I HAD JUST BEGUN to reach my stride in the mid-′90s. I was in peak shape, skating faster and had more skill with the puck than ever. Then one day I woke up with a stabbing pain in my gut that would not go away. All through 1994 I had had stomach cramps, but I ate and drank whatever I wanted, so I wrote it off as food poisoning or the flu or whatever. Rule number one when you are from a small prairie town: the only times you see a doctor are when you are born or you are dying. You might consider getting medical attention if you’re pissing blood or having a heart attack, and childbirth is okay too. But generally, if you pass a kidney stone—especially during harvest time—you do it on the tractor. Besides, I grew up with a mother who was totally fucked up by doctors, so I did not trust them.
I was in a dressing room in Phoenix after a pre-season game against L.A.—this was before Phoenix had a team in the NHL. It was like somebody had taken a knife and jabbed me in the gut every five minutes, about an inch above my right hipbone. It was so bad it took my breath away. The team was playing another game in San Diego the next night, but there was no way I would be able to play. The Phoenix doctor who was on call for the game suggested I go home and look into it. He thought it might be my appendix. That night, I was twisted up in pain on my hotel bed.
I flew home the next morning with Rick Skaggs, our media guy, and went to the Rocky View Hospital. I stayed there for five days while they did a whole bunch of diagnostic tests that involved barium enemas. I was having Dumb and Dumber dumps every five minutes. They emptied me out completely. The doctors tested my blood and stools and stuck tubes up my ass, shooting dye up there and taking pictures. I found a new appreciation for my insides.
The pain had subsided because they had given me something, but they discovered I had a blockage eleven centimetres long in my large intestine. Thankfully, it wasn’t necessary to have surgery. Instead they wanted to make the swelling go down with medication. When you have an ulcer in your intestine and it heals, the scar tissue left behind causes this blockage. It’s called Crohn’s disease.
Dr. Marty Cole, an expert in the field of Crohn’s and colitis, took care of me. He put me on this steroid called prednisone, which is a synthetic version of a hormone called cortisol, which you produce in your adrenal glands. A lot of people gain weight on this stuff, and it’s tough on the bones—it can reduce bone mass and make them brittle. This is not a good thing when you’re getting pounded into the boards by minivans every night.
For me, my hands and feet swelled up, which affected my touch a bit, but my energy levels increased. I could play sixty minutes in a game and not be tired. My swollen hands and feet really bothered me, so after I’d been on the prednisone for about six months, I just threw it away. I went to a health food store and asked if they had anything for Crohn’s. The guy behind the counter sold me about $2,500 worth of fuckin’ garbage that I didn’t need.
I was doing okay. I did have a couple of small attacks during the season, sometimes during the game, but I just kept it to myself. After a year or so, I was only having periodic attacks—mainly if I ate something that didn’t agree with me, like corn, peppers, onions or anything hard to digest. Broccoli or cauliflower would just about kill me. I was determined to ignore it, and eventually it ignored me. Like so many other things in my life, it was just one of those things that went away. I’m not saying it isn’t a serious disease—it is. I was unusually fortunate in that my body healed. I swear I am going to donate my body to science someday.
But getting taken down unexpectedly like that made me think I should get something else going and cash in on my name. I needed someone to help me to capitalize on the opportunity, so I hired Shannon’s sister, Ryan Griffin. She already had a phys. ed. degree and had just graduated with a marketing degree from Mount Royal College in Calgary. I asked her to take care of the Theo Fleury “brand.”
The first idea she brought on board was a hockey school. It was the last thing I wanted to do. “What a pain in the ass that would be,” I said. But she convinced me. The next thing you know, we were interviewing good, qualified people to work at the school. Richard Gagnon, a trainer from Quebec who had his master’s in coaching, put together the curriculum. Then we hired my son Josh’s two babysitters. Why? Because of their ability to organize kids. They could learn to teach hockey, but it was more important to hire people with a background in education. We were right. The first week we had a hundred kids, and the second week we had fifty walk-ins thanks to word of mouth. We were sold out for fifteen years. We put through 720 kids per year, and there was always a waiting list.
Ryan was super organized and everything ran smoothly. But for me it was craziness, running two rinks all day plus making sure I got in a workout with my trainer, Richard Hesketh. Rich was a former decathlete, a Canadian champion. In 1988 Rich was working as a personal trainer at Heaven’s Fitness downtown, making about a hundred bucks a month. Ryan called him and asked him if he could help me get into the best shape of my life and he jumped at the opportunity. The Flames hired him to train the team and he is still there today.
I had tremendous endurance. I smoked a lot of dope and drank, but it didn’t seem to slow me down. There would always be the hangover from the night before. I would show up at workouts and Hesketh would say, “Holy fuck, you stink!” and I would answer, “Yeah, I haven’t been to bed yet.” He’d ask me if I was sure I wanted to work out, and I’d say, “Yeah, let’s go.” He had me up to 168 pounds or so and I was benching 300. There are stairs on Memorial Drive across from Prince’s Island Park in downtown Calgary that go up the side of a huge hill. I read that if you climb these stairs 130 times you will have climbed the elevation of Mount Everest. Richard would get me to run them ten times per session. Up to the top and back down, take a thirty-second break, then do it again—interval training. I worked out religiously, and I was in stupid shape. I guess you could say in the off-season I used to climb Everest.
On the first Sunday, all the kids would come to sign up for hockey camp, and there would be a lineup. It was just packed. That lineup would go on for hours. I did not leave until every single kid had something signed. The deal was that I would sign stuff that day, but not during the week because that was reserved for hockey. Then on the final day I would sign again. It was a carrot for them.
I tried to show leadership—be first on the ice and one of the last guys to leave. It was my school—my name was on it and I was responsible for it. We had employees who met, married and had kids. We had high school and college instructors—amazing, quality people. Good players like Joel Bond, who went to Union College in Schenectady, New York, or Craig Adams, who won Stanley Cups with the Carolina Hurricanes and Pittsburgh Penguins.
I reconnected with my buddy Pete Montana through the camp. When I first moved to Moose Jaw, Pete was doing play-by-play for the Warriors. Later, Pete told me when I got on the bus for our first road trip to Prince Albert, he saw me and thought, “There is no way this kid is old enough to play in this league.” I think I weighed about 125 at the time.
Pete was always good to hang with. We ended up hiring him to coach at the hockey school. Unfortunately, it became kind of a fantasy camp/babysitting service. Parents would just drop their kids off,showing no interest—not even bothering to tie their skates or bring them lunch. I was disappointed in that, so I moved it to Russell after seven years and ran it for eight more. It was a way for me to give back to my hometown. Every cent of profit went to minor hockey in Russell. We donated enough for a new ice plant.
The hockey school had one other added benefit. It gave me an opportunity to spend more time with my son Josh. I made it clear he was to be treated like every other kid—no special treatment—and he had a blast. He was a character, pretty funny and always had a lot of friends. He was a leader, and the instructors would tell me that if we got Josh in line, everybody else would fall in line too.
I was extremely proud of what we had accomplished as a team. Each year when camp ended, Shannon and I put on a barbeque at our home. That first year, the party turned into a gong show. I stood up and started talking about how proud I was of everybody, and then I burst into tears—not sobbing, but crying. The Fleurys are all pretty emotional. So I was hugging everybody and everybody was hugging me. It felt so good to have created this opportunity for others out of nothing. Later in the night, when I was absolutely blasted, I was having a smoke on the front step of my house and Pete was keeping me company. And I just crawled into Pete’s lap like a kid. I mean, he was a big guy—six feet, 210 pounds. I thanked him for helping out and told him, “I love you, man. I couldn’t have done this without you. This is so great. I am so happy all my friends are here.” Suddenly, I needed to take all the guys in the group to the bar. “We need to go out—we’re ordering a limo!” Pete said, “No, you’re not going to order a limo. I’ll call a couple of taxis. We’ll be fine.” And even though I was hammered, I knew I had found a friend who would not take advantage of our friendship.
BY 1994, it was over between Shannon and me. Our common-law relationship was toast. She tried, she really did. Shannon was very, very protective of me. Once, I mentioned to her that it bugged me that Crispy was calling me Fuckface, Numbnuts, Shithead, Flower, whatever. It felt like he didn’t respect me enough to use my name. From then on, God help anyone who did not call me Theoren. Lanny was retired, so at the time I was getting the most fan mail of any player—bins and bins full. Shannon made sure to answer every letter with an autographed picture. We spent a thousand dollars a month on envelopes, stamps and photos. To this day, I still get people coming up to me and telling me that when they were kids they sent letters to their favourite hockey stars and I was the only guy who cared enough to reply.
But it was like living with a mom. She cooked and cleaned and bossed me around. Was she already a mother figure and I was attracted to that? Or did I turn her into one?
My mother was always so lunched on Valium that our home was a mess. You would open a cupboard to get a glass and instead you’d find big plates, Pepto Bismol, Tampax and cups. Next cupboard, a screwdriver, antacid, big plates and last year’s mail. Nobody could eat at the table because it was covered in piles and piles of stuff. There were chunks missing from our living room ceiling because my dad and the rest of us practised our golf swings in the house. Shannon was the opposite—very organized. She packed for my road trips and, even though we made a million a year, she would search for the coupons from cereal boxes so we could save thirty-five cents on margarine.
If I wanted to buy a car she would say, “That is a lot of money!” She spent like a sensible, reasonable person, but I felt that it was very restrictive. However, in my opinion, our biggest problem was her family. There was a lot of friction with her dad. I wanted to break off contact, while she was loyal to him. I felt she was choosing him over me.
I would get drunk probably two, three times a week, and I smoked a lot of dope too. I stayed out all night and slept around. At that point, I didn’t think I had a problem or an issue—I was still functioning and things seemed to be going really well. I really didn’t have problems sleeping at that time, because I’d buried the whole Graham James thing. I thought, “I don’t ever have to talk about this. I don’t have to deal with it.” Meanwhile, Shannon and Graham had become friends. She would call him for advice on how to handle me and they spent hours on the phone together. It wasn’t her fault—I still had not told her about what he had done to me.
I was in my early twenties and wanted to live and enjoy my success. Rock stars, movie stars and professional athletes use people. Whoever they are with serves their purpose, and then it’s time to move on.
Every time I walked through the door I would get an earful about how selfish I was, what an asshole I was, what a shitty dad I was. Blah, blah, blah. It had gotten to the point where I was with Shannon in that relationship for Josh and Josh alone. I told myself I was done giving and giving and being told I wasn’t giving enough. I had never made any decisions for myself. I decided I was going to run my life from then on.
I wasn’t used to quitting. So how did I deal with it? By partying. I was out every night and did not come home until it got light out. At that year’s wrap-up party, Pete walked into the family room with a beer and sat down. “You look like shit,” he said. “Yep, so do you,” I answered. He told me he was leaving his wife, Andy. “Really? I’m leaving Shannon.” There was silence for a moment. “I guess we should get a place together,” I said. “Sounds good,” he said. Then he asked, “So where do you want to live?” I didn’t care as long as I had easy access to the Saddledome and the airport.
So Pete found a condo for us. The rent was $550 a month. I was happy with it and told him to take the big bedroom because I honestly did not give a shit. All I needed was a mattress and a dresser. Material things just didn’t matter much.
I moved a couple of bags of clothing in but had still not officially broken up with Shannon. I had one leg over the fence. She wanted me to go with her to Saskatchewan to see her family and I refused. I didn’t want to be a part of them anymore—there was too much dysfunction. Shannon took Josh to visit them, and Pete and I went to the bar almost every night. One night we were at a cowboy bar called Ranchman’s. We were standing in a circle, talking, and a guy managed to get next to me. He was staring at my hand and said, “Is that your Stanley Cup ring?” I yanked it off and tossed it to him. “Sure, have a look!” I thought Pete was going to have a heart attack.
As far as women went, there were no ugly ones. I didn’t have to do much. Pete would stand in front, screening me, and I’d let him know if I wanted someone to get through. I had to make it tough to get to me; otherwise, fans would be lined up and that might cut down on my drinking time. But women were less intimidated than guys. They would come up and ask me to dance, and Pete and I wouldn’t see each other again until my bedroom door opened in the morning and some strange girl would be looking for the bathroom. Sometimes he’d ask, “Who was that?” Most times I wouldn’t have a clue. “Yeah, I’m not really sure …” And we would both laugh.
One night, we were at another cowboy bar, Longhorns, drinking up a storm and I noticed this brunette sitting with her friends at a table. It was unusual for her to catch my eye, because I always went for blondes. She was petite—way smaller than me, and maybe 110 pounds soaking wet. I thought she was absolutely beautiful, so fresh and natural-looking. I ordered a round for her table and held up my beer to her in a toast. She nodded and smiled, and pretty soon she and a friend made their way over. She had class. “Hello,” she said, “my name is Veronica and we just want to say thank you for the drinks.”
I was smiling. “Hello, I am Theoren and this is my friend Pete, and you are very welcome.” She held her hand out for a handshake. It was tiny. “Feel free to come and join us for a drink at our table if you would like.” Then she turned and left, and Pete and I just stared at her perfect little apple ass. She and her friend were not even three-quarters of their way back to their table when I said to Pete, “Do you think I’d look too eager if we head over there right now?”
He held me back for a couple minutes, but it seemed like forever. When we joined them, she and I continued to get to know each other. I asked her what she did for a living and she told me she worked in property management as an executive assistant and that she put in a lot of hours. Then, “And what do you do?” “Oh, I play hockey,” I said. Pete looked shocked. Later, he repeated the conversation back to me. “Not ‘I won the Stanley Cup and I am a fifty-goal scorer.’ Just, ‘I play hockey.’ Not, ‘I play for the Flames.’ Just, ‘I play hockey!’”
“Do you like that?” she asked. “Oh yeah,” I said, “I enjoy it. “That’s good, that you like what you do,” she said, and I was toast. Maybe she was just flirting with me. You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind to be in that city at that time and not know who I was. I mean, it isn’t like my name was Bill or Dave or something. But at the time she seemed to have absolutely no idea who I was or what I did. Meanwhile, everyone else in the bar was like, “Omigod, Theoren Fleury is sitting at a table with eight women!”
Veronica and I saw each other constantly, and just after Shannon returned I moved all my stuff to Pete’s. I left Shannon with the house, the furniture, the car, everything.
In the long run, I did her a favour. Shannon was smart—she had graduated top of her class from high school. After I left, she went back to school, got a bachelor of education and a master’s in administration and supervision and married a really good guy a few years later.
There was no getting between Veronica and me. She never spent a night at my condo—I didn’t bring her to the den of iniquity. In the first two months Pete and I lived together, I brought home maybe twenty girls. I needed someone there with me at night, but they were nameless and faceless. I was really lonely. I wanted someone totally focused on me. And now this girl was it.
ALL OF US NHL players had played the previous year without a collective bargaining agreement. The league was trying to negotiate a salary cap and we said, “Never,” so Commissioner Gary Bettman locked us out. It was disappointing, but I wasn’t devastated. The Gilmour trade plunged the Flames into a lot of lean years—we hadn’t gone past the first round of the playoffs since winning the Cup in ‘89 and a kind of paranoia had set in around the team. Nobody wanted to be the architect of another trade disaster, so we continued to draft poorly.
When the lockout started, I told my agent, Don Baizley, to shop around and find me a place to play. I was partying every night and losing my mind because I had nothing to do. He found a team in Finland, Tappara. It was Bizarro World there—we had pictures of fuckin’ chickens all over our jerseys. The Finns were good to me, and I learned a lot about European hockey, which would pay off in my upcoming international play. But, man—chickens?
Just before heading out to Finland, I went to Pete and said, “Spend as much time as you can with Veronica. Be her friend. I really care for her.” When I got there, I missed her so much, I called her pretty much every night that first week. Finally, I asked her to quit her job and move to Europe. I told her, “I know you like your job, but you are an executive assistant. You can always be an executive assistant, but can you always find a person in your life who really matters to you and you love more than anything? Probably not.”
That Finnish team hadn’t won in forever, and in one of the first games I played for them we went into OT and I scored. It was exactly like the goal I scored against the Oilers in ‘91—I even dropped to my knees and spun down the ice while everyone piled on. The fans went wild. Veronica and I sent out cards from Finland. Veronica is sitting on my knee and I am wearing that fuckin’ chicken jersey. Those Finns loved me, and life was good.
But one phone call was about to change all that.