When Theo Fleury was a Ranger, he said, he would stay out all night drinking, doing cocaine, going “below the streets of New York City” to “party with freaks, transvestites, strippers” or to “hang out with homeless guys around a burn barrel” on the West Side piers.
The former Ranger Theo Fleury's new book reveals his sexual abuse by a junior hockey coach.
If it happens on ice and it involves hitting and scoring, The Times Slap Shot blog is on it.
Theo Fleury celebrated scoring in overtime in 2000 for the Rangers, his team from 1999 to 2002.
He substituted Gatorade or his baby boy’s urine for his own in drug tests until, finally, he had to take a break from hockey to enter a substance-abuse program. Much of his time as a Ranger, from 1999 to 2002, he remembers as a “nightmare.”
On Tuesday, Fleury will appear at a Manhattan bookstore in support of his memoir, “Playing With Fire,” which was published last month and is the No. 1 nonfiction book in Canada.
The book, which rocked the hockey world as surely as Andre Agassi’s recent memoir rocked tennis, is best known as the place where Fleury finally disclosed that as a 14-year-old player in Western Canada, he was sexually abused by Graham James, a once-respected junior league coach. James was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 1997 for sexually abusing players.
“Playing With Fire” is a profanity-laced chronicle of Fleury’s struggle to overcome substance-abuse problems that, he says, stem from childhood neglect and his traumatic experience with James. Despite a highly successful career in which he scored 455 goals in the N.H.L. and won a Stanley Cup, an Olympic gold medal and a Canada Cup, he had problems that nearly led him to commit suicide.
Fleury, 41, said things were different now.
“Sept. 18, 2005 — that’s my sobriety date,” Fleury said by telephone from Calgary, Alberta. “I’ve been able somehow to string together 1,500 days of sobriety. It’s a miracle, is what it is.”
Fleury’s memoir, and his explicit description of the abuse he suffered, bring back into the spotlight sexual predation in junior hockey. The issue arose in the mid-’90s when Sheldon Kennedy, an N.H.L. player who had been a teammate of Fleury’s when they were teenagers, filed a complaint against James.
While welcoming further discussion of sexual abuse, Kennedy said he was frustrated by Fleury’s failure to file a complaint against James.
“I’m bothered by it,” said Kennedy, who has been active in fund-raising for antiabuse groups. His memoir, “Why I Didn’t say Anything,” was published in 2006.”
“There is no statue of limitations on a crime of that nature,” Kennedy said. “It’s one thing for Theoren to come out and say, ‘I’ve been abused,’ but there’s also a moral responsibility to all kids who may be suffering this kind of abuse to follow it up by bringing charges and testifying.”
Fleury was not part of the case in which James was convicted, Kennedy and Fleury said. He wanted to tell his story because, he wrote, he wanted to send a message: “If you are a kid who is in the situation I was in, and somebody older is using you for sex, call for help.”
Fleury said he had not decided whether to bring charges. “My lawyer is involved in it right now,” he said. “We’re looking at all the options.”
Fleury said that being in recovery and working to help those recovering from sexual abuse had become the focus of his life.
Since the book was published in early October, Fleury said, he has heard from many people who were sexually abused.
“Our Web site shut down one day because of how much traffic we had on it,” he said, referring to 1in6.org, a site for men who had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood. “We’ve also put eight guys in treatment who reached out through the Web site.”
In his memoir, written with Kirstie McLellan Day, Fleury looks back at the “dysfunctional” Rangers team he joined on a $7-million-a-year contract.
In his three seasons in New York, the Rangers did not make the playoffs.
“The Rangers were like an army of mercenaries,” he wrote. “It was all about the money.”
The book includes capsules about everyone on the team, and some descriptions are familiar — notably those of Adam Graves, who Fleury wrote was a “great guy, the ultimate team player,” and Mike Richter (“quickest feet on a goalie I have ever seen”).
Others are somewhat surprising, like Fleury’s assessment of Brian Leetch, the captain during the first part of Fleury’s tenure in New York. Fleury wrote that “Leetch did not recognize how much talent was on our team” and “if he could have seen it, he might have been able to bring the team together.”
Of Mark Messier, who was in his last stretch as a player but still receiving lots of ice time, Fleury wrote: “What was he doing on the first line? He had done nothing all year except give the press some good sound bites.”
But Fleury said he included those characterizations to show “how my illness was distorting my perception.” Leetch, he said, was a “phenomenal player” who “led by example.” Of Messier, he said: “You know what? Mark Messier has six championships, so I’m not going to question anything he does.”
He had especially good things to say about the general manager, Glen Sather.
“If I would’ve been a lot more honest with Glen, who knows how it might have turned out,” he said. “Everybody in that organization is phenomenal. They all tried to help and they all tried to reach out, but I just wasn’t ready.”
And Fleury had good things to say about the city that once held too much temptation for him.
“I have absolutely no regrets about my life,” or about having lived part of it in the city, he said, adding: “I was meant to be in New York for a reason, so I could get to where I am today. It’s been quite a journey.”
