The road of reconstruction

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/04/2009 (6300 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

STEINBACH — No, he’s not the same hockey player on the ice, if that’s what you’re wondering.

Oh, the skills are still mostly there. He’s still a tremendous playmaker, still able to find passing lanes in that rarest of moments, a split second before anyone else sees them.

He’s still deceptively fast when he wants to be, able to cut around a defenceman with a little extra burst that no one sees coming except him.

And there’s still an uncanny touch around the net. Monday night, it was a spinarama move in the slot as he shook loose a defenceman, spun a complete 360 degrees and then fired seemingly blind — except you had the feeling that it wasn’t blind, that he intended the puck to go just over the goalie’s shoulder, just under the crossbar, in the only place it would fit.

And so it did — a goal for Theoren Fleury, the 40-year-old former big-leaguer, on a night that would see him also rack up an assist and be named player of the game as he and his Steinbach North Stars won their first match here at the Allan Cup.

But for all Fleury’s continued prowess with the puck, if you looked a little closer, studied the man on the ice, it was clear this is not the same tormented soul who seemed to enjoy torturing opponents during a 15-year NHL career, who seemed to actually savour watching others lose as much as he enjoyed winning.

Gone is the fire, the red-hot intensity, the almost murderous look in his eyes that helped Fleury author a long and successful hockey career. He averaged better than a point a game, scoring 455 goals and 633 assists in 1,084 NHL contests, despite the fact that at 5-foot-6, Fleury spent most of his career as the smallest player in the entire league.

These days, the man looks, well, comfortable out there. He seems content most of the night to just coast up and down the boards, taking it in as much as making it happen. No longer is there any apparent need to gratuitously hack an opponent’s ankle after a whistle or deride his ancestry, the legitimacy of his birth and his overall worthiness as a human being.

Fleury looks happy these days. And that, hockey fans, has been a long time coming on what has been a very painful and anguished path for a man for whom life, in stark contrast to hockey, never came easy.

Fleury says he owes it all to the wonderful day four years ago that he found sobriety. "It’s been the best thing I’ve ever done in my life," he says, and he’s done many incredible things.

All those achievements — a Stanley Cup in 1989 with the Calgary Flames, Olympic gold as a member of Team Canada in Salt Lake City — pale in comparison, he says, to the day he took back control of his life from an addiction that hounded him through his playing career and ultimately ended it prematurely in 2003.

"You can win Stanley Cups and you can win Olympic medals, but when you finally get it… That’s what it’s all about," he said.

"Whatever you get, you have to give it back — that’s my thing. That’s the nuts and bolts of the program. It’s about helping and being of service to another human being, just being there to support him and let him know he’s not alone.

"I think the best people in the world are alcoholics — the guys who get it and recover."

Part of recovery is taking personal stock of one’s life, and Fleury has done that in the most public way possible, writing Playing With Fire, due out in October, an autobiography he says lays bare his life.

Does that include his long-whispered victimization by pedophile hockey coach Graham James during his junior hockey days? Fleury is coy.

"You have to read the book," he says. "It’s not a hockey book, it’s a life book. There’s tons of inspiration in the book, there’s some tragedy in there, there’s some really good things. It covers the whole gamut of my life and where I was and where I am today and what the future looks like as well."

In the meantime, the future is right here at home. And in this, his 40th year on this planet, it seems only fitting that a person who grew up in Russell has come home to Manitoba to play as his father once did, not for millions or glory, but just for the fun of it.

"I remember in the old Northwest Hockey League, when Russell and Roblin played together, Russell and Foxwarren, Russell and Ste. Lazare, it didn’t matter what rink you were in, it was packed. And it was a fun Saturday night watching the guys play.

"We couldn’t afford to go see the Jets play, get autographs or whatever, so the guys we looked up to when we were growing up were the guys playing senior hockey.

"My dad’s competed for this before, my brother Ted. (The Allan Cup) is important and it’s 101 years old. There’s not too many things in Canada that are 101 years old. It just shows the significance of what we’re playing for."

It’s not, suffice to say, the hockey Fleury is used to. But then nothing in his life is, anymore.

So if it’s true that there is always a price to pay in life for the choices you make, then maybe this is Fleury’s price: that he had to stop playing with such intense fire on the ice to finally find some peace off it.

"I’m hoping that the book reaches out to someone who is in that dark space in life and comes out into the sunlight and sees that life is great and it does get better," he concluded.

"No matter how far down the ladder you get, you can climb back up and make a difference."

Even if that means climbing all the way up from the NHL to a tiny rink in southeastern Manitoba.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca