by Sean Avery
I suppose that I’d have been better off in the eyes of many if I’d bit my tongue and played the constant cheerleader role, but that would have been dishonest. Just because you’re pulling down more money in a month than most people make in a year doesn’t give you the right to consider everything you do to be beyond criticism. I was there to win, and I was not cool with a teammate letting me down. The more I won, the more money I’d make, the more opportunities I’d have to explore life, and the more women I would have in bed—for a night, for a week, and one day, forever.
Andy Murray, my coach in Los Angeles, was, as I mentioned, a puzzle—to put it mildly. I don’t really know where to begin to explain this guy, so I’ll start by saying that he was fired on March 21, 2006, even though our team was 37-28-5 and poised to make the playoffs. Why fire a winning coach? I have no idea.
He was the most prepared coach I’ve ever seen. He created these detailed scouting sheets that he’d slide under hotel-room doors the night before a game, and they were so annoying and mind-numbing that guys would stuff towels under their door to keep them out.
Andy had a very deep voice that became very high when he got angry, so he sounded like a girl when he was yelling at us. He was five-eight and maybe 130 pounds, and he was so pale that he was almost translucent. He always wore an LA Kings golf shirt and slacks. He looked like an elementary school math teacher who was looking for his compass and pencils to draw up pretty plays. (Scotty Bowman, on the other hand, looked like an MIT math professor.)
Andy would have had a tough time playing in a beer league because he could barely skate or handle a puck, so it was pretty rich to have him yelling at us for making a bad play or not skating hard enough. You don’t have to be a hockey superstar to be a coach—in fact, it’s probably better if you’re not, because superstars don’t have to think about how they play—but you’d better have some sense of your own strengths and weaknesses.
The Kings’ GM, Dave Taylor, hired Andy after he won a championship with Shattuck-St. Mary’s, the best high school hockey team in the U.S.A. Taylor was a mild-mannered guy who had a serious stammer that vanished only when he gave a speech. Between him and Andy, the Kings didn’t present the players with anything to fear, and players sometimes need to be a little bit afraid to motivate them to find the next gear.
The LA Kings drafted Andy Murray’s son Brady in the 2003 NHL Entry Draft while Andy was the coach of the team. Talk about awkward. Did Andy and Dave Taylor actually think people were going to believe them when they said Brady Murray was the best player available when the Kings were called to the podium to make their sixth pick of the draft? I mean, Dustin Byfuglien, Brian Elliott, Jaroslav Halák, Joe Pavelski, and Tobias Enström, all NHL All-Stars, were still available, and Brady Murray played four games for the Kings and then wound up playing somewhere in Switzerland.
I never saw Andy in the weight room, and I never saw him with his shirt off or naked in the steam room or shower, like you’d see other coaches. I’m pretty sure I never saw him drink a beer or a glass of wine or smoke a cigar with the other coaches around a fancy fire pit at a hotel on the road. It was very difficult for Andy to say the word “fuck” and that alone was probably enough to prevent guys from taking him seriously.
In fact, he never swore. He was a Bible thumper, though he never thumped it at me. If we ever saw him in a restaurant it was extremely uncomfortable for both parties, because we assumed he was counting our beers or glasses of wine. But because he rarely went beyond the rink or the hotel, it wasn’t a common occurrence.
Andy lived in a suite at the Hilton Garden Inn beside our practice rink, which is beyond weird when you have a wife and family, but his wife lived back in Minnesota. I don’t remember seeing her in LA at any point, which doesn’t mean that she was never there, but if she’d been around even a little bit we would have known.
As much as Andy Murray and I were complete opposites, he must have seen that I could be an effective player because I found a nice spot playing on the left wing with Éric “Belly” Bélanger at center and right-winger Ian “Lappy” Laperrière on the third line. They were both from Quebec, but really polar opposites. Lappy was charged with looking after Belly, because Bélanger was very easily distracted, shall we say. He liked to have a very good time off the ice. Lappy’s job was to make sure that Belly’s extracurricular fun wasn’t going to land him in the kind of trouble that would screw up the game of his linemate and babysitter.
Belly was also a bit of a sulker at times, because he had been a great offensive center and now he was being asked to play a defensive game. But he was a great two-way player. Laperrière played a very similar game to mine, full out, so we were a hard line to play against, but I also think Lappy didn’t like me for that very same reason. I was younger, and a challenger. That said, he would be the first guy into the scrum to back me up if I started something, and vice versa.
We are the Kings’ checking line, which means we’re tasked with playing against the opposing team’s top line, and if we do a successful job at keeping them off the score sheet then that will almost always give our guys a much better shot of skating away after sixty minutes with a W. But we’re more than clock killers. We also generate offense, and I like playing with these guys. Belly is a very good face-off man, one of the best, and so is Lappy, and when they’re not fighting with each other in French—on the ice, on the bench, in the locker room—we do very good work on the ice. We were a very good line, and that was new to me because I’d found myself an NHL role—we were on the ice during the last minutes of the game to protect our lead, and people could see that I was actually an NHL player of value. I’m getting attention.
I’m also doing a fairly good job at pretending that I’m not starry-eyed as I drive around Hollywood, but the truth is I’m still so green in Cali and all that comes with it. It was a step moving from small-town Ontario to Detroit, but this is like moving to another planet, where the rules are all about how you’re seen. So I decide to make myself as visible as possible, off the ice as well as on it.
I’ve taken measures to fit in, starting with something I always recommend when you’re new to a city or country: make the most of your wardrobe, with whatever budget you have. Your wardrobe is a big piece of your confidence, and looking good feels good. In LA, I need something efficient but stylish in an all-purpose kind of way. I’m now past the tucked-in golf shirt and slacks, which made me look like some small-town tourist. I think I’ll go for a James Dean look, which is retro Hollywood, but new to me. So I buy fourteen white T-shirts (seven V-neck/seven crew neck) in a snug size medium, four pairs of AG soft-washed denim jeans (two dark-washed, one light-washed, one black-washed), a pair of black Hugo Boss military boots, and a black leather motorcycle jacket. It didn’t cost me the moon and this uniform was actually good enough to get me into and through every single LA situation with the exception of a funeral or the Oscars.
I had read about Sunset Strip’s famous club the Viper Room, which at the time was partly owned by Johnny Depp, so I wanted to check it out for myself. I drove solo into West Hollywood in my Cadillac and pulled into the back parking lot behind the Viper Room, which despite its fame is a brick slab of a building with everything painted black, including the bricks and the awning above the black door, though the club’s name is in white letters. I threw on my jacket, lit a Marlboro Red, and posted up across the street to the side entrance where the doorman was manning the velvet rope.
I would always scope out a new joint before attempting to get inside because in those early days I didn’t know anyone and was still unrecognizable on the LA scene. I made the call to wait it out in the line, and when I got to the front I’d tell the doorman I was new in town playing for the Kings and wanted to hear some music. I was alone and humble and this would be a lock for access.
As I’m standing there I see a tall guy with long blond curly hair walking toward the door from the back parking lot.
He’s wearing tight black jeans and the classic rocker black ankle boot and he has two women, a brunette and a redhead, walking beside him who have some miles on them but still look good because this is LA. They have tight frames and the mandatory augmented C-cups because a big firm C is the new D.
This guy steps to the side to let the girls pass through the velvet rope and then he looks at me and does a double take. “Are you Sean Avery?” he asks, surprising the hell out of me. “Yes, I am,” I manage to admit. He asks what I’m doing waiting in line in a tone you’d use to ask someone if they were crazy. I told him I was new in town and didn’t know anyone but wanted to hear some music. And all of a sudden I’m walking into the Viper Room with Bobby Carlton and his friends, past all the other people in line who are looking at me with a mixture of loathing and awe.
Bobby Carlton is an LA legend who happens to be a season ticket-holder of the LA Kings. He’s originally from New York, and that’s where he learned hockey. He started going to Kings games when Gretzky landed in LA, because that was the cool place to be. The Forum Club was a venue at the old LA Forum and it was a genuine LA destination for the rich and the famous. There was more excess back then, and LA team owners like Bruce McNall of the Kings and Jerry Buss of the Lakers were fast and loose in ways that let sex and drugs flourish because they were living that wild life themselves. The Staples Center was not like that. But Bobby Carlton is only there for the hockey, and here, at the Viper Room, he’s about to change the course of my life.
The Viper Room is a music venue with two floors and bands going on both. The downstairs is more of a square box bar with tables. They’re not private tables, so anyone can sit anywhere. I sit downstairs, which has a pretty small stage and also these leather banquettes in green and red and blue that look even brighter under the lights. I’m not listening to the band. I’m totally transfixed by Bobby as he tells me about his life as a recovering addict who made his money in the late ’80s and early ’90s as an A&R (artist and repertoire) manager for rock bands.
Bobby knows everyone in the Hollywood scene. Eventually I’ll figure out that it’s really pretty much a town full of empty relationships, but to me, Bobby makes every handshake and air kiss a little bit more authentic. He introduces me to all the people running the velvet ropes of the city’s hot spots, and this is like gold in Los Angeles.
These introductions to the gatekeepers mean that I can valet the car then open my date’s door and waltz her up to the velvet rope to see those friendly hands raise it up like a perfect sunrise. It makes me feel for all those guys who are left standing there holding their valet ticket with their disappointed dates, making other plans for how the evening is going to end when they’re told “not tonight” by the gatekeepers. I know, it’s superficial as fuck, but if you’re young and in the spotlight—as an athlete, musician, actor, mover and shaker—it’s the way the LA game is played.
All the hot spots in LA have women running the velvet ropes, and getting to know them is a lesson in power, albeit one that is particular to Los Angeles. These girls work for the men who own these clubs and bars, and the good ones probably make $125K a year in salary and another $100K in tips. They build relationships with the stars, and often celebrities will only go to the clubs that “their” girl is running that night because you certainly don’t want to run the risk of getting turned away by a stranger. LA insecurity is what fuels the whole circus.
The door girls of LA control everything from who gets on the covers of US Weekly to who ends up marrying and divorcing each other, according to their introductions of male and female celebrities. I mastered the art of taking care of these girls, starting with “Pantera Sarah,” who was kind of the den mother to all the velvet rope girls in LA. (We eventually had a falling out because Justin Timberlake was in her Rolodex, and when I ended up falling for Justin’s best friend’s fiancée and she for me, that was the end of me in Sarah’s clubs.)
I’d always slide a $100 bill into the girl’s leather jacket when she lifted that velvet rope for me and my date, and sometimes I’d make it a gift certificate to Barney’s or a massage at Sunset Tower Spa, both much appreciated in the “how you look is who you are” world of LA. I did not spend money to snag a choice table, but would sometimes be given a nice one to sit at with a few friends. I’d normally have a two-top (bar lingo which describes a small round table with two chairs) no matter what, so I wouldn’t need to sit at someone’s table like an annoying mooch. I also rarely brought anyone other than my date, along with the infamous Larry Longo, and this discretion in numbers was part of why the door girls respected me, because I never tried to take advantage of them.
LA back then was a town built on cocaine. Doing cocaine in LA was as common as having a coffee in the morning for the rest of America. Asking for blow was as common as asking someone if you could bum a smoke. To this day I’ve never done a line of cocaine, and this isn’t because I was fearful of failing a drug test, because nothing would have happened to me in the NHL even if my test showed cocaine in it. The league’s drug policy at the time was the same as a Stanley Cup Championship in Toronto—nonexistent. That changed in 2005, but when I started with the Kings, you could do any drug you wanted.
I never wanted to try cocaine because I was afraid I’d like it. Although I don’t have any addiction issues, I do know that sometimes I’m excessive, even if it’s just too much dessert. This means that if I have that extra helping of German chocolate cake then I do an extra thirty minutes on the exercise bike. If I smoke a few too many cigs at a party, then I can’t have a cigarette for two days afterward and I have to do extra wind sprints until then.
This counterbalance strategy for dealing with an excess of vice is common to most hard-core athletes, and it’s dangerous because you’re pushing your body one way and then pulling it another. You can get away with it for a while, but not if you want a long career.
My desire to have a long career is another reason I never tried cocaine. I was also deterred by how stupidly people can act when they’ve done a few lines. What they don’t show in the movies when they depict glamorous people doing coke is how dull it is to listen to them repeating the same story over and over and over again.
Not that guys don’t use other drugs.
The best feeling in the world is when the needle plunges through the skin of your ass and you feel a burst of Toradol rushing into your blood. You take it after the warm-up, fifteen minutes before the game. Toradol is an anti-inflammatory drug used to counter severe pain, and once it gets in your system you feel its magic move from the tip of your toes to the top of your ears. It’s the same vibe as the scene in Iron Man when Tony Stark turns the suit on and suddenly his body is covered by this indestructible armor. You feel indestructible. While having a continuous orgasm. There’s nothing better.
That said, it’s terrible for your liver, and so during the regular season you take it in pill form. It’s the playoff injection in your butt that presents the liver damage risk, but hey, it’s the playoffs. You take a lot of risks.
I chuckle when I read all these stories about Toradol abuse in the NFL. The NHL makes the NFL look like amateurs in the Toradol department. My cocktail of choice during the eighty-two-game regular season was one Toradol pill and one 30 mg Adderall tablet, split in half. Adderall is what doctors prescribe for people with ADHD to help them focus. I’d take half with the Toradol and half between the second and third periods. The Toradol makes me feel like I can skate through a brick wall, and the Adderall acts as a stimulant, giving me that extra gear and dialing me right into the zone. Adderall is prohibited by the NHL, that is, you are allowed to take it only if you have a TUE (which means “therapeutic use exemption”). Coming out of the 2004 lockout, the list of prohibited substances was a lot longer, but guys still loved their Adderall.
Guys also used Sudafed, which is also a stimulant, though one that was a lot more alarming to see in action than the Toradol-Adderall comb
o. Lots of guys on the Kings used Sudafed, and I saw some so jacked up on it that they lost their hearing. They were so wired and so shaky that they couldn’t understand what you were saying to them. Toradol was the exact opposite.
In Detroit they used this thing called Power Orange, which worked like Sudafed. Even after the FDA pulled it, it could still be found in the Red Wings’ locker room.
The NHL did drug testing at the time, but the only thing you could get suspended for was an anabolic steroid. They tested for recreational drugs, but didn’t suspend you for it. There was no advance warning, and they tested us all at the same time. So you showed up to practice and there would be signs posted directing you to the WADA (World Anti-Doping Association) people who would take your details, give you a little bottle to pee into, and direct you to a stall. You’d give them your full bottle of piss and then they would test it. You could do it before or after practice. Sometimes there were guys who stayed two or three hours after practice just drinking liters of water in order to be able to pee.
The tests were anonymous in the sense that only if something got flagged would WADA check whose urine was in violation of league policy. If they found a guy with a load of cocaine in his system, he’d get a call from the NHLPA doctor, who’d talk to him about his recreational drug use, and if need be, strongly suggest that he needed rehab. But between the Toradol, Sudafed, Adderall, Vicodin, Percocet, and other PKs (painkillers), you didn’t really need to buy street drugs. You could find the right state of mind right in the trainer’s room.
9
SUMMER SCHOOLING
We miss the playoffs my first year in LA, which doesn’t feel great after staggering through a Stanley Cup parade less than a year before. But despite the fact that the Kings send me down to the minors for a bit of playoff experience, I feel pretty good. I feel like I’m in the league for good. I’ve decided to stay in my old room in my parents’ basement in Pickering, Ontario. I want to live like a normal person and train my ass off during the week so that when I go to the Kings’ training camp in September I’ll blow the other guys out of the water.
