Playing With Fire

Fleury: Glittering career

"Playing With Fire," by Theo Fleury with Kirstie McLellan Day, Triumph Books

In the first instalment in a series of articles discussing Theo Fleury and his time in Belfast, skysports.com's hockey reporter Neil Chiplen reviews his autobiography.

Sporting biographies generally fall into one of three categories:

There are stories of those who have achieved excellence, won titles, played in the big games and gained a level of adulation that merits a place on the shelves.

Then there are those characters who may not always have been the greatest athletes, but were charismatic sorts who were always at the heart of the action and can hysterically recount the wonderful scrapes they've been in.

And there are also those who have overcome some kind of adversity to bounce back, overcome heartbreak and move on with their lives.

Theo Fleury's story belongs in all three.

He was an incredible talent, the kind of guy who could go out partying on Saturday and stay out until February and an individual whose life was horribly misshapen by a hellish childhood.

From the first page, Fleury's story hits you like a sledgehammer. It doesn't let up. No punches are pulled in his account of fake urine tests, mountains of cocaine, ruined marriage and the destruction of the human spirit. His tale switches from highlight-reel NHL goals to wild parties with strangers and strippers that would last for days. He drops the F-word with the same reckless abandon that he threw himself into the boards, but strangely it doesn't ever feel unnecessary.

Message

It just feels like Fleury is leaving it all out there, releasing everything he has onto the pages. Just how he used to when he played hockey.

Fleury's account of his childhood leaves the reader with a knot in the stomach. After suffering a huge cut during a game that keeps him sidelined for a year he manages to return and is recruited by a scout called Graham James, who would become his junior coach.

From that point, Fleury starts a downward spiral, which was triggered by the sexual abuse he was subjected to by James, and turns to alcohol to numb the pain.

It's still hard to fathom that Fleury has yet to press charges against James. However, he did hint in a recent interview aired on the ESPN programme E:60 that he would be contacting the authorities at some point in the future.

Throughout the book, Fleury urges children to do what he was unable to - tell someone. Yet this is certainly not a book for children. Maybe he will be able to convey his message in a more suitable form.

Once Fleury arrives in the NHL, it's a nostalgia trip paying tribute to the hockey greats of the late 80s and 90s. Fleury spills praise for his Stanley Cup-winning team-mates in Calgary before revealing his bitterness towards Doug Gilmour's trade from the Flames to the Maple Leafs in 1992. He doesn't hold back as he vents his feelings towards the players, coaches and management who he disliked.

Like many others he can't resist a shot at Hockey Night in Canada's Don Cherry (join the queue Theo). But at times his views are in line with Cherry's as he discusses the influx of Europeans into the NHL.

He recounts how he often chugged back a few cold ones with Chris Chelios, but then tells how he lost respect for the former Red Wings defenceman and how their friendship ended abruptly.

Frustration

Fleury was one of the best when it came to getting under the skin of opposing players and coaches - it's one of the reasons why he was picked by Wayne Gretzky to play at the Winter Olympics in 2002. And he didn't mind taking a personal swipe at others, for example Mike Keenan, but he didn't like it when he had to take it from the likes of Sean Avery.

He uses the phrase "gutless puke" to define one notable European in the book, but Fleury appears to like his team-mates from across the pond such as Milan Hejduk, who he played with in Colorado.

The title of the book fits perfectly. Fleury was playing with fire every time he stepped out onto the ice and every time he walked into the bar. His raw energy and emotion, bottled up into his undersized frame turned him into a fireball on the rink. The same fire within that made him a success on the ice nearly killed him off it.

On initial thoughts the chapter on Belfast is all-too-brief. For fans in the UK it was a huge deal; Fleury's arrival in Belfast was the biggest ever story to hit the Elite League. But after reading the preceding pages you realise that for the man himself it was merely a drop in the ocean.

After the thrill of a Stanley Cup and Olympic gold medal, preceded by his horrific childhood and followed by his emotional unravelling that led to him to holding a loaded gun between his lips, the Elite League was merely an afterthought.

It gave him time to escape the temptation of catching a helicopter ride between the casino and practice rink in New York to re-build his life with his fiance Jenn. Indeed, Fleury found his serenity, standing sober on Giant's Causeway.

The only Elite League player he mentions in name is, of all people, Freddie Oduya. Although he does reveal his frustration at the lack of protection he received, slamming a certain fan group in the process.

"Playing With Fire" is a blistering ride into the wounded soul of a man, who suffered a nightmarish past and then threw himself into life with an unbridled intensity as he sought to overcome it. Sometimes he was too intense and it cost him. Hopefully Fleury can now channel his inner-fire in the right direction.

Coming soon on skysports.com: Neil interviews Belfast Giants GM Todd Kelman to talk about Fleury - the childhood hero who became his team-mate.