It wasn’t until a couple of weeks before the draft that I knew where I was ranked. Most of the experts were saying that I’d be picked in the third or fourth round. I didn’t really care where I was picked or which team picked me. The important part for me was just having that chance.
The draft happens in June, at the end of the NHL season. That year they held it in Sunrise, Florida, where the Panthers play. Ilya Kovalchuk was the first overall pick, followed by Jason Spezza. I had stayed in Brandon after the Wheat Kings’ season finished. On draft day, my parents flew down from Rankin Inlet, and Terence was there. The whole family got together at a hotel in Brandon. We had a little gathering in the lounge and then sat there for what seemed like hours, waiting for the phone to ring. After the first couple of rounds they stop showing the draft on television, so we had no idea what was going on.
Finally, my cellphone rang. It was David Poile, general manager of the Nashville Predators, telling me that they had taken me with the first pick in the fourth round, ninety-eighth overall. They actually had traded up to take me in that spot. It was only then that it hit me: Fuck, this is really happening. I’ve been drafted. I’m going to play in the NHL. My brother was there. My whole family was there. It was a special moment.
When we got back to Rankin Inlet, it was one big, big party. The first Inuk player to ever get drafted by the NHL … that’s a pretty good excuse to light ’er up.
THAT SUMMER, I went down to Nashville for a rookie camp. I had been in the States a few times on road trips, since there are some American teams in the WHL. But it was my first experience being in the real South. When I got there, the temperature was about 90 degrees and the humidity was unbearable, at least for a northern guy like me. I’d thought the weather was going to be like it is in Winnipeg. At first I just stayed in my hotel with the AC blasting. The only time I left was for the one-minute walk to the rink.
The idea was to introduce the drafted players to the coaches, the team, and the city. That’s when I first met Barry Trotz, who was the head coach of the Predators. He was a Manitoba boy, from Dauphin, who knew Kelly McCrimmon, and he welcomed me with open arms. But we actually spent most of our time with guys from their minor league system, including Claude Noël, who went on to coach the Winnipeg Jets.
Despite the heat, Nashville made an immediate impression on me. A lot of people talked about how great it was to live there and how friendly the people were. But the team was still new, and hockey wasn’t all that big there. We were able to see some sights during that week. The city started growing on me right then and there. I thought about coming back and living there and experiencing the country music scene and all of that stuff.
On the hockey side, the trip was a real eye-opener. Three days before the trip, I was all pissed up, still partying after the draft. I hadn’t set foot in the gym. I’d thought it was going to be fucking easy. Instead, it was a whole other level of being in shape. At that age, when you’re done with hockey at the end of the season, you don’t think about being in the gym. And then there was the mental part of the game. When you’re playing with junior kids, the game is a lot slower. I didn’t quite understand all of the systems they were talking about in Nashville. They were giving us all these booklets on things like faceoff plays. Holy shit. We didn’t really have those in Brandon. It was more like: this is how we’re going to forecheck, and this is how we’re going to break out, and other than that just go out and play hockey. Rookie camp was more like going to school again for me. But I embraced the experience of being around NHL guys—guys who had been around in the league. Some of them were working out at that camp because they had kids in school in Nashville. Brent Gilchrist was there, Cliff Ronning, Tom Fitzgerald. It was pretty intimidating at first, but when you’re in that environment for long enough it just becomes normal. And it was a pretty neat experience for a kid, and the first Inuk— going all the way down south and seeing the life of a pro hockey player for the first time. What I saw there told me that it was time to start changing my focus, because there was work to be done to make it to the next level.
In September, I returned to Nashville for the Predators’ rookie camp. I got to play in an exhibition game, and stuck around camp longer than any of the players drafted higher than me. So I started thinking, Fuck, I’m the man around here. It wasn’t really a surprise when they sent me back to junior. But the experience of being in an NHL camp and hanging in there for that long gave me a real boost of confidence. It set me up for a great year in Brandon.
MEANWHILE, Terence had finished up his final season with OCN and was looking for a way to continue in hockey. He had been the captain there for three years, and I think that’s what really kept him in The Pas. He had an opportunity to play in The Dub but he knew that the money wasn’t as good. He was good enough to play major junior, but in the back of his mind he was thinking, I’ve got to get paid. That was his mindset all through junior hockey. At the end of the day, he was playing to support our family, sending money home to shut them up.
I don’t know if it was because he left home at an older age or because he didn’t get the practice needed, but for whatever reason he was a step behind me in hockey, and he knew that. He told me, “You’re a better player than I am. I’ve got to find a way to stick it out. You’re younger, you know the systems and stuff, and how it works. For me, it took a little longer but I’m going to make it work.”
Terence’s coaches had a contact at the Roanoke Express, a team in the East Coast Hockey League that played out of Roanoke, Virginia. The ECHL is a second-tier minor league one level below the American Hockey League, so two levels below the NHL. The teams all play in the States, and most of them are affiliated with NHL teams.
The guys in Roanoke got a call about Terence and looked at his stats and decided to offer him a tryout. Terence went down there and he made the team. It’s funny: just recently, I ran into a guy named Mark Bernard. He’s a scout now, but in those days he was the general manager in Roanoke, the guy who gave Terence a chance there. He told me how much they loved him, how the fans there embraced his style of play. Mark told me that when he sees me play now, it’s just like watching Terence. That kind of tickled me.
Terence definitely enjoyed his time in Roanoke. He wanted to be a pro and he was going to do whatever it took to move up to the next level—the American Hockey League—and then after that, who knows. Maybe a shot at the NHL. He always told me, “You may have gotten a little bit better than me, so I’m going to have to work my way up and catch you.”
I don’t think Terence was ever jealous of the success I enjoyed. He always encouraged me. He’d say, “I’m proud of you, keep going. You do your thing. For me, it might take a little extra time, but I’m ready for that challenge.” I never saw jealousy in his eyes and he never asked why everything was happening for me and not for him.
When he got to Roanoke, he became the city’s favourite hockey player right off the bat. And he enjoyed living down there. He talked about it all the time. “I’m kind of on my own here. Nothing to worry about. I’m far enough away from everyone.” For him, it wasn’t tough at all being away. He was doing what he loved and he was three thousand miles away from the shit at home whereas, when he was in The Pas, he was still close enough to have to deal with it.
The only problem with the ECHL was that Terence had to take a big pay cut. With OCN, Terence was making good money under the table, but in Roanoke he was making fucking peanuts. Still, he always found a way to send money home. As soon as I signed my first contract with Nashville and got my bonus money, I got a call from him. “Now it’s your turn to look after the family. I’m fucking struggling here. You make sure you look after Mom and Dad.”
I tried sending money to Terence, but he wouldn’t take it. I told him that he had looked after me and it was time for me to pay him back, but he wouldn’t accept it. He said, “I don’t want any of your money.” The only help he would accept was for sticks and gear. Beyond that, he didn’t want to d
eal with money anymore. He just wanted to enjoy his life.
I HAD A GREAT SEASON in 2001–2002. By the end of the year, it was pretty obvious that I was more than just a tough guy. I finished as the Wheat Kings’ leading scorer, with 32 goals and 39 assists. We finished first in our division and then beat Saskatoon and Swift Current in the playoffs before losing a tough seven-game series to Red Deer in the semifinals. Not that my game had completely changed. I had 272 penalty minutes that year, also tops on the team, and fought sixteen times. In every one of those sixteen fights, the guy I had faced was taller than me, heavier than me, or both. And that’s not just my memory. There are statistics. There are actually people who keep track of stuff like that.
My confidence was pretty high. I knew that I couldn’t be satisfied with just being a junior player and I had to start learning how to be a pro. I was setting goals, reaching them, and then setting new goals. It was tough for me, because I was now looked at as the go-to guy on the team. But it wasn’t my teammates or coaches putting pressure on me. It was more me putting pressure on myself, and trying to prove to others that I could be a pro hockey player.
That summer, I was looking forward to going to the Predators’ training camp again. I knew that it would be tough to crack an NHL roster as a nineteen-year-old, and that I’d probably return to Brandon for my final year of junior. But coming off a season like that one, I thought I had an outside chance to stick around.
And Terence was coming off a great season, too. They loved him in Roanoke, loved the way he played, and they wanted him back. But he also had an offer to try out with the Norfolk Admirals in the American Hockey League. If he made it, that would mean better money, and it would be one step closer to the NHL.
Terence was all jacked up about that. Things were really going well.
SEVEN
I n the summer of 2002, Terence arrived in Brandon following his first season with the Roanoke Express. On the ice, it couldn’t have been a more successful debut. He had made history, becoming the first Inuk to play professional hockey, and while the first two lines of his rookie statistical record—9 goals and 16 assists—didn’t suggest much, the third one did—218 penalty minutes. Though undersized, Terence was fearless, tormenting the opposition, getting under their skin, and scrapping when necessary; in other words, he played hockey the Tootoo way. In a nontraditional southern U.S. hockey market, he immediately became a fan favourite, and almost from the start number 22 Tootoo jerseys started popping up in the crowd. Though some had picked Roanoke to win a championship that season, the Express were knocked out in the first round of the ECHL playoffs. Before leaving for home, Terence ordered his sticks for the 2002–2003 season, but he was hoping to take another step forward and make the jump to the Norfolk Admirals of the American Hockey League, then the number-one farm team of the Chicago Blackhawks. Terence had understood from the start that it would be a difficult road from hockey’s low minors to the National Hockey League. But if long odds fazed the Tootoo brothers, they never would have left Rankin Inlet. And the truth was, they were closer to their dream of suiting up together in the NHL than they had ever been. Upon arriving in Brandon, Terence moved in with Jordin, sharing a basement bedroom in the home of his billets, Neil and Janene, on the outskirts of town. It was a great summer. Jordin was a junior hockey celebrity—a star in a one-sport, one-team town—the Tootoo brothers were together once again, and though the family burdens remained, they seemed far, far away. During the day, Jordin and Terence trained hard for the upcoming season and, at night, they tore up the town. On August 27, with summer quickly drawing to a close, Jordin, his girlfriend Meghan, and Terence went out to sample the Brandon nightlife as they had so many times before.
I need to tell you about my brother, Terence.
Growing up, he was always a caring guy who looked after other people before he looked after himself. I remember that as a kid, as hard as he was on me, he was always there to protect me. In the community, everybody admired him for being the way he was. He carried himself with laughter and he always had a positive vibe wherever he went. He was always so caring, and very charismatic. He wasn’t a guy who said a lot. He wasn’t the life of the party. He sat back quietly. But when he spoke, you listened. He never showed any negativity. Maybe that hurt him, because he couldn’t express those darker feelings. Just because you always seem happy doesn’t mean you’re a happy person.
I was more of a daredevil. I didn’t care about the consequences in the moment. Terence was a guy who thought twice and considered the worst-case scenario. He was the one who friends relied on for the right answers on anything that lay ahead. And he always had those answers. He always came through. He wasn’t the biggest guy, but a lot of friends and family members looked to Terence when they had to get things done. Even if it was a two-man job, a three-man job, Terence found a way to do it by himself.
When people were around him, they would watch what he did. They followed his lead. He carried himself with a lot of confidence. Growing up, his buddies looked up to him. He was kind of the leader of the pack. He was always willing to try something new to test it out before anyone else did, just to make sure it was okay.
He was quiet, except in the dressing room. It was like he turned into a different man when he put on his hockey equipment. Growing up, he wasn’t much of a talker in public, but in the dressing room he was a very vocal guy. He wasn’t afraid to make speeches there, because he was in his comfort zone.
On the ice, he had the same style as I do. He was a great skater. He played hard. He wasn’t afraid to drop his gloves. He caught a lot of players off guard, because he was a southpaw who shot the puck right-handed but punched left-handed.
Terence was really close to my dad—a lot closer than I was. He was his right-hand man, because he was older. He was always by Dad’s side, looking after him—really, sometimes babysitting him. Out on the land, Terence was Dad’s guy. He was always around to do whatever he was told to do. When my dad needed help, Terence was there. As much as he loved to stay in town on weekends, Terence sacrificed that to go out on the land with my dad. And when Dad went on a bender in town, it was Terence who went to find him.
My mother and Terence had a great relationship, too. I think my mom thought of him as her saviour. When times were tough, she leaned on his shoulders. If it wasn’t for Terence, I don’t think our family would be together today. When things got rough between my parents, he was the mediator. That was a lot to put on a kid. The solution was always: “Call Terence. Terence will calm things down.” That’s the way it was.
When Terence moved down south to play hockey, that’s when things started to get really tough at home. And then when he left us, that’s when all hell broke loose.
THE LAST TIME I saw Terence was that night out in Brandon. In a couple of days, he was going to be heading to Norfolk, Virginia, for his tryout with the Admirals, and so we were partying hard because I wasn’t going to see him until the next summer. At the end of the night we all jumped in his vehicle, all pissed up with not a worry in the world. We’d done it a hundred times. No big deal.
We lived out in the country, fifteen minutes outside of Brandon, with our billets, Neil and Jeanine. But my girlfriend, Meghan, lived five blocks from the bar where we were.
I said, “Let’s just stay at Meghan’s house—spend the night here and go train in the morning.”
Terence said, “No, I’m going to go home.”
Being the younger brother, I wasn’t going to force Terence to do anything he didn’t want to do. He was always set in his ways. If he had something in mind, he was going to fucking do it. That’s just the way he was. So, the plan was to meet the next morning at the Keystone Centre, the Wheat Kings’ rink, to work out.
I said, “Are you sure you want to drive home? Just fucking stay here.” But he left. And I guess as soon as he pulled onto the main drag, the police lights went on. I didn’t see that. He had no cellphone, nothing. He got pulled over and the cops recognized who
he was, because we’re both well known in Brandon. They tested him and he was over the limit. They told him, “We’re going to drive you home to where you’re staying and we’ll just leave it at that, but we’re going to impound your car.” Instead of taking him down to the station, they dropped him off at my billets’ place at three o’clock in the morning. Neil and Jeanine were light sleepers. They always seemed to know when I came home. But I guess they didn’t wake up.
The protocol is that when you drop off someone who is intoxicated, someone sober has to be there to take responsibility for the person. But it was all hush-hush that night. Because Terence was one of the Tootoos and that was a pretty recognizable name in Brandon, the cops decided to keep it quiet. Because of my popularity in Brandon and Terence’s in northern Manitoba, the police tried to keep everything on the down low. All of the cops knew who we were. Heck, I was dating the police chief’s daughter. They knew where I lived and decided to bring Terence to my billets’ house and keep everything under wraps.
They just said, “Okay, here’s your place, go ahead and we won’t say anything.” He went into the house and things must have been going a million miles an hour in his head. I’ve wondered about how I would have been thinking if I’d been pulled over—Holy fuck, I’m supposed to go to the States in a couple of days and now I’ve got a DUI. They might not let me back across the border. What if I can’t play hockey anymore?
All the Way Page 8