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Biography & Autobiography Sports

Offside

My Life Crossing the Line

by (author) Sean Avery & Michael McKinley

Publisher
Penguin Group Canada
Initial publish date
Sep 2018
Category
Sports, Hockey, Personal Memoirs
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780735232877
    Publish Date
    Sep 2018
    List Price
    $19.95

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Description

Hockey's most polarizing figure takes us inside the game, shedding light not only on what goes on behind closed doors, but also what makes professional athletes tick.

Sean Avery is not afraid to break the rules laid down by hockey tradition. And the most respected of these is the code of silence. For the first time, a hockey player is prepared to reveal what really goes on in the NHL, in the spirit of what Ball Four did for baseball. The money, the personalities, the adultery, and the drugs--and also the little things that make up daily life in the league.
Most athletes have little to say, but Sean doesn't have that problem. Yes, he tells us about the guys he's fought and the guys he's partied with, and he tells us where to find the best cougar bars in various NHL cities and what it's like to be hounded by the media when you're dating a celebrity. But Sean's job on the ice was always to get inside the heads of the guys he played against, and that insight on human nature is on full display in Offside.What makes millionaire athletes tick? What are their weaknesses? And in the end, what makes Sean Avery--once called "the most hated player in the NHL"--who he is? What is it like to make people hate you for a living?
Sean Avery's misdeeds on and off the ice are well-documented, and he certainly has his detractors. But on the other hand, he has a lot of supporters, in part for things like being the first North American athlete to come out in favour of marriage equality, and in part just for being an interesting guy. Love him or hate him, he is one of the best-known players of the past few decades, and certainly one of the most colourful and outspoken. In Offside, he meets his accusers head-on, and gives them something to think about.

About the authors

Sean Avery's profile page

"

Michael McKinley, a life-long Hockey fanatic, alternatively followed the fortunes of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Montreal Canadiens until 1970, when the NHL gave him local heroes by granting a franchise to the Vancouver Canucks. He is a screenwriter and the author of Hockey Hall of Fame Legends and Putting a Roof on Winter.

"

Michael McKinley's profile page

Excerpt: Offside: My Life Crossing the Line (by (author) Sean Avery & Michael McKinley)

1

LAST CHANCE

I’ve wanted this since I was five years old. I’m now twenty-one, and time is running out.

Of course, looking back I realize I had lots of time, but in September 2001, all I knew was that playing the game I loved more than anything in the NHL was the only option. There was no Plan B.

My heart is pounding. I am here to earn a spot on the Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League. The fact that people are already talking about this as one of the best teams in history isn’t going to make things any easier. I am going to have to take a job away from someone the Red Wings actually want on the roster. And they’ve already told me in several ways that they don’t want me. This is my third crack at making the NHL—I’ve already played two seasons in the minors. Every year, a new bunch of rookies shows up, diminishing my odds. When I look around at the guys in camp, or when lying awake in bed last night, I have to ask whether I am good enough. I’m not an idiot. I know most people would say no. The Red Wings already said no.

I had been good enough once. As a kid, I played for an All-Ontario rep team. (By the way, that’s a big deal.) In my last year of junior hockey, I had twenty-eight goals and fifty-six assists for eighty-five points in fifty-five games. To put it in perspective, my fellow OHL player, Jason Spezza, had thirty-six goals and fifty assists and eighty-six points for the Windsor Spitfires in his best junior season. Spezza was chosen second overall in the first round of the 2001 NHL Entry Draft. He was beaten out by Ilya Kovalchuk, who was drafted first, and tore up the NHL for a while before walking away from $77 million and twelve years on his contract with New Jersey to play in Russia. Being drafted by the NHL doesn’t guaran­tee anything.

I know this too well as I wasn’t drafted at all. On draft day in 2001, part of me believed that there was at least one NHL general manager out there who would see what I could bring to a team, and another part of me believed that getting drafted was too good to be true. I wasn’t going to sit by the phone—I spent draft day at a pool party. When I came home, nei­ther of my parents even mentioned the draft, and I didn’t ask if anyone had called. It was as if we had all moved on to the next plan of attack. I’d go to training camp as a free agent.

But still, it hurt. No one wanted me. Nearly 300 guys were taken, and not one GM wanted to use a ninth-round pick on me.

Well, I know why. The knock on me was that I was a “bad teammate.” Did this mean that I stole other players’ girlfriends? That I was an arro­gant puck hog? That I put Tiger Balm in guys’ jockstraps and thought it was the funniest thing ever when they tried to extinguish the three-alarm fire burning up the family jewels?

No, none of the above. What it meant was that I played to win on every shift, and some other players don’t see the game that way. So I would let them know that they could do better. Since no one likes to be called out for dogging it, the rap landed on me that I was “bad in the room,” which in hockey-speak means you’re not one of the guys. Maybe it’s the same in other sports, but in hockey being one of the guys goes a long way. What it won’t do, though, is win you a puck battle in the corner. And it’s cer­tainly not going to win you a fight.

So if I wasn’t going to make it as everyone’s best friend and all-round good guy, well, I’d have to make it as the opposite.

I did have one friend in Detroit, though. I knew Kris Draper from growing up in the same town that he did, Scarborough, Ontario, which is part of Toronto but so far from the city center that it’s known as “Scarberia.” In 1997–98, when Draper was then in his fifth season with the Red Wings (the one in which he’d win the second of his four Stanley Cups), we worked out at the same gym. I was playing for the Ontario under-17 team, which fell under the umbrella of the Canadian national hockey program, so as “elite players” we trained at the same facility as pros like Drapes.

He had success, money, and a lovely wife, he was a good husband, and he took care of everyone around him. He was close with his dad, he had friends, and when he let loose he could put any frat boy to shame. He was the best guy. Drapes also had the Red Wing workout gear, which was sponsored by Nike and which was very foreign to a Canadian kid—we had Bauer and that was it. Draper would show up in this gear and hand it out to guys like me. I saw how organized and disciplined and dedicated he was, and at that moment, I was the most in awe of anyone that I had ever been.

Draper was physically a specimen. He was not big, and that was import­ant because neither was I. He was five-nine—and some days when he was feeling supreme he was five-ten—and 180 pounds of lean, cut muscle. He was one of the first guys to make being in top shape a cool thing. Spend any time in the gym with a guy like Drapes, and all you want is to be as chiseled as he is.

Drapes liked me because I pushed him hard and wanted to beat him at everything. So every day he showed up at the gym he had a hungry dog on his ass who reminded him that I wanted to take his job. He later told me that I added years onto his career, but at that point I was just working as hard as I could to keep up with him.

One of Detroit’s scouts, Joe McDonnell, helped me, too. McDonnell had been a minor-league defenseman who played a few games in the NHL for Vancouver and Pittsburgh. He’d moved on to coaching in the Ontario Hockey League, and he knew I could play. Mac was not a suit-and-tie guy, he was a players’ guy, a real hockey man—he loved the game and wasn’t interested in playing politics, so when he said that I had a shot in Detroit, I believed him. He wasn’t the kind of guy to flatter a no-hoper. I had a reputation as bad as they come and Mac’s job was to have good judgment. In my mind, he’d put his job on the line by taking a chance on me, and I wouldn’t let him down.

But even with Drapes and McDonnell in my corner at that training camp in September 2001, I needed to do more than just play. Everyone in camp could play hockey at an elite level, otherwise they wouldn’t be there. And they all know me, because I’d played against most of them in junior. There will be times later in my career when I will most definitely wish I could take a break from my reputation, but now it’s the thing that makes me stand out and I am going to use it to my advantage. I’m here to get noticed, and a bad reputation makes that a lot easier.

Editorial Reviews

A Globe and Mail Bestseller

Offside... may be described as Ken Dryden's The Game rewritten by Hunter S. Thompson.” –Globe and Mail

“[A] lively, dishy bildungsroman on skates.” –Sports Illustrated

“[Avery] pulls no punches... Love him or loathe him, Avery is unapologetically himself in his tell-all.” –TSN

“The one-of-a-kind left winger gives an unparalleled inside look at the NHL lifestyle... If you ever wanted to know what players really thought of certain coaches (Mike Babcock, Andy Murray, John Tortorella), which teammates can drive a squad nuts, or just see how the NHL sausage is made (drugs, sex, partying), Avery has the scoop... Any hockey fan will be interested in the stories he has to tell.” –The Hockey News

“Avery has happily returned the disdain in his new bridge-burning memoir. . . . [he is] the exact same disruptor as an author.” –The Toronto Star
“He doesn’t claim to be an entirely reformed character . . . and there’s more than a hint of score-settling throughout the book. Nonetheless, Avery does want to prove he’s more than a “hate-filled wrecking ball.” –Maclean’s
“Sean Avery is the first to admit he’s made mistakes [and] it makes for colourful reading. . . . Avery throws out manhole-cover-sized brickbats.” –National Post

"[Avery’s] voice is energetic and offbeat, and his get-real revelations about drugs, team jealousies, and the lingering damage from a violent sport will hold readers’ attention." –Publisher's Weekly

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