Breaking Away

by Patrick O'Sullivan

  Despite my performance as an underage player at the world under-18s the year before, despite making the U.S. team that went to the world junior tournament, despite leading the IceDogs into the playoffs for the first time in the team’s history, there was a lot of negative buzz about me among NHL scouts. That had spilled over to the media as well. Supposedly I was trouble, supposedly a problem child. My character was called into question and no one was subtle about it. The agency made a calculation at the end of the season, in the days before the Central Scouting Service’s combine—the physical testing and interviews for the top 100 draft prospects: I had to take control of the story.

  I wasn’t sure about the idea, but a few days later I sat down with the writer from ESPN The Magazine. We met in a sandwich shop around the corner from the IceDogs’ arena. I didn’t feel comfortable about some parts of my story. I didn’t really want it out there about the night my father served me Spam and beans and made me eat my vomit. I left that out. I also left out my father butting out cigarettes in my face. It was too hard to talk about—I hadn’t told anybody about that, not my friends on the team, not my agents, not anyone. It was too hard to talk about, too embarrassing. It was tough enough to tell the rest of my story, tough enough to know that people would know that part of my life before they’d meet me and would pretend when we’d talk like they had no idea. Still, I laid out a lot of my story, and everything about the game in Ottawa, the ride in the van back to Toronto and the rest of the last night I had anything to do with my father.

  After we spoke, the writer managed to track down my father—he contacted the lawyer who had represented him when my mother filed for a divorce the year before. My father was in complete denial. He told the writer he was proud of everything I had done. Though he didn’t come out and say it in so many words, he said I couldn’t have made it as far as I did without him. “Cathie and I might have done more if we had had more support,” he said. “I was totally committed to doing anything for Patrick and my daughters. Kelley is top-ten in the state in tennis. She should get a scholarship.”

  The writer knew but didn’t mention to my father that Kelley hadn’t picked up a racquet since the split.

  When the writer brought up the fact that I wasn’t in contact with him, my father was unrepentant. He said it was just something that the family was going through and that it was bound to pass. “I have no regrets,” he said. “I wouldn’t do anything different.”

  When the writer said that he knew about the jail time he had done, my father described it as a misunderstanding. “It wasn’t an assault, or even a fight,” he said. “We’re best friends. We’d always wrestle and scrap a bit, like friends. I only wish Patrick were more like me as a player, a tougher guy.”

  And when the writer asked my father if he was going to be at the draft and talk to me there, my father broke. “Now you’re pushing my button,” he said and hung up.

  * * *

  Mississauga, Ontario, May 2003

  The writer showed up at the combine and talked to me before I went through a couple of hours of physical testing and two days of interviews. Twenty-six teams had booked interviews with me. Every team took up the full twenty minutes on the schedule and a few teams went long, one of them an hour. The agency had tried to get the word out in advance of the combine, and NHL executives and scouts had followed up with coaches I had played with in Ann Arbor. In the interviews it seemed like the bad rumors hadn’t been completely snuffed out.

  I heard a lot of the same questions. How would you characterize your relationship with your father? “It’s over.” What’s the difference between your game now and five years ago? “I always loved the game but I enjoy it more than ever before.” Do you drink? “No.” Have you ever been in trouble with the law? “No.” Ever been in jail? “No.” The questions Boston asked were a bit weird, and it felt like the execs in the room were trying to yank my chain. If your car broke down, how would you get to the arena—taxi, bus, subway, walk?

  On the second day, by the time I had talked to twenty teams, I was exhausted and my eyes were starting to glaze over. It wasn’t the toughest thing that I’d ever had to do—you could probably pick any night at random from when I was ten or twelve or thirteen years old and it would be a lot more ugly. Still, it was just like a slow drumbeat of painful stuff for me to talk about, having just talked about it twenty or forty minutes before and knowing that I was going to have to rehash it all in another twenty or forty minutes’ time. I knew that other players at the combine didn’t come in with question marks attached and weren’t pressed like I was. My bad luck. I was agitated, no doubt, but I also knew that I couldn’t let them see me sweat, or at least I had to try not to. Any of these teams might be the one that was going to draft me. I had to try to make the best of it.

  The last team that I talked to was the New York Islanders. At the end of the interview, their head scout handed me a fifty-page psychological exam to fill out. The team hadn’t asked anyone else at the combine to take the test, and it was obvious that they were trying to figure out if I was in my right mind. I didn’t complete it. I wasn’t thinking straight. I could have asked the team for more time. I could have asked to take the test home and turn it in later, just to be able to do a good job and give it my full attention. But I’d been blindsided and was tired and just wanted it over. If I had put my best foot forward with twenty-five of the twenty-six teams, then I figured I had done a pretty good job.

  * * *

  June 2003

  The story in ESPN The Magazine came out after the combine. It put me in the best possible light, summing up my father’s failed pro career, his obsession with making me a player and the years of abuse I survived. It detailed his conviction and jail time. It laid out my father’s words, and used them to hang him. It described how my father ignored the restraining order by going to my games and trying to reestablish contact with me through letters and phone calls.

  The story seemed to hit the mark with what the agency had wanted to get out there: I came out of it a sympathetic figure, and the media turned around 180 degrees. Sports Illustrated said on its website:

  Now that the truth has been revealed, it’s hard to come down on O’Sullivan for his “off-ice woes.” In an excellent article in its current issue, ESPN The Magazine reveals that O’Sullivan is the victim of an abusive, overeager father. While some scouts are apparently still worried that a tough family situation could follow O’Sullivan into the NHL, perhaps noted tough guy and former Broad Street Bully Bobby Clarke is just the type of general manager who would be willing to select the incredibly talented O’Sullivan.

  Newspapers started calling the agency after the story came out, but I felt talked out at that point. My mother talked to a few reporters but I declined. I had agreed to the interview with ESPN The Magazine with the idea that I was going to speak my piece once, getting out in front of the story so that it wasn’t going to be the story wherever I went. It was tough enough to talk about once—I didn’t really look forward to doing it again. And again.

  (The next season I made exception for The Fifth Estate, the Canadian television program. I suspected that they were going to go ahead with the story whether I cooperated or not. I knew that they were a serious outfit, and the producers couldn’t mess around with me on video the way that some print reporters might have.)

  The reception of the ESPN story led me to believe that I had put the fire out. Looking back on it now, I can see that I was looking through rose-colored glasses. I read everything the way that I wanted to read it. That draft preview from Sports Illustrated was a perfect example. Seeing the line about it being “hard to come down” on me as a victim of abuse—that suggested that going public had been a winning strategy. I didn’t pay enough notice to a line near the end, about how scouts “still worried that a tough situation could follow” me as a pro. And that was dead on, completely prophetic. Psychologically, how much it followed me is open to interpretation, but one thing was sure: NHL scouts and
executives were worried about it. They would be worried about it at the draft and wherever I’d play in the league. In that sense it followed me and no amount of truth-telling would ever shake it.

  27

  DRAFT DAY

  Nashville, Tennessee, June 21, 2003

  I didn’t sleep well the night before the draft, and I didn’t feel like breakfast that morning. My agents had brought me and the other clients they represented down to the draft a couple of days early because teams will ask to talk one last time to players they’re interested in. We were in the dark about where teams had me on their lists. Everyone who came down to Nashville for my big moment told me not to worry. My agents, my mother, her parents, my friends and teammates from Mississauga, my billet family and others, they all had the same message: things were going to be all right.

  That morning, an hour before we were going to head over to the arena, I put on the same suit I had worn to the combine. I also put on the ring that USA Hockey had given players after the World Under-18s. I had never worn it before. I had never even taken it out of its case. I don’t know if I thought it would be a good-luck charm or maybe some sort of reminder to myself that I belonged near the top of this draft class. I did imagine going up on stage and shaking hands with the GM who drafted me—my ring was going to be my message to him that he had just drafted a winner. The suits and everything else were window dressing. That ring defined who I was and what I had done to get this far. I even imagined that the GM might be wearing a Stanley Cup ring himself.

  The draft was on a Saturday, starting at noon. The league had told my agents that security was on the alert for my father. A few people were trying to reassure me, telling me that, even though there was no restraining order against him in Tennessee, he wasn’t crazy enough to show up and make a scene. Those who were closer to me and knew the full story were more likely to think the same way as me: he was in Nashville. There was no way he could stay away. He couldn’t miss this any more than he could have missed my first junior game. He couldn’t miss this any more than he could have not made it out to the under-17s. Everything he had done for me, he’d have said. If he had been doing time, I’m sure he would have been plotting a prison break with a getaway car heading to Tennessee.

  I was told that the uniformed security officers were going to be watching for him, but it didn’t matter what kind of dragnet they had in place—he’d figure out a way to be inside that arena. He knew he was hot, but that had never stopped him before, not even in small rinks in Ontario where his mug shot was posted at the one door all spectators had to walk through. He could lose himself in the crowd of ten thousand or so that would be in the arena in Nashville.

  I tried to not let any thoughts of my father ruin the day: this was going to be my day, not his. I thought I had a chance to go between ten and twenty. The NHL’s Central Scouting Service—scouts who work for the league and provide player assessments for all its teams—had come out with its end-of-season prospects rankings. CSS had me ranked as the fourteenth-best player (not including goalies) in North America. CSS’s mid-season rankings back in January had had me in exactly the same slot. I thought that I was more skilled than a bunch of players higher up on the list, but I also understood that at 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, I was considered undersized for the next level. I knew my size might drop me a few spots, but I couldn’t see anything worse than the twenties.

  My agents reminded me: just going in the first round would put me in the elite group of players, and the 2003 draft was considered one of the deepest drafts in years, maybe the deepest ever. NHL executives knew the difference, but most fans didn’t. And because of the ESPN story and the media coverage in Nashville, I had more ink than 99 percent of players, even those projected to be in the top five picks. In fact, my father had more ink than all those players.

  * * *

  Every top prospect at the draft had a team of family and friends with him. I had twenty-five tickets set aside for mine. Before the first pick, everybody threw in five bucks in a pool to see which team was going to draft me. Everybody was laughing and high-fiving and having a good time. I was as tensed up as I had been at the combine.

  The commissioner was booed when he called the draft to order—that was business as usual. The Pittsburgh Penguins had the first pick, and everyone knew in the arena knew their pick before they announced it: Marc-André Fleury, a goaltender from Quebec who had been Canada’s best player at the World Juniors in Halifax.

  A few picks in, my sister Kelley spotted my father in the stands on the other side of the arena. He was sitting in section 107 in the upper bowl, the nosebleed seats. He was easy to pick out. He wasn’t trying to hide in the crowd. He was sitting by himself—no one in his row, no one behind him, no one in front. He was even waving, trying to get our attention. He held his hands up and shrugged, as if to say, “What’s going on?” We told the agents, who then told the NHL security detail that was sitting nearby. There was no ignoring him, no wishing he wasn’t here. I had no idea what he was thinking. Was he going to just stay on that side of the arena, or was he going to make a scene when my name was called? Was he thinking that there’d be a reunion on draft day? Was what he’d said to ESPN actually a delusion rather than line of embarrassed bullshit? We tried to keep an eye on him, but it was like he knew he had been spotted. He left his seat, went out to the concourse and didn’t come back. He must have figured that he could stay ahead of security if he kept moving. I panned the stands for a while after that, but then I forced myself to stop, to focus on the picks as they were made. I couldn’t be looking for him when my name was called—that would just ruin the moment.

  The rest of the picks went pretty much as usual through the first ninety minutes—teams taking ten minutes or so to go up on stage, call out the names of their first picks and pose for official photographs. I had hoped to go in that first hour or so, but I wasn’t disappointed or surprised that my name hadn’t been called through the tenth overall pick.

  I started to edge up in my seat at pick No. 11, when the draft entered the range where Central Scouting and the previews thought that I’d fall. One by one the names were called. Jeff Carter, a big forward who had come in to play for the Strathroy Rockets the year after me, went at No. 11 to Philadelphia. Hugh Jessiman, a 6-foot-6 monster right winger they called Huge Specimen, went to the New York Rangers at No. 12. Next pick, Los Angeles took Dustin Brown from Guelph, Ontario, a good player with a couple of inches and 15 pounds on me, but ranked way up at No. 2 on Central Scouting’s list. Zach Parise went to New Jersey at No. 17—no surprise, a really good player and the son of a respected former NHLer who became a coach. With every pick, another person on my team saw his five bucks in the pool burn up.

  I thought I might go to Minnesota at No. 20, but the Wild took Brent Burns, a winger who had scored fifteen goals for Brampton that year and had been No. 39 on Central Scouting’s rankings. Burns was 6-foot-5, and more and more teams were opting to draft size. The picks kept falling in the twenties, players I thought I’d go ahead of. At No. 23, Vancouver took Ryan Kesler, a gritty role player on those under-17 and under-18 teams, a bit of a late bloomer. At 25, Florida took Anthony Stewart, a winger whose numbers weren’t close to mine but who had three inches and twenty-five pounds on me.

  My best friend and linemate from the under-17s and under-18s, Patrick Eaves, ended up going 29th overall, to Ottawa. I was happy for him, but I was also disappointed—and embarrassed to have been the center of all the attention on my team. Everyone just stared blankly forward, disbelieving, everyone except my mother, who was sobbing uncontrollably and unable to speak. The last pick of the first round, No. 30, was Shawn Belle, a defenseman from the Western Hockey League.

  I was ready to walk out of the arena before they made pick No. 31. More names were called, names on the second and third pages of Central Scouting’s rankings. By the end of the first round, I just shut down. I didn’t talk to anyone. I’m sure that some tried to give me consolation or to reassure
me. I didn’t want to hear it. I had wanted this to be my day, but it was still his. It was his day because he was in the minds of executives and scouts who looked at my name on their team’s lists. I knew that if I had a father like the fathers of players in the first round, if I had a father who stayed in the background, even if I had a father with some issues but nothing as serious as a criminal conviction and jail time, I would have been called up to the stage in the first thirty picks, probably in the first twenty.

  It was early in that second round that the crowd started to chant “O-Sul-livan, O-Sul-livan” between picks. The commentators on the television broadcast of the draft had noted on air a few times that my name hadn’t been called, but even the fans in the seats were aware at that point that I was conspicuously undrafted. The story in ESPN The Magazine had been picked up by the other media and had made the rounds. So people who had read the stories or heard about it called my name, and not just when Nashville was on the clock and they wanted to let the Predators know who their choice was. They started the chant no matter which team was on the board. I know they had the best of intentions. They were making their emotional plea to the teams to do what they thought was the right thing. They wanted a happy ending to the story. That afternoon, though, it was the exact opposite for me, the farthest thing from a happy ending, unhappier every time I heard the chant start. At a time when I wanted to leave the building or at least fade into the background, I was reminded of the hopes that I had come to Nashville with and all those years I had put in pointing to this day.