But now I had a better understanding of what I brought to the team, what kind of player I was, what it really meant to be a teammate. Mentally, I was a different player, and you could see it in my game. The coaches noticed that I could see the ice better, that I was making solid, smart plays. My confidence built up and built up. And having my legs every day was a big change. It was like, Wow, I didn’t realize I could play like this for this long. It was as if there had been a cloud over me, and when I smartened up it was as if that cloud lifted away. I felt better about myself, and I knew that my teammates had more respect for me. Before I quit drinking, they were constantly saving my ass, whether they wanted to or not. If the coach asked a question about me and what I’d been doing off the ice, they covered for me. They covered for me on the ice when I was hung over. Now I could prove myself with my actions. Nothing had to be hidden. You could just see in their eyes that they felt differently about me, that they knew Toots was healthy now, they didn’t have to make up stories to protect me, they didn’t have to worry about what kind of mood I was in, and about whether I’d go off on them. The truth is, it was great not having to walk that tightrope anymore.
The NHLPA doctors had a meeting with my teammates when I first got back, just to brief everyone on the process I’d been through. And then a doctor looked at me and said, “Toots, do you have anything to say to your teammates?” I said, “No. I’ve said enough. I’m just going to go back to work.” I think that was a relief to them, because they knew that I wasn’t going to fucking bullshit them anymore. I didn’t want to say something and not follow through—I just wanted to show by example. I wanted to be judged on what I did, not on what I said.
On February 19, the Predators took on the Phoenix Coyotes at home, which the doctors had decided would be Jordin’s first game back. He played for a little over ten minutes, and didn’t score a goal, record an assist, or get into a fight. But everyone on the team, everyone in the building, understood that was beside the point.
After I got out of rehab, the NHLPA doctors and our team doctors would talk to me every week and ask me how I was doing. They were trying to decide when my life was under control enough that it would be okay for me to get back into a game. Eventually, everything just fell into place, and they told me that the Phoenix game on February 19 would be my first game back. I had a couple of weeks to get ready for it.
It was nerve-racking counting down the days. I just tried to stay focused on maintaining my health. It was a daily thing, keeping in contact with the doctors. They asked me if I was hanging out with my old friends, if I was finding new ways to keep myself busy, if I was eating at home or going to restaurants. Stuff like that.
I wanted the process to be a lot quicker because I wanted to play right away, but I knew that the more I pressed to come back, the longer they would keep me out. So, I just kept my feelings hush-hush within myself.
The whole day leading up to the game, everyone was so happy. The Nashville fans had been watching me for five or six years and they had really missed the element that I brought to the game. I remember, in warm-ups, there were signs out in the crowd and people cheering me on. When I took my first step out on the ice, I got a standing ovation that lasted for five minutes. The crowd just went apeshit. That’s when the emotion really hit me.
We were playing the Coyotes, and I remember their players getting up on the bench and tapping their sticks on the boards. It was one of those days that you wish would just keep going on. There were a lot of emotions. That night, it felt like the whole city of Nashville embraced me.
I’ve never come close to drinking again. I mean, frick, there are times when it’s been tough, but I have great resources and people I can call and count on and talk to. When I need them, there are a lot of people around who help keep me grounded.
THIRTEEN
Coming through rehab, rejoining the Predators, and returning to the National Hockey League, sober, were all significant milestones in Jordin’s life. And there would be one more around the same time, the unexpected continuation of a story that began a long time before.
I’ve said a lot here about women … girls … broads, and some of it hasn’t been pretty. If I have offended anyone, I’m sorry about that. But now I want to tell you about Jennifer Salvaggio.
I met Jen way back when I was playing junior hockey with the Brandon Wheat Kings. I was making an appearance at a kids’ hockey tournament on a Sunday afternoon—the usual stuff: show up at a local rink, sign a few autographs, and talk to the fans. I was nineteen years old at the time. When I got there, I saw this lovely lady helping to set up the booth. Of course, when I see a pretty girl I have tunnel vision. The only thing I’m thinking is: How can I get this broad? So we had a little chat. I asked her what she was studying in university. How was school going? What did she like to do? Well, she said, phys ed, science, and social studies. What? That’s high school stuff. That’s when she told me she was only fifteen years old. Holy shit, I got that one wrong! But we still exchanged numbers and just kind of kept in contact.
Jen is originally from Vancouver. Her family bought a business in Brandon when she was a kid and she and her parents, Cal and Anna, moved there when she was ten years old. She spent her high school years there. Her dad is a machinist and her family is old-school Italian.
After that first meeting, Jen and I went on a few dates before my season ended. I invited her to games and we started talking more. She turned sixteen that May. I figured she was old enough at that point. At first her parents wondered, Who the hell is this Tootoo guy? They weren’t into sports all that much, and hockey definitely wasn’t their game. When I first started coming around, they didn’t know who I was or what I did. But then I met them a few times and they came around on the idea of Jen dating me.
By the end of the season, I would be out in bars, late at night, and at closing time I would call Jen to come pick me up and drive me home. She didn’t even have a driver’s licence. I would give her the keys to my vehicle and she’d pick me up and bring me back to her place. It didn’t really register with me that it might not be a good idea to show up there at two or three or four o’clock in the morning after I was done partying. I admit that I was selfish. I didn’t give two shits about what people thought. I was on my own schedule. Jen’s parents had good reason to wonder, Who does this kid think he is? But Anna, Jen’s mom, was the soft-hearted one. For some reason she had patience with me. She greeted me and always made sure there was food in front of me, even if I was pissed drunk. She’d always say, “You’re a hockey player, you burn a lot of calories, I want to make sure you’re fed.” Anna always had a smile on her face, even at four o’clock in the morning. I called her my Mama Bear. And thank God I had Anna around to make me dinner, because I don’t think Jen really knew how to cook anything at that age. Then, after I finished eating, I’d go down to the basement and pass out and Jen would go upstairs and sleep next to her parents’ room.
Jen and I kept in contact through that whole summer. She even asked me to take her to her high school prom, which wouldn’t happen until the following year. At the end of that summer, I moved to Nashville. Obviously, her parents weren’t going to let her follow me there at sixteen years old, so we tried the long-distance thing. I played that year in Nashville, we kept in touch, and I told her, Yeah, we’re dating, we’re together. But, meanwhile, I was running around with all kinds of other broads. So that didn’t really work out.
However, I returned to Brandon in June 2005 for the prom. By then, I’d spent some of my NHL money on a Dodge Viper—a hot, expensive sports car—and I drove Jennifer to the prom in that. There I was, a twenty-two-year-old NHL player, back in high school for a night.
At that time, Jen was going through some personal issues. She’d got caught up with the wrong crowd. I didn’t need that in my life—having to deal with the people she was hanging out with, and having them associated with my name—so I distanced myself from her. Eventually, her parents kind of kicked her ou
t of the house, so she moved in with her cousins in Vancouver. Every time I played there with the Predators, we’d hook up and hang out and enjoy each other’s company … and then away I went until the next time. We’d talk on the phone every other month or so.
Every time we saw each other, it was a big piss-up. That’s all she knew about me. Every time we were together, I got tanked and she partied right along with me. Then she just sort of went off the deep end. I didn’t want anything to do with her if she was going to be hanging out with the wrong crowd. She was spending time with people who were associated with nasty things—drugs and all that stuff. I was never a drug guy. I was never into that. So I didn’t contact her or talk to her for a good five years. I just cut off all communication. With my hockey career going well, I couldn’t be associated with those kinds of people. I didn’t even think about her. I had other girls and I moved on.
Five years went by, and by then I’d gone into rehab. I had been cut off from outside communication when I was in there, so the minute I got out I checked all of my messages. Somehow, Jen had got my number. It was the first time I had heard from her in five years. She left me a message that said, “Hey, we’re thinking about you. My family is praying for you.” After I returned to the team, the Predators were going to play in Vancouver the following month, so I called her up and asked her if she’d like to have dinner and talk about what was going on in my life.
At first, she was hesitant. She knew me, for better or worse, and she didn’t think the rehab was going to work out. She thought I was just trying to crawl back into her life with my charm. By that time, Jen had turned her life around, too. Before, she had worked in the bar industry in Vancouver, but she’d got out of that scene and that crowd and was working with her family in a bakery owned by her cousin.
Jen told at least one of her relatives that there was no way she was going to meet with me. But she must have changed her mind, because we got together in Vancouver for dinner, and it lasted four hours. She probably said four words the whole time, while I talked and talked about everything I’d been through. The team was going to be in Vancouver for four days. At the end of dinner, I asked her if she wanted to hang out again the next day. She said, “Yeah, maybe. I’ll let you know.” That was as far as she’d go. But as soon as she got home, she called me and said she’d really like to hang out again. So we did, and she ended up staying the night with me but we didn’t do anything. And, for me, that was fine because I wanted to repair our relationship. I had put her through a lot. There were a lot of things I needed to fix. I spent the rest of my time in Vancouver trying to prove to her that our relationship wasn’t just about the intimate part. She was fucking blown away that I didn’t even kiss her. We watched a movie and then both went to sleep in the same bed.
The next month, the Predators were back in Vancouver for the playoffs. You know how they say everything happens for a reason? I remember that when we found out we were playing the Canucks in the playoffs, the first thing I thought was that there couldn’t be any more perfect timing to rekindle my relationship with Jen. I remember flying in to Vancouver and calling her. We had a game on Monday and a game on Thursday. I told her that I was going to make sure I found time to see her. She tried to talk me out of it, because it was the playoffs, the most important part of the season. She said, “You shouldn’t be worrying about us. We have all summer to figure something out.” I was thinking, Okay, Jen, I hear you. But deep down in my heart, if I feel that it’s right, I’m going to see you no matter what.
It was crazy in Vancouver during that series. The playoff atmosphere was unbelievable. The intensity. The emotions. Everything is magnified. I couldn’t walk down Robson Street without people recognizing me, so away from the rink I just stayed indoors. And that kind of worked in my favour, because I had a better chance of spending time with Jen by not being out and about. Jen stayed with me in the hotel the entire time, and still nothing sexual happened. She was waiting for me to try to make a move, but I didn’t.
The Predators were the underdogs in that series. I remember that after going down 3–1, we won game five in overtime, and I was thinking, Geez, we have a chance. It gave us life. And you could feel the tension in the building in Vancouver. The fans were thinking, Oh shit, we’ve got a series now. I thought that was going to be a turning point, but it didn’t turn out that way. We lost game six back in Nashville, which was really disappointing. But the time I got to spend with Jen made up for it.
That summer, I was living at my place in Kelowna and Jen commuted back and forth every weekend to visit me. That’s when I told her that I wanted her to be my one and only. She wasn’t quite ready to commit to that yet. She knew I was going back to Nashville, and we had tried the long-distance relationship before and it hadn’t worked out. But she agreed to at least play the relationship out for the rest of the summer.
One day that summer, I was visiting with her parents. They still liked me a lot. I was having coffee with Jen’s dad one evening after dinner and I said to him, “What would you think of your daughter moving to Nashville?” Remember, they’re a strict, old-school Italian family, so I wasn’t sure he was going to like the idea. But he said, “You know what, Jordin? Jen is a grown woman. It’s up to her to make that decision. And whatever decision she makes, I’ll support her.” They knew what she had gone through in the past and her relationships with other guys—and like any parents they wanted to know she was in good hands. And they knew I had turned my life around.
That night, I asked Jen what she thought about moving to Nashville. She laughed. “That would be a huge decision for me—but good luck running that one by my parents.” Then I told her I had already spoken to her dad, and her reluctance seemed to melt away. And that was that. She moved to Nashville, and for a while life was good.
But five or six months in, Jen wasn’t happy. The lifestyle associated with being a hockey wife or girlfriend is obviously different than in your average relationship. It was good for the first little while, because there was a lot of excitement and there were a lot of new things to do. And then it got old. She wondered what she was doing there. She didn’t have any purpose in Nashville. She had worked all her life, but she couldn’t work in the States because she was Canadian. She had been independent since she was a teenager, but now she had to depend on someone else to live. I suggested that maybe she needed to go home for a while and think about what she wanted to do. I knew she would come back. She flew to Vancouver, spent a week there and kind of got refreshed, and then came back to Nashville. It’s been fine and dandy ever since.
Because of her past experiences and the kind of people she hung out with, she needed comfort—someone who would look after her as a person, care for her, and love her. And I was that person. I wasn’t interested in any other broads. I was done with that. That part of my life was over. But it took some time to gain that trust. She kept wondering if I’d really changed. It didn’t help that when we would go out for dinner in Nashville, two or three broads would come up to me—ignoring her—and say, “Jordin, we don’t see you anymore. How come you don’t hang out?” It took a while before that stopped happening.
I’m not a guy who says more than he has to. But I can’t talk about Jen without acknowledging how lucky I am to have her. I guess everybody wants to be loved for who they really are and I know deep down that she accepts me that way. Not only that, she is the most beautiful lady I’ve ever seen. She is beautiful from the inside out, and that’s what I admire about her. She would go out of her way to help anyone. And she’s got the heart of a lion.
I may get paid to get in people’s faces on the ice and do some pretty tough jobs, but off the ice I’ve always been the kind of guy who sort of goes with the flow. Over the years, people have taken advantage of that. But Jen has never been afraid to ask the tough questions and get the facts straight. She’s made me more like that. And it’s a pretty great feeling to have someone like that looking out for you too.
I think Jen a
nd I understand each other. She has known me from my past and I have known her from hers. You mature as a person and you start to understand what really matters to you and when someone is on the same page as you. We’ve been through a lot of ups and downs, but at the end of the day it’s about having respect for each other and being honest, and knowing that the person will be by your side no matter what happens.
For my parents, it’s been a little hard to let their youngest go. They met Jen when we first started dating. With me being so young then, they weren’t expecting much from our relationship. With all of my other girlfriends, my mom knew they were just flings. But when Jen came back into my life and stayed, she had to deal with my mom—and moms are moms. I guess from a mother’s perspective, any time a woman comes into your son’s life and takes that special position in his life away from you, there’s going to be a bit of tension between you and the brideto-be. I love my mom to death, but at the same time she has to understand that Jen is in my life and we’re going to start our own family together. I’m a grown-ass man. I’m not a baby anymore, and I know that loving Jennifer doesn’t mean I love my mother any less.
On July 19, 2014, Jordin Tootoo and Jennifer Salvaggio were married in Vancouver, British Columbia.
FOURTEEN
On August 31, 2011, the hockey world was shocked to learn that Wade Belak, who had recently retired after spending most of fourteen seasons playing in the National Hockey League for five different teams, had been found dead of an apparent suicide in a Toronto hotel room. It was the third troubling death of a hockey fighter in a few short months, following Derek Boogaard’s drug overdose and Rick Rypien’s suicide. For Jordin, Belak’s death hit particularly close to home.
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