When you believe in yourself, good things are supposed to happen, but it sure didn’t feel that way when I was in Grand Rapids. I started wondering about the future. I’m an NHL player and I deserve to be in the NHL, not the AHL. Maybe at the end of my career that’s where I’ll be, but I still feel like I’m in my prime. Mentally, I was drained. I felt like I wasn’t there. In terms of the people running the Red Wings, I was starting to think that since I was out of sight, I was also out of mind. It felt as though they’d tell me what I wanted to hear, and then they’d hang up and forget about me again until our next conversation.
I talked to some other guys who had been through the same experience. For example, Wade Redden—he’d been a big deal in Ottawa, a second-overall pick, an All Star; he’d played in the World Cup and then, after the 2012 lockout, he’d ended up buried in the minors just like me. Everyone I talked to said the same thing: It’s tough. You’re hoping for a second chance. And you question yourself, question the decisions you made. Why the hell did I sign here when I could have signed with ten other teams?
Finally, in December, the Red Wings had some injury problems and I was called up. I thought, This is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for. This is my chance to go up there and prove that I belong. It was a little bit strange walking back into the dressing room. When you leave and they tell the team you’re not going to be around anymore, you kind of are forgotten. When I returned, I could tell the guys felt bad for my situation; I could definitely sense that. There were some awkward moments when I knew guys were wondering whether they should ask me how it had been down there. Of course, they knew I hadn’t been happy in the minors.
I wound up playing only two games with the Red Wings. I know that I had really strong games and I brought energy and physicality the way I’m supposed to. And then they sent me right back down to Grand Rapids, telling me the same stuff: “This is what we asked of you and you did it, but we’re sending you back because we have guys coming off injury reserve.” Oh fuck, are you kidding me? Don’t tell me what I want to hear. Just be fucking honest. I’m an honest guy, and I expect honesty in return.
In March, the trade deadline came and went. That was really my last chance to get out of the minors during the 2013–2014 season, and I was definitely hoping for something to happen and was expecting something to happen. When nothing happened and the deadline passed, I was called into the office in Grand Rapids to talk to the head coach, Jeff Blashill. The first thing that came out of his mouth was, “How are you feeling?” Fuck, what do you mean, how am I feeling? You know how I feel. Why are you asking me that? What do you want me to say? I’m stuck here in Grand Rapids for the rest of the year and I’m not happy about it. Blashill understood where I was coming from. He said, “I hear you. I just want you to know I’m giving you every opportunity to get back to the NHL. You’ve been one of our best players ever since you came down here. You’ve been fighting for your life.” At least that was good to hear.
What Ken Holland and Jeff Blashill couldn’t have known was that I was fighting for my life in other ways. As an Inuk, I’ve faced racism at just about every level of the game, and I think I’ve got a pretty thick skin. But the things I heard in the AHL really shocked me. In four months, I had to deal with three separate incidents. That’s more than during all of the time I spent in the NHL. It’s bad there. Just unbelievable. With these young kids in the minors, they’re undereducated and there’s no sense of professionalism. They don’t have respect for other players. They don’t know the limits. You’re supposed to let the game dictate the outcome, not personal attacks. I know there’s a mental part of the game, where you try to work on guys. The type of player I am, I get under guys’ skins, and I know they want to make a name for themselves by taking me on. But fuck, what I went through was just stupid, and I’m sick and tired of it.
The first time, it wasn’t even one of the kids. It was Keith Aucoin, a veteran, who has logged time in the NHL. Last season he was with the Chicago Wolves, I was playing against him the whole game and frustrating him. The guy’s not going to fight me. But he started waving his stick in front of me and yelling, “Go back to your fucking tribe.” Are you fucking kidding me? The refs heard it. They kicked him out of the game. But there was no apology and really, I don’t expect an apology from guys who say shit like that. I don’t have time for that bullshit.
The next situation was in Milwaukee, with some nobody running around out there trying to make a name for himself, not even a real hockey player. I don’t know what he was on— some kind of fucking drug or something—but right from the start of the game he was yelling and screaming at me. And then it was late in the game—three minutes left in the third period and it’s tied 2-2. And he yells at me, “Go back to fucking rehab, it’s where you brown people belong. . . .” Everybody heard it. The bench, the coaches and the ref. I go to the ref and say, “Are you guys hearing this fucking shit? You’ve got to do something.” The ref says to me, “I can’t make a call like that in a 2-2 game.” Well, fuck you. Fuck you, you fucking gutless piece of shit. You’ve got no fucking balls.
And then the last one was in the playoffs against Abbotsford— the second game of the first round. I wasn’t even playing—I separated my shoulder in the first game, so I was scratched. At the end of the game there was a little kerfuffle on the ice. Both teams were jawing at each other, and it spilled out into the hallway in the Abbotsford arena after the game. I was just standing there by the dressing room, wearing my suit, when Abbotsford’s strength and conditioning coach starts going off on one of our guys. I was watching, shaking my head. You’re a strength and conditioning coach and you’re yelling at players? Then, without me even saying a word, he starts going off on me. “Why don’t you go fuck yourself. Go back to eating your fucking beluga whale, you meat head.” I looked at him and thought, really? There’s no fucking room for that kind of shit.
Everybody heard it—the Abbotsford players, our players, the security guards who were in the hallway. As soon as he said it, he turned and walked into his dressing room. I told our assistant general manager, Ryan Martin, what had happened. This shit’s unbelievable, very unprofessional coming from someone on the staff. I told Ryan that it was the third time it had happened, and I didn’t have time for any more apologies. I told him I was at my wit’s end. I understand what it’s like in the heat of the moment but fuck, there’s no room for a staff member to go off on any player, never mind saying stuff like that.
A couple of days later, after the series came back to Grand Rapids, the guy came up and apologized to me after practice. He was pretty much in tears. He said it wasn’t in his personality to be like that, that he didn’t know what had gotten into him. The same old story I’ve heard before. I just stood there and said, whatever. Turn the page and get out of my face. You said it, and it’s just uncalled for.
The league got involved in that one, and called me to ask for my side of the story. I told them we all have to be professionals here. I understand there are kids coming out of juniors, but that doesn’t make it okay. We have to be fucking adults. There has to be better education and awareness about the variety of nationalities in hockey. It doesn’t matter who you are or what colour you are or what race you are. We’re here to do our job.
People are cowards when it comes to personal attacks and racial comments. You saw that in the racist shit with P.K. Subban during the NHL playoffs. How bad is your life to be like that? How low can you get to be at that point?
Whenever I speak to groups of young people when I am back home, I stress that if I could make it, they can make it. So when some racist clown starts yapping, it’s not so much that he is getting under my skin, it’s that he is making it clear that he would make life more difficult for all those kids I speak to and try to encourage. Look, I can take care of myself. And if someone really wants to call me out, they don’t need to be racist to do it. But if you use that kind of language around me, that’s not just a personal attack. That’s an a
ttack on a whole people. You can’t just sweep that under the rug, or say sorry and expect it to go away.
But obviously I can’t blame the Red Wings for the behaviour of the opposition in the AHL. Putting on the Red Wings jersey for the first time is a memory I’ll have forever. Playing for an Original Six team has been one of the highlights of my career. The fan following that the Red Wings have throughout North America is unbelievable, and I was a part of that. But hockey is a job, and sometimes not being in control of your own destiny is part of it, too. I know I can still play in the NHL. I can’t go back in time and wonder why I signed with Detroit. With new beginnings, you take your chances. I thought signing with Detroit was my best opportunity to be in the lineup every night. But it wasn’t. And I just have to be grateful for every opportunity that I had to play with them, and try to accept that things just didn’t work out.
Hopefully, somewhere down the line, my name will come up and someone will trade for me in the off-season. Unless someone believes in you, you’ve got no chance. I’m just waiting for that one opportunity where someone believes in me and knows that I can play. And in the meantime, it’s about being professional. And I’m grateful that I still get to play this game.
This experience will make me a stronger person and build more character that will help me fight through adversity. I’ve been through a lot in my life, but in the hockey business you have to understand that everything isn’t always fine and dandy. Even if you’re in the NHL, it doesn’t mean that life is always great. It’s one thing to make it to the NHL and it’s another thing to stay in the NHL. Playing in the minors is a test of my willpower, a chance for me to be mentally strong and believe in myself, and I’m going to pass the test.
It is summer in Rankin Inlet again, the short season of long days when Jordin returns home. It is a chance to go out on the land, to hunt and fish with his dad, Barney, and his nephews, to reconnect with his family and friends and his people, to shed the frustrations of life in the south, to forget—and to remember.
As a kid, life in the Arctic was all I knew. I grew up in a community with no high-rise buildings, with not a lot of vehicles around, and with no roads past the edge of town. That was normal to me. Driving around on a Ski-Doo was the most amazing thing you could do, and any time my dad got a new snowmobile or built a new sled for hunting, it was as if that was a limousine. When I go home in the summer, I send pictures to my friends—and hockey players know all about limousines and expensive sports cars. I’ll send them a picture of a Ski-Doo or a quad with a sled or trailer on the back, with a note saying, This is my limousine. They all get a chuckle out of it. Materialistic things just don’t matter in the north. You look at kids down south and they know all about Maseratis and Bentleys and Range Rovers. The kids up north might see those things on television, but they just don’t matter to them. They didn’t matter to me as a kid and they still don’t as an adult. I’ve worked hard all my life, and I feel like I deserve things that will make me happy, but for me it’s more important to have hunting gear or a fishing pole.
When I go home, no one treats me any differently than they did before I made it in hockey. That speaks volumes about our people. I just want to be treated as the Jordin who grew up there. I don’t expect any higher praise or anything like that. The people in my community, in all of Nunavut, are regular folks. That’s in our blood and in our nature. You treat everyone else as you want to be treated. I love going home because I can enjoy life without people coming up to me and wanting to be my friend just because I play in the NHL.
It has been a long, tough journey from a small town in Nunavut to where I am now, and so far I’m the only one who has made it. I always tell myself that I’m just paving the way for the next young Inuk to come along and say, If he can do it, I can do it. It doesn’t matter where you come from. The mental and physical battles I endured growing up only led to bigger and better things. They prepared me for life. I dealt with a lot of family issues along the way but, looking back, I think that everyone has family issues and that I enjoyed a pretty good childhood. I look back on the hunting trips, the fishing derbies we all went out on together, the camping. Those are things not a lot of kids get to experience nowadays.
I wouldn’t take back anything that has happened to me in the past. It all happened and some of it was terrible. But it was a building block. I don’t hold a grudge against anyone who has done harm to me. Every individual takes a different path. My childhood and my teenage years have made me into the person I am today. I’m glad I got to face those hard times and experience all of those hardships. And in the end, I have to thank my parents. I love them to death. I can’t speak highly enough of them. I know that might seem strange to people, now that they have read about some of the things my parents put us through, but I still believe that they’re the greatest people I know. They have their own struggles and problems. I get that. I didn’t get that as a kid, but I do now. And there are experiences I’ve had with them—both good and bad—that I’m never going to forget. You’ve got to take that and learn from it.
In the end, I found a way to believe in myself. I learned to never give up. It’s been embedded in my heart ever since I was a fricking kid. I was always told I was too small and was never going to make it to the big leagues. But I had that drive, that motivation. It’s always been there. There were times when I wondered why. It took me years to realize that I was trying to prove something to others—and to myself. I wanted to show the whole damn world that it doesn’t matter what other people think. If you put your mind to it, the sky’s the limit. I’ve battled all my life. And I’m not about to stop now.
The difference is that I’ve become comfortable in my own skin. I’m true to myself, and I’m true to the people I love. I don’t use anything to hide anymore. This is me now. I’m just trying to lead by example and show everyone who ever doubted me. I’m going to do that by being honest with myself, first and foremost. I’ve said a lot of shit to a lot of people that I didn’t follow through on, because I thought I had better things to do—including partying to fill the void after Terence died. Now I can go to bed at night with no problem and not have a million things running through my mind.
But I dream of him. I dream of him all the time.
It’s weird. The dreams are usually about stuff we used to do. Like when we were out on the land, camping. In one dream, right before I wake up, he’s on our boat and I’m on land, and he’s kind of motoring away. I’m stuck on the land and he’s going off into his own world. I’ve had that dream on more than one occasion.
In another dream, we are walking around in a mall. I jump on the escalator and he stays at the bottom, and while I’m going up and away from him, he says, “Jordin, you can go your own way now.”
Or we’ll be walking down a street and I’ll turn a corner and he’ll just stop there. I’ll say, “Come on, let’s go. What are you doing?” And he’ll wave at me and say, “Go ahead. Go ahead.”
And then there is the one where we are out skydiving and we jump out of the plane together and we’re holding hands and then he lets my hand go and we float away from each other. We’re always going our separate ways before I wake up.
I’m not frightened by those dreams. I actually wish that they would happen more often, so that Terence and I could relive the good times we had together. I wake up and say, “Are you here?” Jennifer will ask me if I’m okay, and then I’ll tell her about the dream. She never met my brother, and I wish she could experience how I feel after those dreams.
It feels like Terence is still somewhere out there, like he ran away but he’s still somewhere in this world.
INDEX
Admirals (Milwaukee), 120, 133, 193, 211
Admirals (Norfolk), 90–92, 94
Alcohol use/abuse. See also Partying.
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), 162–164
Inuit communities and, 35
Jordin and, 33, 43–44, 52–56, 60–61, 65–67, 70–71, 77, 106, 137–138, 140,
142–149, 168– 169, 178, 205
Jordin’s parents and, 14–15, 29–32, 52, 57–61, 69–74, 77, 94, 103, 124
money issues and, 71
north vs. south, 53
Rankin Inlet and, 18–19, 53, 60–61
Terence and, 15, 52, 54, 60–61, 70–71, 95–96, 98–99, 102–103, 158–160
Victor Tootoo and, 151
violence and, 61, 74–77
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), 162–164
Ambien, 169, 170, 186
American Hockey League (AHL), 87–88
Abbotsford Heat, 212
Chicago Wolves, 211
Grand Rapids Griffins, 207– 210
Milwaukee Admirals, 120, 133, 193
Norfolk Admirals, 90–2, 94
American Idol, 136
Anaheim Ducks, 121, 125, 198–199
Armstrong, Colby, 81
Aucoin, Keith, 211
Babcock, Mike, 192–193, 195, 198– 200
Bagwell, Jeff, 154–155
Battle of the Blades, 187
Belak, Wade, 18–187
Bernard, Mark, 87–88
“Best Days of Your Life” (song), 140
Billet families
Murray and Karen Haukass, 45
Neil and Jeanine, 50–52, 54, 92, 95, 97, 100–102
Nigel and Kim, 51
Rose and Ed, 43–44
Blackhawks (Chicago), 92, 199
Blashill, Jeff, 210
Blues (St. Louis), 126
Boogaard, Derek, 132, 185
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