MY FAREWELL TOUR—OR NOT
I always thought that when I retired it would have been planned at the start of my final season or even the summer leading up to that season. I envisioned having my entire family on hand to witness my last game. I would be able to address the crowd in each of the sixteen cities I played in and thank them for all their loyal support. Perhaps I might even shed a tear. Nope. Instead, my career ended pretty much like it began. That is to say, very unspectacularly.
During our prison sentence that was the DEL in Germany, my wife and I decided to rent a house in Newport Beach, California, for the months of May and June. One reason for this was that it had snowed in our hometown of Dryden in the middle of May the year prior so we were looking to avoid any early-summer snow flurries. It also gave us a chance to see some friends we hadn’t seen since our days with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. But mostly it gave us a chance to try to forget about a forgettable year, decompress, and figure out our next move.
I didn’t know if I was ready to call it a career yet. I kept thinking to myself that this is no way to go out. Not like this. I can’t let Germany beat me. But, the one thing I did realize was the end was near. I decided to keep my options open. I was going to continue to train as if I was going to keep playing, but I also needed to be realistic and start figuring out what I wanted to do with the next phase of my life.
I knew I wanted to stay in the game somehow. If I couldn’t play then coaching was an obvious choice to continue in the business. But coaching wasn’t going to bring me any more time with the family. I knew it would also likely mean dragging my family from town to town AGAIN if I was going to try to climb up the rungs of the coaching ladder. There was no way that conversation would have gone over with the wife.
“Honey, I’ve decided to retire….”
“Fantastic, it’s about time! I’ve enjoyed our whole hockey experience, but I can’t wait to settle down and plant some roots in a community. As much as I have loved our travels, I think it’s time to give the kids some stability. I’m so excited!”
“No, honey, I’ve decided to retire from playing hockey but not hockey itself. What I meant to say was I’ve decided to pursue a coaching career.”
That wasn’t going to fly. Starting off as a coach is pretty much like starting off as a player. You have to start at the bottom and work your way up. Mrs. Journeyman wasn’t prepared to begin another journey like that, so I needed to figure out something else to do.
A friend of mine, Monique Lugli, recommended I contact Career Joy to speak with them about helping me “find myself.” It wasn’t cheap, but I needed help. And there was no way the family would live long off the wooden nickels I had saved during my lucrative career. Don’t get me wrong; the ability to make a good living in professional hockey is there. But when 90 percent of your career is spent in the minors there’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Since I still hadn’t officially called it a career, I wanted to keep all of my options open. That meant working with my new career counsellor and working out in the gym as well. I wanted to train as if I was going to be attending a camp in the fall. Be ready just in case someone called looking for that final piece of the puzzle. (Yeah, right.) Anyway, I hooked up with a former teammate of mine, Jason Marshall. He was still playing in the NHL so he was a motivated training partner. We would spend a few hours at the gym in the morning and then after lunch I worked on the next phase of my life.
For eight weeks, life was great. I trained hard, completed all of my career assignments online, and spent a lot of time with the family at home and on the beach. If making Germany a distant memory was indeed a goal, then mission accomplished. The only problem was that after those two months I still didn’t know where my life was headed. On one hand I wanted to keep playing, if only for lack of a better option. But I knew that I couldn’t put the family through another year like we had just endured.
After our two-month beach vacation, Mrs. Journeyman and the kids flew back to Dryden and I hopped in the truck and drove the U-Haul back. That gave me three days of alone time to try to figure stuff out. Yet even after all that time by my lonesome I was no closer to making a decision on the future. Being between jobs is a precarious position. I was definitely feeling the pressure of the situation.
I left Newport Beach on a Friday and arrived in Dryden late Sunday evening. After driving for three consecutive days I was in much need of a workout. No decision had come to me, but I knew I needed to keep training. Little did I know that the workout was about to provide an answer for me. I stepped into the squat rack, and about five minutes later I limped out of the gym with a pulled muscle in my back. Apparently, putting a couple hundred pounds on your back after sitting in a car for seventy-two hours is not good for you. Who knew? That was it for the workouts for a week.
The following Monday I went back to the gym. That time I wasn’t going to do anything to compromise my back. I wasn’t going to do any weights. I did a fifteen-minute warm-up on the bike and then started some plyometrics to get the legs going again. During my first set of squat jumps I felt my hamstring give. I mean, are you kidding me? One week, two brief workouts, and two injuries. Was it a glimpse into the future if I ultimately decided to give hockey another go? I wasn’t prepared to take that chance.
I can still remember where I was the moment I decided to call it quits. Since the gym was only a five-second walk from our house, I limped home again, grabbed an ice pack, walked upstairs, and lay down in our bedroom loft. I was staring out at the lake when I yelled down to Mrs. Journeyman, “That’s it. We’re done.”
And just like that, the professional hockey career of Sean Pronger was over. It was a weird feeling. I was expecting the thought of not playing to hurt a little. I figured maybe I’d experience a small bout of depression. But I didn’t feel a thing. I wasn’t sad or mad. I was just kind of … indifferent. Maybe it was because the decision came in the summer, when there wasn’t any hockey to be missed. But I don’t think so. I just don’t think there was any more blood to squeeze from the stone. I gave all I could to the game and I had nothing left. I really believed my time had come. And to be honest, there was no one left to fool! I mean, sixteen teams in eleven years in five different leagues. The jig was up, and I was at peace with that.
For most players, retirement doesn’t happen that quickly. And before that not-so-fateful day in July I figured someone would have to cut off my skates to get me to stop playing. I envisioned playing till I was at least forty. Sometimes I think I may have been able to keep playing if I hadn’t decided to head overseas, but that’s a moot point. I would have just been delaying the inevitable. You see, at some point, we all have to retire. Since journeymen typically don’t make life-changing money, we need to find employment. For whatever reason, that is a shocker to some people. The summer after I played for the Manitoba Moose I went back to Winnipeg for a charity golf tournament. I took a cab to the golf course and the driver recognized me. That, my friends, is a big hockey fan! He asked me what my post-playing day plans were. I can still picture the puzzled look on his face when I told him that I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I had to do something. He figured since I played in the NHL I was set for life. No sir Mr. Cabbie, you’ve got the wrong brother.
A lot of players are terrified of retirement. And, really, can you blame them? Hockey is all they know. From an early age every minute of every day was spent focusing on making it to the NHL. And once they do, all their time and energy is spent on trying to stay there. There’s not a lot of time for guys to find another craft they may be good enough at to earn a living. That’s why some guys hang on and play for a couple years past their best-before date. What the hell else are they going to do? Retirement is tough even on the elite players. I know what you’re thinking: “Cry me a river about another millionaire athlete who can’t let go of the game.” And you may have a point. But the challenge is mental, not financial. These guys have been identified as “Joe Smith, star hockey player” their whole lives, and when that turns into plain old “Joe Smith” it can be tough on the ego. Hockey defines them. It’s their identity. And once these guys retire it’s like their identity erodes a little bit day by day. Obviously, I was not a star in the game, but I’m guessing it takes a pretty balanced individual to make a seamless transition from pro hockey life to everyday life.
I don’t know. Maybe being well-balanced is overrated. Maybe seamlessness is not all it’s cracked up to be. I’m thinking this way because I realize that at the moment of retirement I was pondering the same things I was that day back at the farmhouse, during my first season as a pro, when I was tempted to pack it in. What I was thinking then was that I had to go on, because Sean Pronger was a hockey player. So what else was he going to do?
I’m glad I came to the decision I did, because if I had chosen poorly back then I would never have had the chance to live the dream that dominated my whole youth. Yeah, there were some tough years, but I got to do what I set out to do. I scored some big goals, laid a few hits, dropped the gloves in front of 18,000 fans once or twice. It doesn’t make me a Hall of Fame candidate (not counting the NWO Hall of Fame, that is), but I’m sure glad I didn’t blow my chance to do those things. When I was a kid playing road hockey in Dryden, I would have given anything to face off against a Doug Gilmour or a Steve Yzerman. And I got what I wanted. (And won the draw, too, as I recall.)
So I’m glad I made the decision I did. But I see now that I was wrong about one thing. I didn’t make that decision just because I was a hockey player and I couldn’t do anything else. I probably did what I did for the challenge. Maybe I did what I did because the good things in life are the tough things to achieve. That’s what I think now, anyway.
Maybe the journeymen out there learn better than others how to value what comes through great difficulty. I’d like to think that we probably prize the precious things in life a little more highly than others do, because in many cases we worked harder than others to achieve them. I’m thinking that now because, as tough as a career in hockey was, being a parent is even tougher.
Which reminds me. Now that I’m a parent, I have a much clearer sense of what my parents did for me. Not just growing up, but throughout my career, when they would trek to the outposts of civilization to see me ply my trade. Young men may take this sort of thing for granted, but now that I’m a father myself I realize that what I often thought of as my career was actually not just about me at all. That’s another reason I’m glad I didn’t hang up my skates in Tennessee.
It also means that retirement is not entirely about me. It means saying goodbye to something I shared with people I love. But this time around it’s not giving up. There are other challenges out there, which I hope I meet with the same fortitude my parents brought to their challenges.
That’s not to say that retirement is easy. It’s bittersweet, and probably more bitter than sweet. But I have no doubt in my mind that I made the right decision that day. I may be the exception to the rule, but I have never, ever regretted my choice to retire. Still, there are some things I miss about being a professional hockey player. And there are a lot of things I don’t miss, too.
What I don’t miss:
I don’t miss constantly worrying about getting sent to the minors.
I don’t miss getting sent to the minors.
I don’t miss not being able to make plans a few weeks in advance for fear of being traded or sent down.
I don’t miss playing zero minutes in a game when my parents have travelled to see me play.
I don’t miss being a healthy scratch with friends and family in the stands.
I don’t miss leaving my family in August to find a place to skate for a month—oh and hopefully find a job, too.
I don’t miss training camp (but you could have guessed that).
I don’t miss seeing my name on the fifth line of the depth chart.
I don’t miss thirty-three-game goal-scoring droughts and the feeling of wondering whether I would actually hit water if I fell out of a boat.
I don’t miss being out of the playoffs in February.
I don’t miss spending entire summers waiting to sign, or wondering IF I’ll sign.
I don’t miss playing three games in three nights in three different cities.
I don’t miss playing with unbelievably talented players who have no idea that hockey is a team sport.
I don’t miss missing my mom’s birthday every September because
I’m too wrapped up in my own world.
I don’t miss having to make that phone call to my wife to tell her we got sent down.
I don’t miss having only two days off at Christmas.
I don’t miss Germany.
I don’t miss missing my family.
What I do miss:
I miss going to the rink.
I miss being on a team.
I miss being in the locker room with the boys.
I miss being on the road.
I miss that exhausted feeling after a game.
I miss having that first beer after a victory.
I miss the feeling of scoring a goal.
I miss the feeling of losing myself in the game.
I miss having my summers off.
I miss playing down the stretch.
I miss the feeling of walking into the locker room for practice after playing a great game.
I miss playing the game.
I miss dreaming about winning a Stanley Cup.