My buddies had to return to Calgary. But to me, being asked to be a roadie for Black Label Society was like being asked to play in an All-Star Game. You would never refuse that invitation.
I ended up being a roadie for five days, and I did everything a roadie does, including moving equipment and making sure band members had what they needed to put on a show.
Wylde used laminated-lyrics cards during the concert, and one of my jobs was going out and replacing them as the show progressed. I would be running out on stage with 10,000-plus screaming fans watching me. In that respect, it was just like playing a hockey game.
We also drank heavily. I remember one particular night when we stopped at a Hooters and the drinking put me over the edge. The drinkers included a cop/bodyguard named Phil and Zakk’s brother-in-law, Mark, who was the tour manager. They challenged Zakk and me to a beer-pitcher-chugging competition.
The beer of choice for the competition was Guinness Stout. That’s like dueling with long knives. There’s no margin for error when you’re chugging stout.
The competition lasted through six pitchers, and we found out later that Mark was cheating by going into the bathroom and throwing up after each round.
My puking didn’t come until a little bit later. On the tour bus, I crawled from the carpeted lounge area to the linoleum-floored kitchen area and puked everywhere.
The next memory I have is waking up on the tour bus, lying on a comfy couch with my head on a pillow. A blanket was covering me.
Needing to piss, I forced myself off the couch and discovered Zakk Wylde, the greatest guitarist in the world, sleeping on the floor below me with no pillow and no blanket. It was like he was my devoted dog watching over me.
“You all right, man?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Dude, thanks for taking care of me.”
“No problem,” he said. “We never leave a man behind.”
After five days, I left BLS. But by then I had hooked up with the band System of a Down, a California-based rock band also known as SOAD. I was just a tag-along with this group. I just drank, got high, and soaked in what it was like to be a rocker on the road. After a week of partying like a rock star, I literally jumped off the bus in Washington, D.C., and flew home.
During my entire 12 days away, I never called anyone at home. No one had any real idea where I was or what I was doing.
Poor Anna had no idea what she had signed up for when she married me.
When I returned home to Detroit, my mother; my sister, Melissa; and my ex-wife, Cheryl, staged an intervention at the Grinder Bat Cave in Warren.
I knew it was coming. As I mentioned earlier, watching Bob Probert’s downfall had taught me how far I could push the envelope. He showed me the line that shouldn’t be crossed, even though he crossed it often.
Throughout my career, I always recognized when I was at the edge of the cliff. Subconsciously, that may be the reason why I embarked on my music-fest bender. I probably needed one wild-ass escapade before returning to the world of responsible behavior.
My family convinced me to go to Hazelden in Minnesota, for a five-week rehabilitation program. It was my third trip to rehab. “Going off to summer camp,” I told my buddies.
What that meant was that I was going to be late for training camp, and I also wasn’t going to be in great shape. But at least I was going to be clean and sober.
I played it straight with the Flames. I called president and CEO Ken King and Darryl Sutter and explained my situation. Both of them assured me that my decision to enter rehabilitation wouldn’t impact my status with the team. They told me I had made the right decision. I entered rehab feeling positive about the fact that it would not have a negative impact on my career.
It seemed like there would be a seamless transition between playing for Sutter and playing for Jim Playfair, because Playfair had been Sutter’s assistant. He knew all of us, and I presumed he would see the same value in each of us that Sutter saw. My presumption turned out to be incorrect.
Playfair had been an assistant coach, but he had coached the defensemen, meaning we didn’t have frequent contact. But he had treated me with enough respect that I didn’t anticipate any difficulty playing for him. When I arrived after my stay at Hazelden, he sat me down and said he understood what I was going through. He told me his father had drinking issues. He assured me again that my status was the same as it was the previous season.
But I realized instantly that my place on Playfair’s team was not the same place I held on Sutter’s team. My status was different after I came back from rehab. Players treated me the same, but Playfair seemed to have a different attitude toward me.
Right or wrong, I just felt as if there was a wall up and I was on the outside looking in.
It is true that I wasn’t in the best condition of my career because I couldn’t skate while I was at Hazelden, but I wasn’t embarrassingly out of shape. Plus, I’d always possessed the ability to get by while I was getting into shape, and the coaches knew that. At that point in my career, I was 34 years old and I had accepted the reality that I was going to be an eight- to 10-minute-per-game role player.
But Playfair was playing me five minutes per game, as if I had no value other than to fight. I quickly lost interest. It was unsettling for me to feel as if what I had to offer to a team wasn’t appreciated.
Throughout my career, I was known as a loyal soldier. I would do anything for my team or any of my teammates. Loyalty is one of my strengths. When you treat me with respect, I’m all-in for you. But when I felt as if the coaches didn’t appreciate my abilities, my emotions would sag. That’s always been my Achilles heel. I need to feel some love coming from the coaches. I played like a commando every shift when I played for Scotty Bowman because I could feel that he appreciated what I could do, and cared about me as a person. I would have done anything for Darryl for the same reason.
But I didn’t feel any connection with Playfair. Maybe that’s my own insecurities talking. But that’s how I felt.
I did talk to Darryl Sutter about my situation, but he said he had to allow Playfair to make his own decisions about players’ playing time. Sutter is an honest man, and it was an honest answer. I expected that answer from him. He’s not the kind of man that would tell his coach who to play. Sutter has a black-and-white, straightforward approach about what’s right and what’s wrong. In his mind, GMs manage, coaches coach, and players play. Even though he respected me, he was not going to disrupt the natural order of things. I respected him for that.
To make my situation worse, I developed a hernia issue that required surgery. I ended up playing 32 games, averaging just over five minutes per game.
That was the last season of my contract with the Flames, and I was looking forward to a fresh start elsewhere. But NHL Players Association officials called me to tell me they had other plans for me.
I had again tested positive for marijuana use. This was not a new occurrence. I frequently tested posited for marijuana use during my career. I’m guessing 30 or more times I tested positive for marijuana. But marijuana is not a performance enhancing drug, which meant the league couldn’t suspend me for that alone.
The problem was that I had reached the point in my league-NHLPA mandated treatment phase that any substance abuse issues could prompt suspension.
Dan Cronin, director of the NHLPA substance abuse program, plus Dr. Brian Shaw and Dr. David Lewis, got me on a conference call and explained that I couldn’t sign with another team. I would not be allowed to play again until I completed treatment and proved I could stay clean. They’d made arrangements for me to have a two-month expenses-paid trip to the Canyon Treatment Center in Malibu, California.
This wasn’t a surprise to me. I knew the hammer was going to come down on me sooner or later, and I didn’t fight it. Although I’m an addict, I have always known when it was time to listen to the pe
ople trying to help.
This was my fourth trip to a rehab center, and this was by far the best place I had been. If you are trying to overcome your addiction, it seems like trying to do it in plenty of sunshine makes some sense.
At the time I entered the program, Anna and I had planned to have a real wedding ceremony, and the treatment center counselors even agreed to let us go ahead with those plans.
I was allowed to go back to Calgary to renew our vows in August of 2007. I’ve been married three times, and had five ceremonies. I’m really good at it.
But I had plenty of time to think while I was at the treatment center. And in those two months it occurred to me that my marriage to Anna wasn’t likely to work.
She wanted children, and I had been adamant with her that I didn’t want any more children. That edict was difficult for Anna to accept. It was always going to be a source of friction between us.
When I returned to Calgary after my treatment, I told Anna I needed to return to Detroit to re-connect with my children. She wanted to go with me, but I said that I needed to go alone. I said I would send for her once I re-established my relationship with my children. She wanted me to stay in Calgary and work on our marriage. She told me that if I left, we were finished.
While she was at work, I wrote her a goodbye note, packed up my Chevy Avalanche truck with as many of belongings as would fit, and started the 32-hour drive to Detroit.
I loved Anna. She was a great wife. She loved me. She adored me. The truth is she probably loved and adored me too much. She is a beautiful person. I never meant to hurt her. She deserved better than I could give her.
I cannot tell you one story of her doing anything wrong or hurtful. She was just a victim of circumstance. At that time in my life, I didn’t love myself so loving her was impossible. I was unfaithful to her. I had multiple affairs with ex-girlfriends and other random women on my trips to Michigan. She deserved much better than what I had to offer her at that time. She had conveniently been there for me at a time I was depressed. I never wanted to hurt her.
Although Anna initially accepted my demand that we would remain a childless couple, she eventually started to press the issue. Meanwhile, my ex-wife, Cheryl, had been pressuring me to return for the children’s sake. If I stayed in Calgary I wasn’t going to see my children much. That was certainly true. As I was trying to start a new life of sobriety, the pressure of dealing with Anna’s understandable desire for a family and my family issues in Michigan became unbearable.
It was years before I realized how badly I treated Anna. I believe my ex-wife manipulated me through guilt.
Today, I do spend time thinking about what I need to do to be a good father. I felt like I left both Cheryl and the kids in good financial shape after the divorce, but I don’t seem to get any credit for that. Although I was bankrupt, I made sure she and the kids were not. I made sure they were financially set so she would never have to get her first job ever, and so she could be home with the kids and still live very comfortably and lavishly. Even still though, today Cheryl has me battling in court over my pension and even recently went after me for child support. See, the problem I face now is that because of the money that I earned and gave to her she can afford the best and most expensive attorneys and I, on the other hand, can not. Ironic isn’t it?
Now I can imagine what Anna thought when I told her I was going to live with my ex-wife for the sake of my children. Guilt is a beast as strong as alcohol when it comes to controlling me.
When I returned to Detroit, I actually moved into the basement of Cheryl’s home. That wasn’t a wise decision because it brought me back into the drama that I’d been trying to escape when I left Cheryl.
The problem was that my mother and sister stuck by Cheryl throughout our marital difficulty. If I didn’t have some connection to Cheryl, then it was like I was ex-communicated. Because of their alliance with Cheryl, my family never really accepted my marriage to Anna. At that time of my life, it seemed important that I have the acceptance of my mother and sister.
My mother even flew to Minnesota to drive with me the rest of the way from Calgary.
The good news about Anna is that after I got out of her life she found the man she deserved to have. She finally had the baby she wanted, a boy named Declan. I’ve only talked to Anna twice since I left Calgary, but believe it or not, my current wife, Sheryl, has become friends with her. They started communicating because Anna realized that I had never signed divorce papers. They discovered they liked each other.
Sheryl tells me that Anna sounds content. That makes me ecstatic. She deserved to find the happiness I could not provide her.
I got out of rehab in September and I stayed in Calgary into November. When I started my trip back to Detroit, I already had a plan in my head about what I wanted to do next: I wanted to resume my NHL career.
While I was in rehab, I had been eating healthy and my weight was good. It’s funny what you remember. We were served ostrich for dinner one night at the Malibu treatment center. It was actually quite good.
When I was in rehab, I also befriended a Nigerian soccer player and he and I worked out together. I believed I could still play.
But I needed help to get back in the game. There were many people I could have called to help me, but there was only one I wanted to call. It was Kris Draper. I’d always had his back on the ice, and he always tried to have my back off the ice, even though I wasn’t always willing to accept his help.
I called him and asked him to meet me for lunch. We sat at the table, reminisced, and then I put it to him bluntly: “I need your help.”
“Whatever you need,” he said.
The only advice he gave me was to get rid of my red-tinted Mohawk haircut and not to wear my Grinder hat.
12. 2008
“Knock me down, gonna get back up, thought you seen the last of me but I ain’t had enough, come to town gonna get what’s mine … I’m a Detroit son of a bitch, no way you can fuck with this, got one chance left Im’a take it”
—“Detroit Son of a Bitch”
Dirty Americans
When you travel through life at 100 mph, you miss all the scenery. The first 15 years of my pro hockey career were a blur.
I was so busy being a player and sampling its rewards that I never enjoyed the ride. When Detroit general manager Ken Holland and his assistant Jim Nill told me after Thanksgiving in 2007 that they would consider re-signing me if I could prove I still had what it takes, it felt like I was getting a mulligan. At age 35, I was going to be back in the minor leagues, playing for $500 per week, for the Flint (Michigan) Generals of the International Hockey League.
I couldn’t have been happier.
After a divorce, a bankruptcy, the death of James Anders, and four trips to rehabilitation for substance abuse, I had re-discovered the joy of playing hockey. Sober and clear-headed, I’d been working out at Draper’s Core Training Facility in Troy. Dr. Jeff Pierce supervised my training, and I made it clear that I was ready to do whatever it was going to require for me to return to the NHL.
I didn’t miss any training sessions, and even Draper remarked on how committed I was to this comeback. He seemed impressed with my focus. This was not a half-assed effort on my part. This was a man who finally remembered how much he enjoyed playing hockey.
Holland didn’t promise me anything, but he didn’t need to. We had known each other for many years. When he said he would seriously consider signing me, I knew he meant it.
My friendship with Draper had lost its energy after I left Detroit. We would text, but I kept him at arm’s length. Honestly, I avoided contact with him when I was drinking because I didn’t want him to be disappointed in me. I knew he would call me out on my drinking. It meant a great deal to me that he was willing to go to Holland and vouch for the seriousness of my intent to return to the NHL.
Also, I wanted to re-
ignite my friendship with him because I need well-grounded people like Draper in my life. He was like a brother to me for so many years.
Draper was a part-owner of the Flint Generals, and he suggested I start my comeback there. I also knew another Generals owner, Ron Sanko, who was the team’s director of hockey operations. My favorite rock ’n’ roll bar, the Machine Shop, is in Flint. The great Michigan State guard Mateen Cleaves was from Flint. I was as stoked to go to Flint as LeBron James was to go to South Beach. I am serious when I say that. I was mentally invested into this comeback.
When I went to Flint, I was looking to accomplish two objectives—to get down to my ideal playing weight and to regain some confidence. Bothered by a sports hernia, I didn’t score a single goal in my 32 games with Calgary in 2006–07. I simply hadn’t played much in the past 18 months.
The Flint coach was Kevin Kerr, and I knew about him because he had played for the Windsor Spitfires from 1984 to 1987. I was four years younger and I remember watching Kerr terrorize opponents with his physical abilities and his hands in the Ontario Hockey League. He could score 20 goals and he could hammer guys. He amassed more than 700 penalty minutes in three seasons with the Spits.
Kerr registered 352 penalty minutes in his first pro season for Rochester in the AHL in 1987–88. He never made the NHL, but his legacy included a long list of victims in the minor leagues. He was my kind of coach. I knew we would get along.
I ended up playing 11 games for the Generals, and Kerr did me a great favor by giving me the ice time I needed to regain a strong conditioning level. In fact, I had more ice time per game than I’d had in my last three seasons in the NHL. It didn’t take me long to shed the extra pounds and to improve my conditioning.
To say I enjoyed my time in Flint would be an understatement. The team had a good mix of youngsters and veteran minor leaguers.
My Last Fight Page 12