Acknowledgments

In the days after I signed on to do this book in December 2020 and began telling friends and family about it, my plans were met with chuckles, headshakes, and dropped mouths.

Not in, “That’s great news and I’m shaking my head because I can’t believe it!” or, “My mouth is open because I’m excited for you!” kinds of ways, but in the, “You know you’re having a kid in five months, right?” kind of way. Some combination of, “You’re crazy,” or, “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” or, “You better get most of it done before the baby comes” usually followed.

My wife, MJ, (who was a couple months pregnant with our first child, Beaumont, when this publisher presented me with the idea that fall) reacted differently. She gave me the kind of sappy grin that only someone who really knew me and just how much I’d want to do something like this could. There was no pause to question whether I should take on my first book, while still working my job at The Athletic full-time, in the middle of a pandemic, with our first kid—and all the craziness that would (and did) come with him—on the way. There was no hesitation. She just said, “Do it.” And whenever I came up with a but-but-but as I mulled it over, she just kept saying it.

“Do it. Do it. Do it. You won’t regret it. We’ll make it work.”

But in the 11 months after I started the book and before I submitted this manuscript—and the year of editing and pagination that followed before it was published—she made it work a heck of a lot better than we did.

From December to Beaumont’s birth on May 7, 2021, I spent my weekdays sitting at our kitchen table doing my work for The Athletic, and almost all my weeknights and weekends writing this book. A few days before Beaumont’s due date, a pipe above our living room burst, flooding our small home and forcing us out in the middle of the night to my in-laws’ place north of the city. Though Beaumont was born in Toronto, he didn’t come home to it until three-and-a-half months later, once the insurance company—and its many delays—had replaced the plumbing, ceilings, and floors. Even during the seven weeks of parental leave I took from The Athletic, I spent many of those days (too many) squirreling away to the office at my in-laws’ home to write the manuscript or conduct and transcribe interviews.

MJ, even when she had every right to, never said a word. Not as she navigated motherhood for the first time. Not as she sang lullabies into the wee hours, barely able to hold the weight of the baby in her arms in those first few days, carrying Beaumont around her parents’ basement. Not as she shuffled Beaumont to and from the city, taking him to doctor’s appointments or by our construction site to check on progress. Not when we were finally back home in Toronto and she’d stop whatever she was doing to scoop up Beaumont, take him upstairs, and close the door of his bedroom whenever she heard my phone ring because she wanted to make sure that he didn’t make any noise while I was on a call for the book. Not in the home stretch, when I began to travel again for The Athletic, leaving her alone for weeklong trips to Calgary in the summer when Beaumont was still a newborn, or Traverse City in the fall as his sleep schedule changed, or Edmonton at Christmas as he learned to crawl. Not when I hit a wall in the writing process and began escaping to the nearby Riverdale Library, even when I was home, to finish the final chapters.

For each of those reasons, this book belongs to her more than me.

It also belongs to the many others who supported me—and her, and Beaumont—throughout its authoring. It belongs my parents-in-law, Heather and Andy, who took us in for 101 days (not that we were counting!) after the flood, cooking us meals and swanning in during the most difficult nights to take Beaumont for a couple of hours so that we could get some rest—and to Heather, in particular, for painting each room of our house while I worked on the book in the final months of MJ’s pregnancy. It belongs to people like my brother-in-law, Michael, who repeatedly came by the house after we were back in to do odd jobs that I had neglected to get to (or, as those who know me would likely tell you, am incapable of doing). It belongs to my parents, for their unending support of MJ and me in all that we do and of me in my pursuit of this crazy career specifically—and to my mom for endowing in me some of her research skills. It belongs to my sister-in-law, Meg, who also happens to be a literary agent who helped me navigate the early stages of this process, on her own time, when I was out of my depth.

And most of all, it belongs to the many subjects who answered my calls and spoke with me for much longer, and in much greater detail, than they needed to (in almost every case on multiple occasions).

David Gregory. Walt McKechnie. Bruce Boudreau. Randy Carlyle. Bob McGill. Peter Ihnacak. Wendel Clark. Gord Stellick. Scott Thornton. Steve Bancroft. Danny Flynn. Drake Berehowsky. Todd Warriner. Staffan Kronwall. John Ferguson Jr. Luke Schenn. Dave Poulin. Chris Bergeron. Rico Blasi. Brendan Shanahan. Jack Han. Ryan and Todd Tverberg. The many others from around the sport who spoke with me off the record or connected me with the right people. And Steve Dangle, for writing the foreword with the levity and energy that only he is capable of.

These stories really belong to them, in the end. In some cases, like Wendel’s, I was asking them to provide new details in stories they’ve told hundreds of times. In others, like with Tyler Biggs’ story (which I knew would be the longest chapter of the book and the toughest to write), I was asking people to tell a story about someone else when Tyler and his father Don politely declined to speak with me for the book.

Don wrote the following back to me in a text:

Scott,

Spoke with Tyler and he has moved on with his life. The past is the past and you can’t change it. People will say what they want no matter how the story is told.

Thanks for asking. Take care.

So it’s not lost on me that these stories don’t really belong to me. The book might, but the stories don’t—at all. That much hit home for me when Bergeron, after we were done speaking for the chapter on Biggs, finished by saying, “I hope this is a celebration of Tyler more than it is negative,” because his words were a clear sign of the we—of the humanity—at play.

I hope this book respected that we has its limits for me as a writer, telling stories about people who are not me, just as it did when MJ told me, “We’ll make it work,” knowing full well that she would need to.

Without her—and all those many others—making room for me to tell these stories, and without the people who lived them filling that room with theirs, this book never gets into your hands.