Breaking Away

by Patrick O'Sullivan

  It went on for more than an hour. It went on for almost two, as team after team made pick after pick. At one point, I leaned over to one of my friends from the IceDogs and said, “Now they’re drafting Tier II players.” Kids who played a full level below the OHL.

  Finally, at No. 56, almost out of the second round, the Minnesota Wild announced my name. I stood up and shook hands and exchanged hugs with those around me, but I couldn’t force a smile. My mother couldn’t turn off the tears or say a word to me. Most who were picked celebrated. A few who were disappointed at least made a show of it and appeared relieved. For me it was like a funeral. I went down on the floor and shook the hands of the general manager, Doug Risebrough, and others at the Minnesota table. I took off my jacket and put on a team sweater that they had ready for me—no name on the back, unlike the players in the first round. I’m sure the Wild staff could read my mind.

  The Wild’s PR man took me to a makeshift office the league had set up to sign some official forms and pose for photos in my team sweater. Then he showed me out to an area the league had set aside for the media to talk to the draftees. I had no place to hide and only a couple of minutes to compose myself. I had to talk. I wouldn’t say that it was the worst day of my life, but it was easily the worst day since my father was out of my life, a disappointment that I had never seen coming.

  I tried to put a brave face on it. “It was hard sitting there. As soon as you hear your name called, you forget about everything else and you’re the happiest person in the world,” I said. “To be wanted by someone is a good feeling. I’m really excited that someone stepped up and decided to take me, and now I’m looking forward to working with Minnesota.”

  Barely a minute in, the reporters asked the inevitable questions about my father. I knew I was going to have to say something but I tried to keep it cut and dried. “I don’t talk to him,” I said. “No one talks to him in my family. It’s tough because I didn’t pick my family and I can’t control that stuff. I’ve come a long way in two years. I guess you can say it’s turning a page and starting a new chapter.”

  “I love the game too much to give it up for anything. Now for the first time, I’m not worried about anything. I have no stress. I’m looking forward.”

  All of it I wanted to believe.

  Across the room, other reporters asked Doug Risebrough about drafting a kid with “baggage” and “issues.” He pushed back against reporters who set it up in a way that questioned or criticized my character. “This was a really talented kid who is dealing with some issues that weren’t really of his design or making,” he said. “He was very open about it. We were comfortable. He was driven to be an offensive player. It doesn’t discourage me that he isn’t a complete player. We’ll introduce him to all the possibilities. He’s actually a pretty smart tactical player.”

  It was an interesting choice of words and more accurate than Risebrough even knew: “driven.” It never came up in our conversations at the combine or in Nashville before the draft, but that was what my father had done—drive me to be the player he wanted to be and the player he wanted me to be. Get your goals, get your points and don’t give a shit about your teammates until you get to the NHL. Maybe Risebrough had intuitively figured out that was the message in my ear.

  Another Minnesota exec, Tommy Thompson, Risebrough’s assistant GM, had the book on me as well. “He’s an extremely skilled player who becomes extremely frustrated,” Thompson said. “Something is not always clicking there.” Again, it was fair criticism at the time—my father had been brutal on me, but with him out of my life I had in turn become tough on myself. I knew enough about the game to be a pro but had never learned to have fun at it.

  I was encouraged that they seemed to believe in me, seemed to get me. That said, the draft was the most frustrating few five hours of my life. Other players drafted—even kids who went in the eighth and ninth rounds and would never play a NHL game—wore their sweaters out of the arena, went to dinner with them still on, sat on patios and had a beer to celebrate. They were going to hold on to their sweaters as keepsakes, souvenirs to hang in their basements.

  When I left the arena, I took off my Minnesota sweater. I couldn’t take if off fast enough. I folded it up and packed it away. I didn’t want to be reminded of draft day, the day when everything was supposed to have come together but didn’t. I knew that I couldn’t feel sorry for myself, that I couldn’t send the wrong message.

  * * *

  I didn’t feel like talking to anybody when I went back to the hotel. The phone rang in my room. I didn’t know if I should answer it. I hadn’t picked up the phone in my room in Nashville unless I knew a call was coming. I didn’t pick up the phone in my room on road trips with the IceDogs either, one of the rules we had put in place after my father was arrested and charged. I always let my roommate screen calls, but there was no one around to screen this call for me. It could have been my father—he could have tried phoning around to the hotels that the NHL people had checked into. On impulse I picked up the phone. It was one of my friends from the team who had come down to Nashville—I was still so rattled by the day and by the message that I’m not sure which one of them dialed my room.

  “Wayne Gretzky is down in the lobby,” he said. “He wants you to come down.”

  I didn’t know if this was legit. It would have been the worst possible time for a prank. I thought maybe there was some other reason that someone wanted me to go down to the lobby. Again, could I put it past my father to try to set up something like that?

  When I made it down to the lobby, Wayne Gretzky was standing there. I was surprised that he was standing there alone. I’d always imagined that someone like him would draw a crowd but I guess everyone else in the NHL was busy at official events after the draft.

  “Patrick,” he said, in case I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. “Wayne Gretzky. How are you doing?”

  I can’t remember exactly what I said at that point. I’d gone from one state of shock at the draft to another here in the lobby.

  “I just want to tell you that my wife read the story about you in ESPN and started crying,” he said. “She told me, ‘You have to read this.’ I did and I was crying too. The stuff you went through was awful.”

  Again, I have no idea exactly what I said. This just came completely out of left field. I thanked him. I told him that I appreciated the gesture. But what can you say to someone in a situation like that even at the best of times?

  “Hang in there,” he said. “Don’t let today get you down too much.”

  We talked for maybe five minutes, that’s all, and it did raise my spirits a bit. Only later did the conversation hit home, the irony of it, the reason that it might have meant enough to Wayne Gretzky to call me and come by my hotel.

  Wayne was one half of hockey’s greatest father-and-son story. He always talked about the influence that his father, Walter, had on his career. They seemed to go everywhere together. They were best friends—it seemed like they couldn’t have been closer. Wayne went on to be the player that my father had always wanted me to become. My father had imagined that he was playing the same role in my career as Walter had played in Wayne’s.

  My father always figured that the Gretzky’s backyard rink made a good story, but he also thought the truth had to be more complicated than that—no one could be as good as 99 without a plan, a program, a coach and trainer there 24/7. Wayne always talked up Walter’s teaching, coming up with drills, imparting the fundamentals.

  My father knew that Walter Gretzky had played in the minors. In fact, he didn’t even make it into a major junior game or the pros. My father was obsessed with me becoming Wayne and he was obsessed with being Walter—and, of course, he was nothing like Walter. He was the opposite of him in every way. I thought about what my life would be like now if I’d had positive reinforcement from my father, the positive reinforcement that Walter gave Wayne. My father could have had that kind of influence on me, but he went to excess in ev
ery way. Making me a player didn’t have to be inhumane and abusive. It could have been fueled by love and kindness and support.

  If I’d had someone like Walter Gretzky as my father, my draft day would have played out differently. Maybe I would have been a first-round pick without what the scouts considered “baggage.” Even if I hadn’t been, even if I had still dropped in the draft, I’d have felt better about myself and would have had a family at my back. I wouldn’t have to count on the kindness of strangers and a legendary player for a pat on the back.

  28

  SOPHIE

  Toronto, Ontario, October 2003

  The IceDogs had a new owner in my third year with the team: Mario Forgione, a real-estate developer. Mario had always loved hockey and he had always managed to combine his passions and his business, so it stood to reason that he’d take an interest in the game. He owned a couple of junior teams at a lower level than the OHL and a minor pro franchise in Pensacola, Florida, before he bought the IceDogs. One of his partners was Chris Pronger, the NHL All-Star defenseman. With Mario coming in, Don Cherry wasn’t going to be involved in managing or coaching the team. It was a fresh start for the IceDogs, and we really needed it. I didn’t imagine that Mario’s buying the team was going to have much of an impact on my career. Mario had hired Greg Gilbert to coach, a guy who had experience playing and coaching in the NHL, and I thought he could help me with my game. And Mario was prepared to help me with my off-ice issues rather than judge me, even calling in lawyers he had worked with to go to court with me when I got an extension on the restraining order against my father. As it turned out, though, Mario’s buying the team changed my life. I just didn’t know it at the time.

  That fall, Mario invited all the players and coaches to his house for a dinner—a chance to meet and get to know the boss and his family. At the dinner I talked to Mario’s daughter Sophie for a while. She knew nothing about my background, about the draft or really about hockey. In fact, she didn’t seem interested in the game at all. Mario and Sophie’s mother had divorced when she was young and both had remarried and started new families. Sophie had spent most of her time with her mother, who had moved to Colorado a few years before. Sophie didn’t get the same immersion in hockey that her younger stepbrothers did—Adam was our stickboy and Mike was the team mascot at games. Only a couple of months before the school year, Sophie had moved up to Toronto. She’d had some issues at school in Denver and Mario thought that she’d be better prepared for college if she did grade 12 at a private girls’ school not far from his home. I put together that even by the high standard of Italian families, Mario was awfully protective of his daughters. She was told to stay away from the players, and we were told to stay away from her. That’s the usual rule in hockey or all sports, I guess—the daughter of the coach or manager or owner is off limits. Mario hammered the point home to all of us.

  Still, Sophie and I hit it off. I liked talking to her. I had really never talked to a girl I connected with as quickly as I did with Sophie. We didn’t make plans or anything like that. It was only at practice a few days later that I gave my email address to Adam to pass on to Sophie and made him promise that he wouldn’t say a word to his father. He passed on the note, and he kept his promise. It was a pretty risky move, when I look back on it. It could have given Mario a reason to trade me to another team, and maybe he would have, but the IceDogs were having their best ever season—we were one of the best teams in the league. And if he asked Sophie about it, she would have told him that it was innocent enough. Which it was, then. We exchanged messages by email. We chatted on MSN Messenger. We didn’t even really see each other except when Mario brought Sophie out to games and they’d be around the arena afterward, waiting to pick up Adam and Mike. That probably tripped an alarm for Mario, or at least had him watching me closely.

  The stakes were raised only at the end of the season, when Sophie invited me over to Casa Forgione . . . while Mario and his wife and the rest of the family were home. We just hung out in the living room and watched television while Mario watched us—there was no way that Mario was going to let Sophie out of his sight, no way he was going to leave her alone with me or let her take one step out of the house with me around. I didn’t take that personally. And I didn’t take it personally when I went to the front door to put on my shoes to leave and saw that Sophie’s stepmom had left a Bible for me beside them. Any message that Mario and his wife were sending me, I really don’t think that it had anything to do with my backstory. I’m sure Mario would have been as suspicious and cautious with any other player who had come along. But it was all pretty new stuff to me. I had met girls when I was in school in Ann Arbor and in Mississauga the first two years. In Ann Arbor and all the years before, my father had me under his thumb and gave me almost no free time to actually socialize with anybody. When I was able to get away, back when I was a sophomore in high school, players on the team went around in groups together, eight or ten guys and eight or ten girls. It was never like a dating situation at all. And for a lot of my time in Mississauga, I’d never been left alone, a precaution that the team took with me because of my father.

  I didn’t fit the profile of boys Sophie had known when she was in Colorado. Even though I was the property of the Minnesota Wild, even though I had gone to training camp with them, I had been sent back to junior and hadn’t signed a contract. I wasn’t making anything more than pocket money playing for the IceDogs. It limited our options for dating. I could take her to Mr. Pita for lunch, or to a movie. Just getting to see her was tough too, limited by the team’s schedule. My Friday nights and a lot of Saturdays were spoken for. Road trips meant whole weekends away. Sophie had come up from Colorado to go to school in Oakville and get her marks up, so most weeknights she stayed at home, hitting the books. Because we didn’t go to the same school, there’d be stretches of days when we’d only talk on the phone or chat online.

  As boyfriends go, I’m sure I didn’t qualify as a catch—no money, not around enough, not even a home and family to call my own. And I definitely didn’t qualify as someone Mr. Forgione and his wife had hoped that Sophie would wind up in a long-term relationship with. Sophie, though, has always had her own mind about things, and she’s no slave to convention. It wasn’t that she believed in me as a player—she would tell you that she didn’t know enough about hockey to make any judgment like that. But she did believe in me as a person, even with baggage that would scare almost everyone else away. We saw each other as often as we could, as best we could. Mostly I came over to her house—it wasn’t like I could take her home to my family.

  Just hanging around the Forgiones’ house was an experience like the one I had when I moved into the billet’s home back in January 2002 or when I stayed at the Eaveses’ that week before the World Under-18s. I saw displays of affection and devotion. I heard laughter. I saw how other families lived.

  Other players had girlfriends that they’d see in school, girls who would wait for them after games. If Sophie came out to a game, it was nothing much more than a wave. Other players’ girlfriends grew up around the game, and a lot had brothers who had played. Sophie didn’t know the game at all. My first sense was that she didn’t particularly like it or at least didn’t find it that interesting. It might sound strange, but I liked that. After all those years of obsessively focusing on hockey, it was a nice change to be around someone who saw more to life.

  29

  COMEBACK

  Helsinki, Finland, January 2004

  Not even close to 1 percent of kids who ever play the game will make a nickel at it or play for their country or anything that proves that they’ve made it. But even if you’re in that elite group, there’s another fraction, a 1 percent within the 1 percent. If you’re in that 1 percent, you are going to make it no matter what. If you’re part of that 1 percent, you don’t need luck—things are going to work out on just your talent alone. If you don’t mess up, if you can stay out of your own way, things are going to be fine. It’s
not true if you’re just outside that group—if you’re in the 95th percentile, the 97th or anything just short. No, if you’re anyone else, if you’re not in the 99th percentile, luck is a huge factor. All the clichés apply, but mostly it comes down to being in the right place at the right time. It plays out in a game, it plays out in the game.

  Just how important luck is I realized only after the fact. It played out for me in the biggest game that I ever played.

  On my second trip with the U.S. team, to the World Under-20s, we played Canada in the final. We had the same team that we won with at under-17s and under-18s two years before, but we weren’t favorites. In fact, against Canada, we were huge underdogs. The Canadian team was stacked. The 2004 World Juniors was the first time Canada’s 1985 birthdays had all played together. Going into the tournament in Helsinki, everyone in the game knew that the Canadian ’85s were a really strong group—today they’re considered the best class in the history of the game in Canada. The Canadians absolutely steamrolled teams in the opening round, outscoring opponents 25 to 4 in four games, and then crushed the Czech Republic 7–1 in the semifinal. The experts ranked the U.S. fifth or sixth before the tournament started, but we won our side of the draw and had a bye into the semifinals, where we beat the home team 2–1.

  Even though we made the finals, a lot of people thought the game was just a formality. It looked like Canada had a bunch of guys in that 1 percent. Overconfidence looked like more of a threat than we did, strictly David-and-Goliath stuff.

  USA Hockey officials didn’t get the news. The higher-ups at headquarters in Colorado Springs, those who would see the team only when they flew in for international tournaments, let it be known that they needed a win badly. Even if this hadn’t been such a strong Canadian team, history would have shown that this was a big ask. We were only the second American team to make the final—the team in ’97 was shut out by Canada in the gold-medal game, and that predated USA Hockey launching the Ann Arbor project. But we didn’t really need more motivation. Though I had another year of eligibility, most of our key players were 1984 birthdays, my teammates from my year in Ann Arbor, and they weren’t going to be back together. This was our last shot at it as a team.