This might not mean much to the 99.9% of the U.S. population who have never seen an NHL game—let alone heard of “the ice hockey”—but for millions of Canadians (living and buried) this is pretty important shit.
According to the New York Times, former NHL player Theoren Fleury reveals in his memoir Playing with Fire* his “nightmare” years playing hockey with the New York Rangers (1999-2002):
…all night drinking, doing cocaine, going “below the streets of New York City” to “party with freaks, transvestites, strippers” or to “hang out with homeless guys around a burn barrel” on the West Side piers.
He substituted Gatorade or his baby boy’s urine for his own in drug tests until, finally, he had to take a break from hockey to enter a substance-abuse program.
And, of course, he was MOLESTED:
… as a 14-year-old player in Western Canada, he was sexually abused by Graham James, a once-respected junior league coach. James was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 1997 for sexually abusing players.
Fleury encourages “men who had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood” to visit 1in6.org to seek help.
Now as for the adult men out there who were not sexually abused—but were picked on by hockey players all through adolescence—well, Fleury’s confession might offer these men some redemption.
“It feels good to know that while they were calling us fags and shoving us into lockers, they were sucking dick for more ice time,” says one imaginary victim of hockey bullying. “I bet they were crying too.”
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* I haven’t read the book yet.
