I take a single stride as my bottom hand slides up toward my top hand, and the flex in my Easton snaps the puck off my blade into the top corner past Johan Holmqvist for my first goal as a New York Ranger. We’re now up 4–0 on the Lightning, and the crowd starts the A-V-E-R-Y chant. MSG is chanting my fucking name. This is the big time.

  A week later in Carolina we win 5–2. I get two assists on the power play, more than sixteen minutes of ice time, and we’ve won three in a row. It’s an away game, but I know they’re chanting back home. In New York.

  On February 17, we play Philadelphia in our barn. They’re a traditional Ranger enemy, and it’s the first time that I square off for a fight at center ice. I’m thinking Ali vs. Frazier, and of course, Frazier was a son of Philly. We’re ten minutes into the game when Todd Fedoruk of the Flyers goes berserk, elbows Jágr in the head, trips Petr Průcha as he skates behind him, and takes a run at pretty much everyone. Crazy. Shanny goes after Fedoruk and there’s a scrum and I emerge from it to find myself face-to-face with Mike Richards, and it’s on. It’s a long fight, and I get some pretty good ones on Richards, and when it’s done I throw my hands up on the way to the penalty box. The building goes fucking nuts, and here we go again: A-V-E-R-Y.

  On February 18, we beat Chicago 2–1. That’s four wins in our last six games.

  On February 20, against Marty and the Devils, I receive a penalty for goaltending interference. Yeah, I was starting to like tormenting the guy.

  On March 3, against St. Louis, we’re down a goal with just under three minutes to play. I bust up the ice and take a drop pass three feet inside the blue line and then bury a slap shot just under the cross bar to tie the score. We win in the shootout.

  On March 5, we’re playing the Islanders. We have seventy-one points and the Isles have seventy-six, and we’re currently in the last playoff spot which means nothing if we don’t keep winning. We’re eating the pre- game meal and I ask Shanny how come he’s not nervous. He laughs and says, “I only get nervous for games in June.” This is the first time in my career I’m actually afraid to lose a game. I want this to keep going so we make the playoffs. I feel that this is the first time in my NHL career that I’m “all in” because this team is my team and this city is my city. Whatever it takes, I’ll do it. We win 2–1 in the shootout. It’s our ninth win since I arrived and the city, which misses nothing, is starting to take notice.

  There’s a headline in the New York Post (which will take a keen interest in me over the years): “A-VERY Good Player . . .” And underneath it: “Glen Sather has used his magic touch with the recent Sean Avery trade . . .”

  My mom and dad are very happy that I’m in New York, because my mother loves the city and it’s only an hour from Toronto by plane. My dad, Al, finds New York too big and noisy, but he brings along his best friend Roly Evelyn to ride shotgun. He’s known Roly since he was in his early teens playing golf on the course that Roly’s family owned in Scarborough, Ontario. Roly was also one of my biggest fans and would go with my dad to my games in Detroit, Ottawa, Buffalo, Nashville, Montreal, and New York, even making a trip out to LA once for some weekend games.

  Roly understood the game on the ice as well as off, and the off-ice game is something that athletes rarely talk about. It’s what happens after the game, and specifically after a loss. Players always have guests at games, either home or away, and these guests usually consist of close family and close friends. Then it’s a pretty big drop to the next category, which is the “friends of friends” who manage to gain entry to a roped-in waiting area at away arenas and a place they call the “Green Room,” the “Wives Room,” or the “Players Lounge” at home.

  This room is not green and it always has a girlfriend—and sometimes a mistress—and a group of wives sitting at tables dressed in their fancy clothes, chasing kids and balancing the insecurities that come with being a hockey wife and where you fit (or don’t fit) in the hierarchy. After a loss, most players are miserable. The last thing we want to do is bullshit with the brother of your mother’s co-worker who lives in Colorado, especially if we were a minus-2 in a 6–0 loss.

  It’s almost impossible to fake it but guys do; they’re putting on their best frozen smile and exchanging some painful small talk about what it’s like to play in the NHL. I’ve never understood why people don’t read this situation better. Could the thrill of talking to an NHLer who’s just had the worst game of his life be so powerful that it kills all reason? I mean, can’t they see that this player would rather have taken a slap shot off his foot so he’d have to spend extra time in the ice bath after the game and not be able to hit the Green Room before the bus pulls out?

  Most rock bands get on a bus after a concert and drive all night to the next city for the next show the following day, but pro athletes travel on custom 747 jets that have their favorite beverages waiting for them (depending on the next day’s schedule, and whether you just won or lost). Well, your drinks will be there regardless, but you can’t exactly drown your sorrows if you have a game the next night and a tough game-day skate ahead after the loss you just helped make happen. But you can always try.

  We also have gourmet hot meals—win or lose—and we watch movies, or play cards, or read, or listen to music, or watch game tape, or chew painkillers or tobacco to pass the time because it’s such a tough way to travel.

  Dad’s friend Roly was the best at letting us get on our way, but he also knew when to pull out his bag of jerseys to get signed for his friends back home. In New York, he even knew how to ask Henrik Lundqvist to sign a shirt, which can be a dangerous request depending on Hank’s game, but Hank always had time for Roly.

  Roly knew how to point out a play that I made that didn’t show up on the score sheet but was important to being a good NHL player. Roly was also a tonic to the stress my dad, Al, would feel if I wasn’t getting enough ice time or I’d been screwed by the referees calling off a deflection goal I’d scored because I had a foot in the crease. Al was beat up worse than me after games because of the emotional roller coaster he put himself on from the warm-up to the final whistle. Roly was always there to make sure they got home safe and sound, and that they hit the road on a full stomach, because nobody liked food more than Roly. He always knew which arena had the best French fries or pretzels.

  Roly died a while back, and I’m thinking of him now. It’s a cliché, sure, but it’s not when you really feel it: I need to spend more time with the people I love.

  After a loss to Ottawa—2–1—on March 13, I feel like I need to blow off some steam. We’re heading into the home stretch here, and we’re two points out of the last playoff spot, with twelve games to go in the season.

  So I take a taxi to the part of NYC called Clubland. It’s the area on the far west side of Manhattan where a lot of the music and strip clubs with cabaret licenses are found. Even though my Rangers teammates call the most famous arena in the world home, they don’t hang out at the real New York hot spots. The guys are more mainstream, but I’m looking to walk on the wild side.r />
  Bungalow 8 is the most exclusive club in New York. I walk up to the door and two of the biggest men I’ve ever seen are standing there with a velvet rope in front of them. I’ll learn that you know you’re at an NYC hot spot when you walk up to it and there’s actually nobody in line. I approach the men confidently, as if I’ve been here a million times, and I ask the giant on the right if I might speak with the owner.

  He laughs and says, “You mean Amy?”

  Yes sir, Amy it is.

  “She’s busy,” he replies.

  At this point I know the owner isn’t coming out, so I lay my cards on the table. I’ve learned that humility is one of the most important qualities for success (unless you’ve just scored a goal at MSG). “Gentlemen,” I begin. “My name is Sean Avery and I was just traded from the Los Angeles Kings to the New York Rangers, and I know Bungalow is a legendary spot, so I decided to come by myself and would love to come inside and have a drink.” And I’m in.

  When I walk through the doors, I’m in a room that resembles a California bungalow. There are palm trees everywhere and murals depicting poolside scenes, and it’s small and intimate.

  I see Heath Ledger at a table chain-smoking with a few models . . . the Olsen twins at another table also chain-smoking with a bunch of their friends . . . Colin Farrell chats up a pretty blonde and Sienna Miller hangs with some really good-looking friends who are swearing more than a group of guys in a locker room.

  The mammoth man at the front door asks if I can hook him up with some Rangers tickets so he can bring his daughter to a game. I tell my new friend named “Disco” that he can come to any game he wants, and I give him my phone number so I’m just a text away.

  I didn’t think it was going to be this easy, but I’m starting to understand New York City and how much less social bullshit there is here than in LA. Disco introduces me to the Queen of New York Nightlife (she didn’t give herself that title) and the owner of Bungalow 8, Amy Sacco, and I shake hands with this lively blond lady who has a voice like a Zamboni engine.