All the Way (21 page)

Jen and I kept in contact through that whole summer. She even asked me to take her to her high school prom, which wouldn't happen until the following year. At the end of that summer, I moved to Nashville. Obviously, her parents weren't going to let her follow me there at sixteen years old, so we tried the long-distance thing. I played that year in Nashville, we kept in touch, and I told her,
Yeah, we're dating, we're together.
But, meanwhile, I was running around with all kinds of other broads. So that didn't really work out.

However, I returned to Brandon in June 2005 for the prom. By then, I'd spent some of my NHL money on a Dodge Viper—a hot, expensive sports car—and I drove Jennifer to the prom in
that. There I was, a twenty-two-year-old NHL player, back in high school for a night.

At that time, Jen was going through some personal issues. She'd got caught up with the wrong crowd. I didn't need that in my life—having to deal with the people she was hanging out with, and having them associated with my name—so I distanced myself from her. Eventually, her parents kind of kicked her out of the house, so she moved in with her cousins in Vancouver. Every time I played there with the Predators, we'd hook up and hang out and enjoy each other's company … and then away I went until the next time. We'd talk on the phone every other month or so.

Every time we saw each other, it was a big piss-up. That's all she knew about me. Every time we were together, I got tanked and she partied right along with me. Then she just sort of went off the deep end. I didn't want anything to do with her if she was going to be hanging out with the wrong crowd. She was spending time with people who were associated with nasty things—drugs and all that stuff. I was never a drug guy. I was never into that. So I didn't contact her or talk to her for a good five years. I just cut off all communication. With my hockey career going well, I couldn't be associated with those kinds of people. I didn't even think about her. I had other girls and I moved on.

Five years went by, and by then I'd gone into rehab. I had been cut off from outside communication when I was in there, so the minute I got out I checked all of my messages. Somehow, Jen had got my number. It was the first time I had heard from her in five years. She left me a message that said, “Hey, we're thinking
about you. My family is praying for you.” After I returned to the team, the Predators were going to play in Vancouver the following month, so I called her up and asked her if she'd like to have dinner and talk about what was going on in my life.

At first, she was hesitant. She knew me, for better or worse, and she didn't think the rehab was going to work out. She thought I was just trying to crawl back into her life with my charm. By that time, Jen had turned her life around, too. Before, she had worked in the bar industry in Vancouver, but she'd got out of that scene and that crowd and was working with her family in a bakery owned by her cousin.

Jen told at least one of her relatives that there was no way she was going to meet with me. But she must have changed her mind, because we got together in Vancouver for dinner, and it lasted four hours. She probably said four words the whole time, while I talked and talked about everything I'd been through. The team was going to be in Vancouver for four days. At the end of dinner, I asked her if she wanted to hang out again the next day. She said, “Yeah, maybe. I'll let you know.” That was as far as she'd go. But as soon as she got home, she called me and said she'd really like to hang out again. So we did, and she ended up staying the night with me but we didn't do anything. And, for me, that was fine because I wanted to repair our relationship. I had put her through a lot. There were a lot of things I needed to fix. I spent the rest of my time in Vancouver trying to prove to her that our relationship wasn't just about the intimate part. She was fucking blown away that I didn't even kiss her. We watched a movie and then both went to sleep in the same bed.

The next month, the Predators were back in Vancouver for the playoffs. You know how they say everything happens for a reason? I remember that when we found out we were playing the Canucks in the playoffs, the first thing I thought was that there couldn't be any more perfect timing to rekindle my relationship with Jen. I remember flying in to Vancouver and calling her. We had a game on Monday and a game on Thursday. I told her that I was going to make sure I found time to see her. She tried to talk me out of it, because it was the playoffs, the most important part of the season. She said, “You shouldn't be worrying about us. We have all summer to figure something out.” I was thinking,
Okay, Jen, I hear you. But deep down in my heart, if I feel that it's right, I'm going to see you no matter what.

It was crazy in Vancouver during that series. The playoff atmosphere was unbelievable. The intensity. The emotions. Everything is magnified. I couldn't walk down Robson Street without people recognizing me, so away from the rink I just stayed indoors. And that kind of worked in my favour, because I had a better chance of spending time with Jen by not being out and about. Jen stayed with me in the hotel the entire time, and still nothing sexual happened. She was waiting for me to try to make a move, but I didn't.

The Predators were the underdogs in that series. I remember that after going down 3–1, we won game five in overtime, and I was thinking,
Geez, we have a chance.
It gave us life. And you could feel the tension in the building in Vancouver. The fans were thinking,
Oh shit, we've got a series now.
I thought that was
going to be a turning point, but it didn't turn out that way. We lost game six back in Nashville, which was really disappointing. But the time I got to spend with Jen made up for it.

That summer, I was living at my place in Kelowna and Jen commuted back and forth every weekend to visit me. That's when I told her that I wanted her to be my one and only. She wasn't quite ready to commit to that yet. She knew I was going back to Nashville, and we had tried the long-distance relationship before and it hadn't worked out. But she agreed to at least play the relationship out for the rest of the summer.

One day that summer, I was visiting with her parents. They still liked me a lot. I was having coffee with Jen's dad one evening after dinner and I said to him, “What would you think of your daughter moving to Nashville?” Remember, they're a strict, old-school Italian family, so I wasn't sure he was going to like the idea. But he said, “You know what, Jordin? Jen is a grown woman. It's up to her to make that decision. And whatever decision she makes, I'll support her.” They knew what she had gone through in the past and her relationships with other guys—and like any parents they wanted to know she was in good hands. And they knew I had turned my life around.

That night, I asked Jen what she thought about moving to Nashville. She laughed. “That would be a huge decision for me—but good luck running that one by my parents.” Then I told her I had already spoken to her dad, and her reluctance seemed to melt away. And that was that. She moved to Nashville, and for a while life was good.

But five or six months in, Jen wasn't happy. The lifestyle associated with being a hockey wife or girlfriend is obviously different than in your average relationship. It was good for the first little while, because there was a lot of excitement and there were a lot of new things to do. And then it got old. She wondered what she was doing there. She didn't have any purpose in Nashville. She had worked all her life, but she couldn't work in the States because she was Canadian. She had been independent since she was a teenager, but now she had to depend on someone else to live. I suggested that maybe she needed to go home for a while and think about what she wanted to do. I knew she would come back. She flew to Vancouver, spent a week there and kind of got refreshed, and then came back to Nashville. It's been fine and dandy ever since.

Because of her past experiences and the kind of people she hung out with, she needed comfort—someone who would look after her as a person, care for her, and love her. And I was that person. I wasn't interested in any other broads. I was done with that. That part of my life was over. But it took some time to gain that trust. She kept wondering if I'd really changed. It didn't help that when we would go out for dinner in Nashville, two or three broads would come up to me—ignoring her—and say, “Jordin, we don't see you anymore. How come you don't hang out?” It took a while before that stopped happening.

I'm not a guy who says more than he has to. But I can't talk about Jen without acknowledging how lucky I am to have her. I guess everybody wants to be loved for who they really are and I know deep down that she accepts me that way. Not only that,
she is the most beautiful lady I've ever seen. She is beautiful from the inside out, and that's what I admire about her. She would go out of her way to help anyone. And she's got the heart of a lion.

I may get paid to get in people's faces on the ice and do some pretty tough jobs, but off the ice I've always been the kind of guy who sort of goes with the flow. Over the years, people have taken advantage of that. But Jen has never been afraid to ask the tough questions and get the facts straight. She's made me more like that. And it's a pretty great feeling to have someone like that looking out for you too.

I think Jen and I understand each other. She has known me from my past and I have known her from hers. You mature as a person and you start to understand what really matters to you and when someone is on the same page as you. We've been through a lot of ups and downs, but at the end of the day it's about having respect for each other and being honest, and knowing that the person will be by your side no matter what happens.

For my parents, it's been a little hard to let their youngest go. They met Jen when we first started dating. With me being so young then, they weren't expecting much from our relationship. With all of my other girlfriends, my mom knew they were just flings. But when Jen came back into my life and stayed, she had to deal with my mom—and moms are moms. I guess from a mother's perspective, any time a woman comes into your son's life and takes that special position in his life away from you, there's going to be a bit of tension between you and the brideto-be. I love my mom to death, but at the same time she has to
understand that Jen is in my life and we're going to start our own family together. I'm a grown-ass man. I'm not a baby anymore, and I know that loving Jennifer doesn't mean I love my mother any less.

On July 19, 2014, Jordin Tootoo and Jennifer Salvaggio were married in Vancouver, British Columbia.

FOURTEEN

O
n August 31, 2011, the hockey world was shocked to learn that Wade Belak, who had recently retired after spending most of fourteen seasons playing in the National Hockey League for five different teams, had been found dead of an apparent suicide in a Toronto hotel room. It was the third troubling death of a hockey fighter in a few short months, following Derek Boogaard's drug overdose and Rick Rypien's suicide. For Jordin, Belak's death hit particularly close to home.

I met Wade late in 2008 when the Predators picked him up from Florida in a trade. He became my new road roommate. Most fans know him from the seasons he played with the Toronto Maple Leafs, and everyone in the hockey world knew who he was and the kind of player he was. But I got to know him personally, because we wound up rooming together for the better part of a year. It turned out we had a lot in common. We'd faced a
lot of the same obstacles throughout our hockey careers, so we could really relate to each other. He was a Saskatchewan boy, a small-town boy from North Battleford. And he'd had to fight his way into the NHL. It wasn't long before he became almost like a brother to me—kind of like Jim McKenzie had been when I first arrived in Nashville. Wade wasn't the most skilled player on the ice, but when it came down to sticking up for his teammates, there was no one better. It was an honour just to play with him, to be at his side and learn the ropes from him and see the game through a fighter's mind. I was a fighter, too, but Wade was a true heavyweight.

He was always happy. He smiled all the time. Really, Wade seemed like the happiest guy around. And he was a real jokester. He played a lot of random jokes on me. I was okay with that because of how much I respected him. Outside of a hockey fight, he would never do harm to anyone. And he had a great presence; he just lit up a room. I'll always remember one of the crazy things we used to do. The night before a game, we'd both take an Ambien at the same time to help us get some sleep. But then we'd put $500 on the nightstand. Whoever stayed up the longest got to keep the money.

Wade would always tell me: “Toots, play your game. You're a good player. You can score goals. All of that other crap that I have to do … don't worry about that. I'll take care of it. I've got your back.” When someone tells you that, someone like Wade or Jim McKenzie who has the power to bust people up, it makes you feel comfortable. Those guys were the toughest guys in the NHL. Having them by my side was an amazing feeling. I have
been fortunate to play alongside guys who are heavyweights and who have fought through battles like I have.

Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. There was a game with the Washington Capitals when they had Donald Brashear on their team. I laid Brashear out in the corner. Part of my game is being physical; it was a clear shot, and I took Brashear out. Of course, he wasn't happy about it. He got up and started tapping me on the back of my legs, trying to get me to fight.
Fuck,
I was thinking,
are you kidding me?
I'm a brave enough guy, but that was a bit of a mismatch. The next thing I knew, Wade came storming over and he actually knocked Brashear out with one punch. There's a clip of it on YouTube, I believe. Right after that, on the next shift, I went at it with a guy named Matt Bradley, who was actually bigger than Brashear, and busted him up pretty good. I did my duty. That one's on YouTube as well.