Day Kirstie McLellan - Cujo: the untold story of my life on and off the ice

To Madi, Taylor, Tristan, Luke, Kailey, Jason and Kensie Shayne. Your love makes me the luckiest man in the world. And to Stephanie, the love of my life, thank you for bringing down the walls.

Contents

Foreword by Wayne Gretzky

Hockey is, without a doubt, just a wonderful game. Eighteen players get a chance to do their very best every single time they step out onto the ice. Its funny how we dont ever stop to think about the goalies. The rest of the team shifts on and off, but because there are just two goaltenders, they often play a whole sixty-minute game by themselves. No other player does that.

I was lucky enough to be part of Curtis Josephs career. When I coached in Phoenix, I got to be part of the fun he had there. He was just a first-rate pro who practised hard and played hard with not such a good team. Never heard him complain, ever. In fact, he played so well, he wound up being team MVP.

And when I was putting together the 2002 Canadian mens Olympic hockey team, I knew that Curtis was the best goalie in the NHL that year. Curtis was unreal, so there was no question in our minds he was going to be a big part of the team. One of the things that made him great was that he was the kind of goaltender who liked to play the big games. He loved the challenge of the playoffsthats when I saw him play his best.

The other side of knowing Curtis says more to me about the man, not the goalie. Things dont always go in our favour, and when you are a goalie, that means having to sit out games. Curtis was a huge part of our 2002 Olympic gold medal win, even though he didnt play the final game. I know it was really tough for him, but he didnt let it show. He put the team first and stayed really positive, standing behind every single player on our team. And you know what? I think we still wouldve had the same results had Curtis been in net. Hes just that good a goalie.

As with every great player, it was always Curtiss attitude that made him invaluable to the team, whether it was St. Louis, Edmonton, Toronto, Detroit, Phoenix, Calgary or Team Canada. I dont know a lot about goaltending and the pressure goalies feel or the lives they live, but I do know one thing. Curtis was a team guy all the way!

Enjoy his book. He is a good man with a remarkable story.

Wayne Gretzky

Prologue

By the time I was ten years old, I was living on a steady diet of stale cookies, processed cheese slice sandwiches and frozen institutional hamburgersGod knows what they were made of. Every night, Id throw one on a dirty old barbecue we kept outside the kitchen door. My bed was a mattress on the floor. It was tough to find a dry corner because Moms cats peed and shit all over it. I didnt have sheets or anything, just an old blanket. In the winter, Id sleep in an old coat that one of the men in the house had thrown out. Mom treated her animals better than she treated us kids.

Im going to tell you all about my childhood, and my life. A lot of the early stuff is not good, but listen, I wouldnt change a thing. It made me who I am. It made me tough. It made me driven and it made me appreciate life. Think about it. There was no direction to go but up, right? Every day, everything kept getting better and better. Meeting my friends at school and in sports and going home with them and seeing how normal families lived filled me with awe. Im a glass-half-full kind of guy. I loved watching the moms and dads and brothers and sisters and all the love between them. Id think, Wow, this is awesome. They inspired me to want to live in a family like they had.

I also found family in the game. No question. It was probably to my advantage that I didnt have a solid family life growing up because when, all of a sudden, I was surrounded by these wonderful human beings, I appreciated every single one of them. We were all part of this big group. We spent more time together than we did at home. We looked after one another. We had each others backs. We called one another if somebody slept in. We travelled together. We ate together, we talked about the game together, we were going to win together and lose together. We were more than friends, so yes, we were a family. A hockey family.

Today, I have four great kids from my first marriageMadison, Taylor, Tristan and Lukeand two from my second, Kailey and Kensie Shayne, plus Jason. Hes our nephew and were raising him too. Luke said to me, Dad, you should write a book. If you can change one kids life, help one kid continue on, overcome and turn things around, its worth it.

All of my kids are thoughtful and funny too. They kill me. I was cleaning up and found a trophy our team won back when I was twelve. Its about the size of a small pickle jar and says all-ontario championssingle a . I showed it to my oldest boy, Taylor, who was eighteen, and I said, Taylor, look at this! I pointed to the Single A part because, now that I am comfortable with my history, Im proud of the fact that at that age, I was still playing single-A hockey. Nowadays, for somebody playing at that level at that age, the chances of making it to the NHL are absolutely slim to none. Taylor looked at the trophy and he nodded. Nineteen seventy-nine. Wow, youre old.

When I retired from hockey, my kids asked me, Dad, who owned you? Cmon, you can tell us. I try to be funny. We all try to be funny and joke around a lot. I pretended to think about it, and then I responded, Uh... nobody! And so they said, Okay, Dad, well just look it up. They grabbed the computer and started googling, and Im watching them, thinking, Oooh, I wonder who did score on me most? We looked at the stats and they went, Oh... Teemu Selanne owned you ! He had thirty-five goals or something crazy like that. And I said, Ohhhh yeah, and I started to remember all those times I played against him in the Western Conference and how many big goals he scored on me.

Selanne was so fast and just a pure goal scorer. When I played in Edmonton in 199596, we gave up a lot of chances and a lot of goals, so it was tough. But he was the guy who scored the most on me. Theres probably a few other goalies who can say the same thing about him, right?

Flash-forward to the outdoor game in Winnipeg in 2016the Heritage Classic alumni game. I was playing for Edmonton. Wayne Gretzky was playing too, and it was a big deal for Winnipeg because the Oilers used to beat the Jets all the time. There was a big crowd31,000 fans. It was beautiful outside because it was Manitoba in October.

It was the third period and Selanne had four points alreadythe first goal, on a penalty shot, and three assists. Bill Ranford and Dwayne Roloson played goal in each of the first two periods, and I took over for the third. With 3.6 seconds on the clock and the score tied 55, Teemu was tripped in the Jets end, which meant another penalty shot. He came in on me and he scored. How fitting. I got back to the locker room and my phone was buzzing. Zzzt zzzt . Somebody was texting me. I didnt even have my equipment off yet. I was sweating and frustrated that Teemu had scored on me. I always hated getting scored on. I looked, and the text was from my son Tristan, who makes me laugh because hes dry and funny and smart, but hes also the kid who tried to run beer through the Keurig machine. I picked up my phone and read the message. It said, He still owns you, Dad.

1. 999

Everybody used to call it Nine Ninety-Nine, because it was located at 999 Queen Street West in Toronto. And then in the 1970s, it got to be known by locals by its new address1001 Queen Street West. Its proper name was the Queen Street Mental Health Centre. It was a mental institution. A big one.