by Sean Avery
He never did get his five-on-three, though. At that moment, Dominik Hašek was using a perfectly legal stick. I mean, he used an illegal stick all the time. But not in that game. Cheli told me that sometime before Game 3, someone from the Avs snuck into our dressing room at the Pepsi Center in Denver with a measuring tape. He confirmed what was probably obvious to the naked eye: Dom’s goal stick blade was too wide. So the intel goes into Hartley’s file. But he doesn’t use it in Game 3, doesn’t use it in Game 4, doesn’t use it in Game 5.
Game 6, though, down 2–0, he decides it’s time to pull the trigger. What he doesn’t know is that sometime before the game, the locker attendant assigned to our dressing room decided he didn’t like this spycraft. He pulled Cheli aside and told him what was being planned.
Cheli warned Dom, and the illegal stick was left in the room when Hašek hit the ice. As hockey fans know, there’s also a two-minute penalty for asking for a stick measurement if the stick turns out to be legit. Hašek got a shutout with his legal stick as we won the game 2–0. I think Cheli ended up giving the room attendant some form of paper thank-you which was “thanked but not accepted.” We call that “the Love of the Game.”
6
STANLEY CUP SUMMER
I never did play again that year. Did I feel sorry for myself that my leg blew up a few days before the playoffs started? Not at all. Any idea how many minor hockey players actually have a career in the NHL? About .002 percent of them. And how many of those win the Stanley Cup their first year in the league? You get the point. I wasn’t moping around the Wings’ dressing room. I’d just won the fucking lottery.
It was pretty much a blur from then until the Stanley Cup parade. I used to drink alcohol like most hockey players. Yeah, twenty-two-year-olds like to drink, and yeah, Canadians know how to put away some beers. That’s the baseline. Pro hockey players are in another league altogether.
It seemed to me that the best players in the world are the guys who like to throw them back the most, sort of like some genius artists who need to lose themselves in booze and drugs once they’ve finished creating art. It’s as if reality just isn’t interesting enough. But despite what you might expect from me, I’m not a boozehound. True confession: I don’t really like the taste of alcohol. I’m more a “dry vices” kind of guy, but firing up a joint wasn’t really an option around the NHL.
I remember the afternoon before the Stanley Cup parade, when Cheli said he was coming to pick me up so that we could go out and get relaxed before the city showered us with adulation (and more booze). I have a major-league sweet tooth, so I poured myself half a glass of amaretto and half a glass of Dr. Pepper and slugged it back to get a protective little buzz going. There was absolutely no way I was going to keep up with Cheli.
Cheli was a beer guy to start, and then he’d get into tequila or Jameson, and then he’d black out. When he got really bad you’d have to carry him out of the place or he’d just sleep there. Then he’d wake up in the morning and he’d shake the dust off and go to the rink and he’d be the hardest working guy in practice. Clone his DNA and you’d have a race of supermen.
So the day before the Stanley Cup parade in 2002 we went over to Eminem’s house with Lord Stanley’s jug. Eminem lived in a rich suburb of Detroit in the biggest house I’d ever seen. He didn’t have gold lions or a shark in the pool or anything like that, it was just this massive house and him.
I don’t know how we ended up there or who set it up, but the whole thing was really awkward, actually, as Emimen didn’t know anything about hockey. It was a really more like a photo-op for everyone. He’d just become famous, and he had a lot of hard-core hip hop guys hanging around. When you meet famous people it always cuts one of two ways: either they wish they were professional athletes or they don’t care about sports at all. Eminem was the latter.
So I left Eminen’s place to run around town with Cheli, and then Sergei Federov joined us, and we ended up at my townhouse overlooking the mighty and beautiful Detroit River. I’d moved into the condo from the hotel after I’d made the Wings for good, and my mom, Marlene, and father, Al, had come down to see their boy celebrate his team’s Stanley Cup championship. Cheli’s the kind of guy who could sit down and have a beer with my dad and me, and it would seem completely normal. Because it was. No one was pretending to be someone else.
I was very glad that my parents were staying with me, because I was conked out on the bathroom floor when my mother woke me up at 9 A.M. on the day of the parade. Fortunately for both Marlene and myself, I was in my tighty whities, but I had no idea how I wound up on the bathroom floor. Well, I did, but no specific memory of what had happened.
And now I realized to my horror that I was late to the Stanley Cup parade. My head was a swamp. Just getting out the door was going to be an accomplishment.
It’s not like they were going to delay the parade until I arrived, so I thought that I’d just sneak onto a float or car when I caught up with it. But the parade was running late, too, so I made it in the end. They gave us each our own car to ride in—a Thunderbird convertible—and I brought Leslie, who ran the family room for the Red Wings, along with me, because that’s the kind of atmosphere the Wings created, and I thought she should be there.
Ford had launched their retro Thunderbird model earlier that year, but they put Scotty in the original car from 1955. We were all chauffeured down Woodward Avenue from “Hockeytown,” a bar that the Red Wings’ owner, Mike Illitch, built across from Comerica Park. It was a short parade, just the one mile down Woodward into Hart Plaza, where they had set up a stage.
I had no idea what a Stanley Cup parade was like. There were two million people in downtown Detroit, all there because of us. I’d never seen that many people in one place. The Plaza was packed and the sun was hot and I was guzzling water from a bottle just to keep myself from passing out, but when I was introduced to the crowd as one of the Black Aces by the announcer, and he said that they were going to be hearing a lot more from us, I felt as if I’d played every single playoff game for the Wings and scored the Cup winner. It was a thrill like I had never experienced, and it was also overwhelming.
The noise, the people, and the fact that the Stanley Cup was the reason for it all was just staggering to me, because I was still a fan. So you could say I was a fan at my own Stanley Cup parade, and that’s what I remember most about it—watching me, watching it, all in awe. I didn’t even think of all those people who told me I’d never make it. I just thought about next season, and winning this thing again. Of course, I never would win it again, but that’s the nature of the beast. When you’re twenty-two you think you’re immortal and that the Stanley Cup is yours for the taking every season. But those seasons go by fast and that Cup is very, very hard to win. So looking back, I’m very glad that I made it to that parade because there wouldn’t be any others.
A few days later, I’m working out with Drapes at a gym in Detroit when he mentions that he’s going to New York to model tuxedos. Oh, and he’s signed me up too. I didn’t know there was such a thing as “Wedding Week” on Good Morning America, but suddenly I was part of it. This is so surreal on so many levels that I just say “Sure.” By the way, no one minds being told that they have what it takes to be a model.
As it turned out, I was a model on TV for all of about twenty seconds on that trip. No one on set cared about Sean Avery or Kris Draper, and there was no small talk about the Stanley Cup. Why the team or the league wanted us there, I have no idea. But I learned a lot from being on the other side of the camera. Strutting around under the TV lights, I realized there was no way anyone watching Good Morning America would have any idea what I was thinking. You can’t figure someone out by watching them on television. In that moment I understood the complete rift between what someone looks like and who they really are.
It occurred to me that models always look like they’ve got their shit together, but that was not how I
was feeling. Even for a guy who’d spent the previous year jetting around and staying in luxury hotels, the St. Regis off Madison Ave was a cut above. It made me realize that I was still just a suburban kid figuring this world out. (Even the prostitutes were elite—not the usual suicide blonde draped in too much faux gold, but more like a hot pharmaceutical rep waiting for a meeting.) I had the same experience walking around Soho, which is the coolest part of New York with its cobblestone streets and old loft-style buildings that rise up six stories. The people walking the streets are different here than in Detroit, or Scarborough. They just seem so confident, as if they each own a piece of this amazing city—I don’t mean real estate, but the “anything is possible” sense of the place. I mean, if you walked around dressed in black from top to bottom in Scarborough or the Motor City people would offer their condolences and ask where the funeral was happening. But in New York, it looks clean and elegant. I had to admit, it was sort of intimidating.
I may have looked like a model that day, but I knew I was the same guy who had to wear two undershirts after gym class to stop the sweat from seeping out. Part of my job is to figure other people out and you can’t do that if you bullshit yourself. I wasn’t walking around Manhattan feeling like a big shot. I was taking notes on all I had to learn if I wanted to fit in here.
Well, maybe more than just fit in. As I walked back to the hotel from Columbus Circle after the GMA gig I see, in my mind’s eye, a billboard with my face on it. I feel like I’ve just taken the smallest peek into the mind of New York. Now that I’ve glimpsed its power and passion and its massive scale of possibility, I want to come back and stay longer so that I can see how far I can push myself.
I also remember realizing that the NHL had no idea how to promote itself. No idea. We’d just been on network television, and no one even mentioned our names. Only people who already knew us would have cared. That’s how the NHL is—only people who already care about it will watch it. If you want to grow—and that’s what businesses are supposed to want, right?—then what you need are personalities. Heroes, villains, people for the fans to focus on. But the NHL is no good at creating character. So if I want attention, then I’ll have to create a character for myself.
• • •
Not long after my first modeling gig I was on a plane again with Kris Draper. He and his wife, Julie, and I flew out to Los Angeles to go to Cheli’s Stanley Cup party at his beachfront HQ in Malibu. Cheli and I were the same kind of social animal and were drawn to each other. He hung out with me because I was always available and I could keep the insane hours that he kept. He was energized by my energy, and I was energized by his diverse interests.
We stayed at the W Hotel in Brentwood, which was close to Luc Robitaille’s house, which he’d kept after being traded to Detroit in 2001 after twelve seasons with the Kings (and a couple with the Rangers and one with Pittsburgh; Luc would go back to LA in 2004). Luc was having his Stanley Cup party on the Friday night, so we had the weekend pretty much covered.
Luc’s party was a total family affair, with guys and their wives and girlfriends and parents and kids. He had an In-N-Out Burger truck in his driveway during the party.
All I knew at the time was that I’d stepped into a much bigger world than the one I knew, and Detroit was already huge compared to the world I’d come from. Jerry Bruckheimer is at Luc’s party, and Bruce McNall and Chad Lowe (Rob’s brother). Luc’s wife, Stacia, is a former Laker Girl (cheerleader for the basketball team) and a lot of her nicely turned out girlfriends are in attendance. So I’m partying with a bunch of celebrities and NBA cheerleaders and taking it all in—because I don’t fit in. Not even close. I was wearing a golf shirt, tucked in, with jeans and loafers. To all those fine SoCal babes who are there I looked like a hockey player who had some money but no idea what to do with it. If I was five years older and more experienced I’d have had the pick of the litter, but I’m still a rookie and if the lady hasn’t worn a jersey to some sort of sporting event in her life, then right now I probably don’t have a shot.
It’s also my first time in Malibu, with the drive from Westwood down Sunset Boulevard to the ocean and then along the Pacific Coast Highway—or “PCH” to those who know her well—feeling like it’s straight out of a movie, which of course it has been, many times. It’s a little like being on set again, and it gets me thinking the way I had been back in New York (another city I really only knew from movies and cop shows). Seeing yourself in a place you always kind of imagined as fake and realizing it’s real gives you a whole new sense of what’s possible. I mean, these gleaming beachfront homes of glass and steel—they’re real. If I work hard, I can have one. My friend has one.
It’s the same thing with the guest list. Rocky was at Cheli’s party, as in Sly Fucking Stallone, here at the same party as Sean Avery from Scarborough, Ontario. So are Hilary Swank, and Tom Hanks, and Kid Rock, and Cuba Gooding. Wayne Gretzky is here. As I walk down to the beach, I meet two magnificent human specimens, and I recognize the incredibly beautiful five-eleven brunette—a cross between a Greek goddess and the sexiest All-American girl from small-town Oklahoma—as Gabby Reece. She is the most famous pro volleyball player in the history of the sport and she’s married to the most famous big wave surfer on the planet, and probably the best-looking man I’ve ever seen, Laird Hamilton. They’re having a conversation that’s so animated and joyful it seems like they just met.
But because it was Cheli, it was a family beach party with the Stanley Cup. There were kids romping in the water, and people hanging out on lounge chairs soaking up the sun and some beers, and the vibe was very friendly and earthy, even if the star power was high. Watching the waves come in, I wasn’t congratulating myself for having made it this far. Trust me, I knew I wasn’t Chris Chelios. But seeing all this—seeing this world and the people in it—made me realize just how much is possible. More than ever, I wanted to figure this all out. I wanted to be part of this world.
Hard work separates those who truly rise above and stand out from those who merely get by. Not hard work as in showing up to the same job on time for twenty-seven years, which is a fine thing and absolutely an achievement (if you can find an employer that will keep you for nearly three decades without outsourcing you). I mean the kind of hard work that leaves you alone at night while your college peers are doing keg stands and your grown-up friends are taking a well-earned breather. I mean the kind of hard work that most people just won’t do.
That takes desire. Raw, unstoppable desire. Driving back to the hotel in LA, I look at the Pacific Ocean lit by the moon and stretching off into forever, and I know that desire is not going to be a problem.
• • •
After Cheli’s party I flew home to Toronto and used the roughly $20,000 bonus that each Red Wing received for winning the Presidents’ Trophy to rent a house in the east end neighborhood of Toronto known as the Beaches. Ten years earlier, while strolling through the Beaches with my mom and dad, I told them that when I made the NHL I was going to buy a house there and have them over for dinner, but they’d have to go home afterward because I was going to be with my friends. I was twelve years old when I made this grand pronouncement.
That summer was as good as it gets for a twenty-two-year-old guy. I had two of my best friends living with me, guys I’d played junior hockey with who were hoping to land in the NHL, and from Monday through Thursday we had a fairly standard routine: 6 A.M. wake-up, followed by a track or gym workout from 7 A.M. to 11 A.M. A quarter-mile is one full lap around a track, which is also 400 meters. For twelve years, quarter-mile runs—and I mean runs, we’d do them in ninety seconds—were an integral part of my summer training. They provided me and my training partner, Kris Draper, with a tool to push ourselves and each other to become stronger and stronger year after year. We’d run a quarter, then move on to the next one, and onward until we’d done ten. When your heart rate hits 195 beats per minute the dry heaves or outright pukes w
ould start. Drapes and I had some epic battles on the track in those summers, and that training and the pain of it were critical for me becoming a NHL player.
Of course, once the run was done, my buddies and I would hit the gym for a couple of hours to lift weights. One thing hockey players do is take a bar that you’d bench-press with and power-clean it. So you lift 145 pounds above your head, then drop the bar onto your shoulder, then jump up onto boxes three feet high, then jump back down. We’d do eight of those box jumps.
After knocking off on Thursday we’d head to Muskoka, which is Ontario’s famous lake district. We’d stay either near the Kee in Bala or at the Sherwood Inn on Lake Joe, with either place soon turning into “Animal House.” Bala is a tiny town on a huge lake three hours from the nearest city, but the Kee is a legend. I mean, Drake, Rush, the Ramones, Snoop Dogg, and tons of huge bands have played in this little bar. That’s how good the party is.
We would go to all the local lake bars, and because Canada is Hockey Nuts I was almost guaranteed to be recognized, which meant I could get anything (within reason, though reason can have a shifty boundary). A hockey player in Canada in high summer can pretty much do whatever he wants. He can take all his clothes off and dance naked under the moon on the deck; he can fuck/drink/snort his mind out in the bedroom, on the beach, in the parking lot. You have your pick of women—married, single, in between—and if your taste runs to men, well, they’re available too, though not once in my entire hockey career did I ever meet a player who was out as gay, and that’s possibly because the standard insult for everything and everyone in hockey is “Fag!” I mean, you’d have no chance.
Hockey players are the hardest partying athletes of the four major league sports, hands down, and summer in Canada for a hockey player is one big buffet of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll. At that age I also wanted to be recognized, and I came to like talking to starry-eyed Canadians (I mean, that was me in Los Angeles a couple of weeks earlier) about the NHL, and what it was like, and did I know Stevie Y?
