I MET Jim Yaworski through my brother Travis. They coached a Junior B team together. Jim called me about investing in a computer company, which I did. Then he invited me to play in a golf tournament and asked, “Would you be interested in coming to Belfast and playing for the Belfast Giants?” He explained that hockey was fairly new in Northern Ireland. The team had been formed in 2000 and was now part of the Elite Ice Hockey League. I asked how much it would pay, and he said, “Well, we have a salary cap, so you won’t make much—maybe just enough to cover your expenses—but we’ll get you a car and an apartment.”
Right before we teed off, I called Jenn at the dental office and said, “Hey, do you want to spend the winter in Belfast this year?” And she answered, “Where the hell is that?” In Ireland, I told her. “Yeah, let’s go,” she said. “Let’s do it.”
We moved to Belfast on October 13, 2005, and it was awesome. I was dry, and not long after, Jenn was dry too. At first, she wanted to keep drinking—she liked a glass of wine before dinner—but I was up front about wanting to be with someone who was sober too, and she understood.
When I went over there, I weighed 225 pounds—after I quit drinking, I just ate and ate and ate. But after playing for a while I dropped down to 190. I was on the ice and playing in my first game just hours after landing. I scored three goals and five assists and got into a fight with a guy named Freddie Oduya, who played for Edinburgh. He’d played with the Atlanta Thrashers’ farm team, the Orlando Solar Bears, and was traded to the Calgary Flames in 1999 for Eric Landry, but he never saw ice in The Show, so I think he had something to prove. He stood six foot three and weighed 218, and his nickname was “Freddy Knuckles.” Didn’t matter—I knew if I didn’t step up I would be killed. He kept going after me, kept taking me into the boards, and finally after a spear I took a swing, then dropped my gloves and went at it. My helmet flew off and I was just whaling away. I managed to knock him on his ass, and then the refs came in. In Belfast, you fought your own battles. It was a different mentality. Nobody protected the talent—not even the refs. You were on your own.
My job was to entertain the crowd, and I think I can say I did my part. They would yell at me, I would beak back, and they loved it. Sometimes I would throw the game puck to my biggest critic—my way of saying thanks for the show, buddy. The fans in Coventry were the worst. During one game in January, we had to call security to our bench a few times. They were calling me all kinds of names and referring to my drug use. The PA announcer was egging them on. I finally just said, “Fuck it” and left the game. There is a real mob mentality among sports fans there. Hockey in Belfast isn’t a joke—it’s definitely bush, but it turned out that a lot of guys thought they could make a name for themselves by going after me. So it was like I had a bull’s-eye on my chest sometimes.
We won the regular-season championship but lost in the playoffs because our goalie fell apart. A recurring theme. I was named the British Ice Hockey Writers Association’s Elite League Player of the Year, which was a big honour.
Belfast was the best thing that could have happened to Jenn and me. We had an eighteen-month engagement to see if we could actually live together. We were able to travel and see a whole bunch of really cool stuff, like castles and Giant’s Causeway, a strange rock formation caused by a volcano. The legend says it was built by a giant, Finn McCool, so he could walk to Scotland to fight his enemy. We went up there nine times. It was just a great place to go and hike and walk around, just absolutely beautiful. The area around it is the greenest place you can imagine.
And we had lots of visitors—my parents and hers, as well as friends, and Trav and his girlfriend, Amanda. We got to see the Braveheart monument, which is kind of like Scotland’s Statue of Liberty. It was just phenomenal. And we went to Edinburgh and St. Andrews golf course and had our pictures taken on the bridge.
It was cool to see another part of the world because, for the first six to eight months of our relationship, we were locked up in a house partying. The idea that we could function so much better without drugs or alcohol was eye-opening. We never left each other’s side. I explained to the team that I was sober and that if Jenn didn’t come on the road trips with me, I wasn’t going either. Occasionally, Jenn still wanted a glass of wine, but she stuck it out. Which was no easy task when we were living in the middle of a pub culture.
We had our moments—sometimes it was touch and go. But I finally found somebody who does not care whether I am rich or poor, somebody who embraces my successes and my failures and who loves me unconditionally.
Not all of the games while I played for the Giants went smoothly. I lost my temper if the crowd got too abusive, and I still had a problem with refs. Hey, I quit drinking, I didn’t have a personality transplant! The Giants asked me to come back because I was putting the game on the map over there, but I had done what I’d come to Ireland to do.