National Hockey League. - A guy like me: fighting to make the cut

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For my girls.

My daughters Eva, Gabriella, Estelle, and Sofia, I am so blessed to be your dada.

My beautiful wife, Danielle, you are my everything. I love you, honey.

T he cheering was for me. I couldnt believe it. I walked into the banquet room filled with other players and their families at the NHL All-Star Game I had just played in, families whose company some cynics said was too good for me. Yet there they were, clapping and hooting for me. I waved the most sheepish wave I could, the kind you give when a room full of friends surprises you on your birthday. And thats what they weremy friends, my colleagues, people who were happy to see me and happier for me that I had a reason to wave like that.

After a weekend full of firsts and amazing moments, that is the part that I will remember the most. To think that all these superstars and their families would give me a standing ovation was unthinkable and would have been almost laughable just two months earlier. And it didnt stop with cheering. People wanted pictures. Pictures with me ! I posed with anyone who wanted a shot, mostly families and friends, but some players, too. People kept asking for a photo, so I kept obliging. My jaw was hurting from all the smiling I was doing. I would have been honored just to be considered an equal, but my wife and I had somehow become the guests of honor. It wasnt a formal gathering; it was a celebration of a whirlwind set of hours, days, and weeks that I was just trying to piece together. I barely had time to sit or gather my thoughtsthe rest of my extended family was waiting for my wife and me at our table, and Id kept them waiting long enough. I tried to have a beer and a few bites of food with them, but the constant swarm of people buzzing by was just getting to be too much. Eventually I hit a breaking point, and I needed some space to clear my head.

Lets go, I said. My wife looked at me. The party was just getting warmed up. But in the middle of all the hoopla, all I wanted was to get back to something familiar. We thanked more people. We smiled. We posed. Then we snuck away. My wife and I went upstairs to our room, got the kids in their pajamas, and then ordered room service. It was just us, and it was exactly what I needed. We hung out, we laughed, we celebrated by ourselves. Every time there had been a high or a low, my family had always helped me make sense of it and put it into perspective. That night was no different.

That was the party I needed at that moment. We ate burgers, hung out, and laughed. I looked over and I said to my wife, You know what? I am enjoying my life so much right now. It was a perfect ending to a perfect time. There may have been fifty thousand people in town wanting to fawn over me, but I just wanted to go back to the hotel and have burgers with my family. It had been one crazy winter that led to that magical weekend. But it didnt just happen with the flip of a switch; Id had a lifetime of hurdles and hard work. There were long odds and doubters. But there were also close supporters, special people whom I could never thank enough.

How did I get from there to here? From the outsider to the star? Its taken a lifetime to live it, and Im still sorting it out.

W e were survivors. I lived in the Evergreen Trailer Park in Edmonton, Alberta, with my parents, Howard and Marilyn, and my brothers, Jamie and Curtis, until I was five. My brothers and I shared a tiny bed, so there was never much chance to spread out. When my father changed jobs, we moved in with my dads mother, who lived out east in Port Dalhousie, Ontario. The move came just in time, too. Soon after we moved, a tornado hit the park area and leveled all the houses except ours. My dad had left behind a 55 Chevy pickup truck, which he planned to, well, pick up a few months later. It was gone when we got back, and I always wondered who or what took it, the tornado or one of my moms brothers, who could have sold it for some extra cash.

Within a year, we packed up shop and moved again, this time to St. Catharines, Ontario, an industrial city about twelve miles from the US border, along the Niagara River. It was the place where I first went to school, and as I settled into the rhythm of my new life, I started to become very curious about my relatives. My parents always did a good job providing for us. They just never really talked much about family history, and they didnt express a lot of emotion. They always took care of us, but life at home was a little impersonal for us compared to some of our neighbors.

The family history was in my grandmothers basement. My brothers and I would explore down there for hours, searching through the old boxes she had stacked in nearly every corner. My grandmother had raised five kids, and each of their stories was tucked away in those boxes. She had dozens of them full of toys, photos, and old sporting equipment. My great-uncle, Nick, had a bunch of used hockey equipment that was worn down to the core. There was an old canoe, some pads, a few sneakers. It was treasure after treasure. Most of all, I remember the pictures. My parents never told me about how they met or what it was like when they were dating, nor did I go out of my way to ask them. I found my answers in the basement. There were albums upon albums of pictures. I would sit there for hours going over every picture in every one of them, piecing them together to get a glimpse into my parents lives when they were just kids. Most pictures were of them hanging out with their friends. My dad had a big old beard and my mom had long black hair, the kind you would see on Pocahontas from the Disney movie. My parents didnt have much back then, but from their smiles in those photos, they looked like they didnt have a care in the world; they looked happy.

Although I never knew my parents whole story when I was growing up, I at least knew that there was a story. My moms parents met in Saskatchewan before moving to British Columbia. When they arrived in Quesnel, a tiny town in the provinces interior, they had to cut down trees to make room for the house that my grandfather, a domestic engineer, was building. I believe my grandpa still has the mark for felling the biggest tree on record. And thats back when they used only a sawnone of the chainsaws and harnesses people use these days. My grandpa built the house by hand, so my mom and her eight siblingsincluding two sets of twinsgrew up with no electricity.

Dad was born into a Catholic family in St. Catharines, where my grandparents owned a grocery store that supplied a lot of the local shipping industry. But when my dad was thirteen, my grandad passed away, so my grandma sold the store and moved my dad, along with his three brothers and two sisters, to Bobby Orrs hometown of Perry Sound, Ontario, where they opened a dairy business. Compared to people around them, my dads family was relatively well off. When my dad was twenty-one, he went on a trip to California, where he bought a car to drive around and tour the United States. By the time he made it up to British Columbia, hed been gone for four months and had drained his money. My dad had a friend in B.C. who was dating my moms sister. My mom was eighteen when they met, and she already had a son, my brother Jamie, from a previous relationship. My dad met my mom, and they fell for each other quickly. They moved to Edmonton to join a construction business, and theyve been inseparable ever since. They didnt actually get married until I was five. I understood that it was a special day, but I didnt really know why. There was a nice church and a reception with a lot of people. I remember dressing up in a suit for the big dayit might not have been so comfortable to wear, but I got a lot of compliments about that suit.