Authors: Jordin Tootoo
When I went back to Rankin Inlet at the end of the 2010â2011 season, I made a point of visiting everybody and telling them about my whole experience, and admitting what I had done wrong. I needed them to understand why I was like thatâand pretty much everyone did. They all forgave me. That's a testament to who your real friends are. Your real friends are the people who can forgive you when you fuck up.
I think my parents spent that time hoping that I wouldn't get off track. I would phone them before I went to bed at night, just to give them a sense of peace so they knew I wasn't out. I don't know if they had doubts about me pulling through, or if that was just their way of showing love and letting me know they respected my decision to get sober. Either way, it was always nice to hear their voices and to be able to let them know that everything was okay. At that point, they were trying to stay sober themselves, so we were kind of helping each other out.
BACK IN NASHVILLE, the biggest challenge was filling time and getting my life straightened out while I was waiting to get the green light to play hockey again. Some of my buddies came down to hang out and support me. One of them was my cousin Victor Tootoo, the guy I called just before I went into rehab. He came down from Iqaluit and helped me through the process. He understood because he had been through it twenty years earlier and had stayed sober ever since.
At least people in Nashville knew I had been to rehab, because it was in the news. I can't imagine what it must be like for a regular person coming out of rehab after living that kind of life for thirty or forty years and trying to change. Everyone around you would constantly be offering you drinks and expecting you to be what you used to be. I know that was the biggest thing my cousin Victor had to face. He was a big druggie and alcoholic, but no one knew that he went to rehab and cleaned himself up. So it took five or six years for everyone to understand that he was sober.
For me, it was different. My situation was public knowledge. When I came back from rehab, my teammates, the hockey community, and the city of Nashville all knew where I'd been, and they were all so supportive. Any time I went out and met people, they knew. I went to restaurants where I used to hang out when I was drinking and they'd say, “Jordin, do you want a glass of water? Do you want a Coke?” Whereas before they would have asked me what bottle of wine I wanted. So, that kind of thing made it a lot easier for me.
That being said, there was always that one asshole who wanted to be the person who could tell everyone that he saw Jordin drink and that he's fallen off the wagon. But the people who I was with and who I trusted always had my back.
It took about a year or a year and a half until it became completely natural, until I could go out to clubs and the same bartenders who used to serve me a glass of wine just handed me a water or a pop instead. It actually got to a point where it was kind of funny.
To be honest, I was never really tempted to start drinking again. I knew I was done with it. Booze has been right in front of my face since I quit, but it's never come to the point where I've wanted to drink. For me, it is all about living one day at a time and staying sober one day at a time. You can't tell yourself that you want to be sober for, say, three years and mark it down the calendar day by day, though I know that works for some people. For me, it's not like that. I guess everyone deals with their sobriety differently.
Because I'm in the public eye and part of my job is making appearances and going to events, I had to deal with some different challenges. When I first got out of rehab, we had team functions, and it was suggested that I shouldn't go. I understood why. They didn't want to put me in an awkward situation. But as time went on, I wanted everyone to understand that it was my choice not to drink. I made that point to everyone I was around:
Don't feel bad if you grab a drink. If I feel uncomfortable, I'll leave.
Eventually, everyone understood where I was coming from and I felt free to be myself.
The other challenge for me was to separate drinking from playing hockey. I always believed it was the norm, that one was connected to the other. Being a hockey player meant that you drank, and when you got the green lightâno game or practice tomorrowâyou'd go hard every time. Now that I look back at it, I understand that our job was to make sure we were at the top of our game every day. And I didn't give myself that opportunity. I didn't give myself the chance to be the best every day because
of my addiction. Not that I was the only one. I've seen a lot of guys questioned by coaches or management over the years, asking them if everything is okay, because they know that they're going hard. It's kind of funny now. When I show up at the rink and guys are hung over and complaining about how terrible they feel, I think to myself,
I sure don't miss those days at all.
You hear them talking, saying that they feel like shit, wondering why they drank so much. Then they look at me and say, “You must feel great.” Hopefully, they'll understand one day.
Of course, I didn't limit my drinking to my hockey friends and it's not like hockey caused my problems. It was me who took it to the next level. If the bar closed at two o'clock and I wasn't done, I'd be looking for the after-party. By the end of most nights, I wasn't drinking with hockey players, but I always knew that those other people would be around at the end of the night, because they knew that Tootoo was going to have booze at his house and everyone was welcome. For me, it was more about having the people around to keep me occupied and make time pass; looking back, I realize that it was more about that than about the drinking. I didn't care who came over as long as people were there and I wasn't alone. I'm sure things were stolen from my house without me knowing it, but I didn't care. I just wanted the company.
In those first weeks after I got sober, that was an adjustment. The crowd was gone, and at the end of the night I was alone. Thank God for Ambien, because there were times when I would be lying in bed at ten o'clock on a Saturday night, restless and
wondering what I should do. I'd pop an Ambien, knowing that it would put me out and get me through to the next morning, get me through until tomorrow.
WHEN I GOT BACK on the ice after rehab, I noticed a huge difference. I felt amazing every day. And I had a new clarity and understanding of the game, plus a new recognition that when I was younger, and I was drinking, I just did what I had to do to stay on the team. I didn't think about the game much. I just did my job, rather than try to expand my game. Having conversations about the subtleties of the game with my teammates ⦠that had just never crossed my mind before. I had been doing my job and that was good enough.
But now I had a better understanding of what I brought to the team, what kind of player I was, what it really meant to be a teammate. Mentally, I was a different player, and you could see it in my game. The coaches noticed that I could see the ice better, that I was making solid, smart plays. My confidence built up and built up. And having my legs every day was a big change. It was like,
Wow, I didn't realize I could play like this for this long.
It was as if there had been a cloud over me, and when I smartened up it was as if that cloud lifted away. I felt better about myself, and I knew that my teammates had more respect for me. Before I quit drinking, they were constantly saving my ass, whether they wanted to or not. If the coach asked a question about me and what I'd been doing off the ice, they covered for me. They
covered for me on the ice when I was hung over. Now I could prove myself with my actions. Nothing had to be hidden. You could just see in their eyes that they felt differently about me, that they knew Toots was healthy now, they didn't have to make up stories to protect me, they didn't have to worry about what kind of mood I was in, and about whether I'd go off on them. The truth is, it was great not having to walk that tightrope anymore.
The NHLPA doctors had a meeting with my teammates when I first got back, just to brief everyone on the process I'd been through. And then a doctor looked at me and said, “Toots, do you have anything to say to your teammates?” I said, “No. I've said enough. I'm just going to go back to work.” I think that was a relief to them, because they knew that I wasn't going to fucking bullshit them anymore. I didn't want to say something and not follow throughâI just wanted to show by example. I wanted to be judged on what I did, not on what I said.
On February 19, the Predators took on the Phoenix Coyotes at home, which the doctors had decided would be Jordin's first game back. He played for a little over ten minutes, and didn't score a goal, record an assist, or get into a fight. But everyone on the team, everyone in the building, understood that was beside the point.
After I got out of rehab, the NHLPA doctors and our team doctors would talk to me every week and ask me how I was doing. They were trying to decide when my life was under control enough that it would be okay for me to get back into a
game. Eventually, everything just fell into place, and they told me that the Phoenix game on February 19 would be my first game back. I had a couple of weeks to get ready for it.
It was nerve-racking counting down the days. I just tried to stay focused on maintaining my health. It was a daily thing, keeping in contact with the doctors. They asked me if I was hanging out with my old friends, if I was finding new ways to keep myself busy, if I was eating at home or going to restaurants. Stuff like that.
I wanted the process to be a lot quicker because I wanted to play right away, but I knew that the more I pressed to come back, the longer they would keep me out. So, I just kept my feelings hush-hush within myself.
The whole day leading up to the game, everyone was so happy. The Nashville fans had been watching me for five or six years and they had really missed the element that I brought to the game. I remember, in warm-ups, there were signs out in the crowd and people cheering me on. When I took my first step out on the ice, I got a standing ovation that lasted for five minutes. The crowd just went apeshit. That's when the emotion really hit me.
We were playing the Coyotes, and I remember their players getting up on the bench and tapping their sticks on the boards. It was one of those days that you wish would just keep going on. There were a lot of emotions. That night, it felt like the whole city of Nashville embraced me.
I've never come close to drinking again. I mean, frick, there are times when it's been tough, but I have great resources and people I can call and count on and talk to. When I need them, there are a lot of people around who help keep me grounded.
THIRTEEN
C
oming through rehab, rejoining the Predators, and returning to the National Hockey League, sober, were all significant milestones in Jordin's life. And there would be one more around the same time, the unexpected continuation of a story that began a long time before.
I've said a lot here about women ⦠girls ⦠broads, and some of it hasn't been pretty. If I have offended anyone, I'm sorry about that. But now I want to tell you about Jennifer Salvaggio.
I met Jen way back when I was playing junior hockey with the Brandon Wheat Kings. I was making an appearance at a kids' hockey tournament on a Sunday afternoonâthe usual stuff: show up at a local rink, sign a few autographs, and talk to the fans. I was nineteen years old at the time. When I got there, I saw this lovely lady helping to set up the booth. Of course, when I see a pretty girl I have tunnel vision. The only thing I'm
thinking is:
How can I get this broad?
So we had a little chat. I asked her what she was studying in university. How was school going? What did she like to do? Well, she said, phys ed, science, and social studies. What? That's high school stuff. That's when she told me she was only fifteen years old. Holy shit, I got that one wrong! But we still exchanged numbers and just kind of kept in contact.
Jen is originally from Vancouver. Her family bought a business in Brandon when she was a kid and she and her parents, Cal and Anna, moved there when she was ten years old. She spent her high school years there. Her dad is a machinist and her family is old-school Italian.
After that first meeting, Jen and I went on a few dates before my season ended. I invited her to games and we started talking more. She turned sixteen that May. I figured she was old enough at that point. At first her parents wondered,
Who the hell is this Tootoo guy?
They weren't into sports all that much, and hockey definitely wasn't their game. When I first started coming around, they didn't know who I was or what I did. But then I met them a few times and they came around on the idea of Jen dating me.
By the end of the season, I would be out in bars, late at night, and at closing time I would call Jen to come pick me up and drive me home. She didn't even have a driver's licence. I would give her the keys to my vehicle and she'd pick me up and bring me back to her place. It didn't really register with me that it might not be a good idea to show up there at
two or three or four o'clock in the morning after I was done partying. I admit that I was selfish. I didn't give two shits about what people thought. I was on my own schedule. Jen's parents had good reason to wonder,
Who does this kid think he is?
But Anna, Jen's mom, was the soft-hearted one. For some reason she had patience with me. She greeted me and always made sure there was food in front of me, even if I was pissed drunk. She'd always say, “You're a hockey player, you burn a lot of calories, I want to make sure you're fed.” Anna always had a smile on her face, even at four o'clock in the morning. I called her my Mama Bear. And thank God I had Anna around to make me dinner, because I don't think Jen really knew how to cook anything at that age. Then, after I finished eating, I'd go down to the basement and pass out and Jen would go upstairs and sleep next to her parents' room.