by Sean Avery
“Yes, I know him, he’s my fucking teammate.”
“What’s he like, as a person?”
“He’s the kind of guy I’d like to be if I weren’t me.”
I didn’t actually say that, but it was true. That summer I spent a weekend with Steve and his awesome wife, Lisa, at their incredible home in Muskoka. They lived in the compound that housed the former Hudson Bay family home and had been redone by Lisa, who has great taste, and in the world of hockey wives that means she basically created the word “taste.” She could do that because she was married to the captain of the Red Wings and one of the greatest players in the history of the NHL. In other words, Steve and Lisa were allowed to stand out.
The trouble with hockey wives’ taste could be nature, but a lot of it is nurture. When you walk into players’ homes they look like they’re a recreation of a Pottery Barn showroom. They’re all the same, and even if a woman has great taste, it’s dangerous to express it because then it might seem as though you think you’re “better than them,” which is a big taboo. The last thing the league wants is for players to become powerful, or worse, interesting. Sergei Federov, who was hardly a rebellious outsider, would go to Paris in the summer to be with his girlfriend, tennis player Anna Kournikova, and rather than see this as a guy enjoying the bigger world, other players would assume he was putting on airs.
But Lisa and Steve epitomize the concept of “happy family,” and they are a rarity in pro sports. I wonder to myself during that weekend if I will ever have what they have, with the only exception being that I am starting to fantasize about meeting a woman who is powerful and successful and beautiful—and not Canadian. My reason for her not being Canadian is that I’m starting to crave exposure to the rest of the world and don’t see myself on the lake every summer for the rest of my life. Of course, neither might a Canadian girl whom I could love, so the idea has a few holes in it. But the main point is that after New York and LA I am beginning to imagine my life on a much bigger stage.
That notion came home to roost at an end-of-summer party we had at the Beaches house. As the festivities rolled along, people started to complain about someone locking themselves in the washroom. When people would knock on the door all that came back were grunts. This went on for ten minutes until I’d had enough and started to bang on the door, telling this person—who I assumed was an invited guest—to wrap it up and get out of there.
All of a sudden the door opens and some girl is sitting on the toilet, weaving in and out of consciousness. I made the decision to call the cops and have them take care of it so nothing would go wrong on our end— I didn’t know what she’d ingested or how seriously she was impaired, so I left it to the pros. To this day I have no idea who this girl was or where she came from, but I hope if I have a daughter, she never gets that wasted. It was a pretty stark reminder of what I wanted to leave behind and what I wanted to accomplish. It made me focus even more on making the upcoming season the best one yet.
7
TWO IS THE MOST DANGEROUS LEAD IN HOCKEY
In September 2002, after what seems like the longest summer of my life (but is actually the shortest because we played until June), I go to the Red Wings’ training camp. This year, I don’t have to go to rookie camp. I get to report to the main camp like the rest of the guys who play for the team that just won the Stanley Cup.
Things have changed a bit. Scotty Bowman has retired, and one of our assistant coaches, Dave Lewis, is now the boss. And just before the first game of the season, I find a poem in my dressing room stall, as do all the other Red Wings. It’s from Dave Lewis. It’s about a page long, and it starts like this:
This is the time. This is the time when it starts.
This incredible dream, it never goes away . . .
It was something so unique that even guys who’d been playing for fifteen years had never seen it done before. And since Dave left the poem in our stalls just before a game, we didn’t sit back and talk about it. But maybe that was the point. He’d coached for so long with Scotty, who used to do things to distract guys from thinking so that they could just play, so maybe this was Dave’s way of doing the same thing, literally getting us on the same page as him from the start of the season.
Later in my career, when I was with LA, Andy Murray would put quotes in his daily notes to us, and you’d pay zero respect to them because you knew Andy was just ripping them from some quote website. It was his way of trying to motivate a bunch of guys he had no idea how to motivate because he’d never been in our shoes. Dave Lewis played fifteen years in the NHL and he wrote a poem for us. We paid attention.
Dave Lewis had a tough job because not only was he taking over from Scotty Bowman but he’d been an assistant coach with the Wings since 1988, after retiring from the NHL. The assistant coach’s job, among other things, is to bridge the relationship between the head coach and the players. When you move from assistant to head coach, you have to adjust your friendship with the players because now you’re not the bridge, you’re the boss.
Dave was an outgoing man of few words. He was pleasant and personable, but he didn’t yammer at you with nonsense. He knew the game, he knew how players thought, and he knew he didn’t need to give us endless tutorials. He just needed to bring out our best, and the Wings were a team that wanted to be the best, so it was a smooth transition between the legend that was Bowman to Dave Lewis.
My training camp in 2002 was very similar to the others I’d attended in that it usually consisted of me playing three games with a goal and a couple of assists, a couple of fights, and a ten-minute misconduct penalty for driving the opposing squad so crazy that they were thinking more about how to kill me and less about how to win the game.
I am feeling very confident as the season starts because I know I’ve raised the level of my game, which is what any player wants to do going into a new season. Now I’d like to raise the amount of my paycheck, too.
And I hope that the agency representing me does as well. Newport Sports Management is the biggest and most powerful in the sport, and my agent, Pat Morris, did a good job of getting me out of some tough situations I’d put myself in during the course of my career. I certainly made him work for his money. Pat Morris was one of the biggest agents at Newport, which, as the largest hockey agency on the planet, is actually a hockey player factory—they sign a lot of players to their stable, from superstars to grinders, and the amount of money you make dictates the amount of time you get from your agent. Morris was close with Chris Pronger, Brad Richards, and the Primeau brothers—they were his core group. I wouldn’t hear from Pat for months, and then he’d pop up when it was contract time. There were times when I couldn’t get Pat on the phone for a few days.
He wasn’t a former player but a lawyer. He was a very nice guy, and I honestly believed that he cared about the players, but it was in a “business first” kind of way. I’m sure he did stuff for me behind the scenes when I got into my various jams, but I wasn’t a member of Pat’s inner circle, so we didn’t spend a lot of time talking about anything other than money.
The only time you ever heard guys talking about their agents was when they were bitching because they couldn’t get their agent on the phone. Or because they hadn’t heard from them in years, if a guy had a long contract.
The agency game is a racket, run by the good old boys who have so many side deals with NHL general managers that it puts a sports book to shame. And while I get that it’s good business in the big picture to keep the GMs friendly, players can’t help but wonder when they get traded or have to go to salary arbitration whether their own agent is sacrificing them to keep some other more lucrative situation in play. That said, agents don’t really give a shit what happens to their players, apart from the guys who make in excess of $60 million. They’re all very motivated by an extra zero or three before the decimal point.
There’s so much that agents could be doing for
players to help them make the transition after their careers are done, but mostly they choose to do things that fatten their wallets. For example, Newport had a financial division where they opened bank accounts and credit cards for players, and set up your car insurance and bought bullshit mutual funds that made you a fraction of what a proper family office would. A family office—which is a boutique service tailored to manage the financial life of a high-net-worth person or family—would also help a player with estate planning and creating a diversified portfolio, the stuff a guy needs when the game is done.
Newport took 3 percent of the gross contract and then players could pay an additional 2 percent of assets under management—so a player who had stashed $10 million with them would pay $200,000 for the privilege. They would also charge 20 percent gross on endorsements.
Another example of the greed and laziness of these guys lies in disability insurance. Some players take out this kind of insurance to make sure their contracts don’t evaporate should some goon cross-check them head-first into the boards. Sports agents often obtain this insurance through a broker, who may, coincidentally, be a former player and who adds a percentage to what you’d pay an established insurance agency. What does the agent get out of this? Don’t know. Just asking. I found out that all you have to do is call Lloyd’s of London directly and buy your own insurance at a cheaper rate from them, because that’s what my friend Adam Campbell did when he started managing my money and that of other players.
Newport Sports is the last place I’d allow my son to be represented. It’s a tough call when you’re starting out because you need the professional help—but with agencies like Newport, when you really need help, it’s not there. If I had a son, I’d send him to Ryan Barnes, who became an agent after his NHL career. I know that if he had fifty players on his roster, each and every one of them would get his full, honest attention. He knows the game, and he was the best of teammates. And he understands better than anyone that a player never really knows how long the ride is going to last until it’s all over. Most players don’t see the end coming, and most don’t have any help planning that transition. I know that Ryan does because he’s been through it. There were times I got frustrated enough to think I should go into the sports management business when I’m done playing.
Which is another way of saying be careful what you wish for because I got sent down to fucking Cincinnati again shortly after the 2002–03 season started.
Did I see this one coming? Nope. It was like I’d just poked my head up to look at my second season as a secure NHLer and the Wings had whack-a-moled me. It hurt, but I had to look at it like a professional. Plus, it wasn’t really a big surprise. Not when you looked at the lineup the Wings were dressing in October 2002:
Chris Chelios
Mathieu Dandenault
Pavel Datsyuk
Kris Draper
Sergei Fedorov
Jiří Fischer
Tomas Holmström
Brett Hull
Igor Larionov
Nicklas Lidström
Kirk Maltby
Darren McCarty
Luc Robitaille
Brendan Shanahan
Henrik Zetterberg
If I’m Dave Lewis looking down the bench to see who goes on the ice next, I’d be embarrassed by the richness of choice. Lewis was a very good coach, but even John Tortorella would have to work awfully hard not to win with this crew (still, he could manage it). And while I was very, very disappointed to be back in Cincinnati again, I knew it was just a matter of time. The Red Wings sent me down to get in some games while they got rid of some bodies and contracts. And sure enough, I was called back up at the end of October, and then the Wings told me the magic words: “Find a place to live.”
I was ecstatic. This meant I was going to be around on a more permanent basis, although at this point in my career there were never any guarantees. So I kept a travel bag packed, just in case.
One day in the dressing room before practice, Brett Hull asked me where I planned to live. I told him I didn’t know, so he said, “Why don’t I ask Darcie if can live in the apartment above my garage?” I accepted on the spot.
Brett rented a house behind the Blockbuster Video in downtown Birmingham, which was a hip and fancy suburb of Detroit. Everybody called his place “the Jukebox” because that’s what it looked like. I mean, it had fluorescent lighting around the border. There were certainly occasions when we made the place rock.
The daily routine was fairly consistent. In the morning I’d always pull either the Firebird or the Navigator out of the garage into the driveway and turn the heat on so it was warm when Mr. Hull was ready to go. We’d make a quick stop at Starbucks and then we were off to the rink, always being among the first to arrive, just after the trainers and Cheli. We’d practice, work out, and then have lunch with some of the guys. We’d drive home for a nap, and then meet for dinner in whatever joint Brett and his girlfriend (now wife), Darcie, were craving that night—usually Mexican or sushi. We’d then hit a movie or head back home to settle in and watch TV. Hully rarely watched sports, with the exception of golf or football. I don’t ever remember watching a hockey game with him.
One of our morning drives to the rink was memorable because of the wretched state Brett was in. Darcie told me before we left for practice that he’d been up all night rolling around on the floor, moaning and clutching his stomach, and when he could speak, was strongly of the opinion that he was dying.
During the thirty-minute drive to the rink Brett was drinking his coffee and trying to figure out what was wrong with him. “Jesus, Aves, I feel rough,” he said to me. “Don’t know if I can survive a practice without puking my guts out. Think I should just sit in the sauna and sweat out whatever the fuck this is.” Hully was always game to go, and seeing him like this made me worry.
In the end, he decided to battle through practice, and told me to hustle up afterward so we could get on the road home. It was obvious he needed some sleep. As we walked out to the car I checked my phone and saw that I had fourteen missed calls from one of my best buddies, who’d made the drive from Toronto the day before to watch the game and do a little partying afterward.
When the boys had arrived in Detroit they’d swung by the Jukebox around 5 P.M. to drop their bags before the game. They also dropped some cookies in the fridge and then headed to the Joe. After the game, we had the usual Friday night adventure of wine, women, and general mayhem.
Brett had gone home after dinner that night and was delighted to find those cookies my friends had left in the fridge. Well, it turned out those cookies were packed with weed, and Brett ate two of them, which means he ate enough weed to put a guy in the hospital. When he was rolling around on the floor in the middle of the night he must have truly believed he was dying. I can’t fathom what getting that stoned, without even knowing you’re stoned, must feel like.
I waited a few days to tell him, until after he’d buried two goals and notched one assist in a game and was feeling pretty good. Brett was untouchable after a game like that and you could tell him pretty much anything. When I revealed the source of his near-death experience, he was so happy to know what had happened to him. He’d thought he had some awful disease that hadn’t been diagnosed. He laughed about it, even. “I didn’t expect cookies would be the way I’d get high on pot for the first time in seventeen years.” And thank goodness he still had the touch—700 goals and counting. I could have fucked everything up for him—and for the history of hockey—thanks to my cookie-baking buddies from the north.
I was becoming really good friends with Boyd Devereaux, and one day he asks me before practice if I want to go see a Canadian band called Our Lady Peace. I’ve been a fan of theirs since I was seventeen. Instant yes. Boyd is one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met, and he’s really well-versed in culture—from literature to music to world affairs. He’s a far cry f
rom your average puck-chaser and I’m flattered that he thinks me worthy of his company. I also want to learn what he knows.
The OLP show was brilliant, as expected, and after the encore we got to go backstage, which was a big thrill but also a little daunting. I felt like a groupie waiting to meet a stranger whose performance you loved. That can go one of two ways: they could be a total asshole, which would instantly change my perception of their music, or they could be the kind of person you were glad you knew.
That night I got lucky and met a lifelong friend in OLP drummer Jeremy Taggart who, aside from having music instead of blood in his veins, is one of the most fun humans I have ever had the pleasure of knowing and taught me more about music than I could ever dream of.
My first real Rock Star Party was courtesy of Bob Ritchie, aka Kid Rock, and it began as a team bonding exercise, organized by Cheli, who was pretty much the team’s chief executive of fun. I’d first met Kid Rock at Cheli’s Chili Bar after a game, and despite his rock star snarl and American Badass persona, I couldn’t believe how normal and nice he was in person. At this point, Kid Rock, or “Bobby” as he was introduced to me, has a few Grammy nominations and is a very fast-rising star in the music world. I find it amazing that I get to meet him just because I play a little hockey, even though I’m no different from most of his twenty-two-year-old fans who like to drink and screw. “American Badass” is not an act, and what you see is what you get.
The Wings were an older team and a lot of the guys had families, so Cheli put something together for those of us who weren’t at home with the wife and kids. We had a few days off between games, including a rare Sunday of rest, so after practice on Saturday Cheli rounded up about ten single guys and we loaded onto a party bus. We drove around to our favorite bars, picking up a few people from each of them as we cruised through the outskirts of Detroit, with the final stop being Rock’s house in Oakland County, which is about a half-hour drive north of where I was living with Brett and Darcie.
