Staple: Former Ranger Fleury writes about his roller-coaster life
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Theo Fleury is back in town. It's a miracle he's still alive, much less here Tuesday night at a bookstore next to Madison Square Garden signing copies of his memoir.
"Playing With Fire" doesn't begin to describe Fleury, who spent parts of three seasons with the Rangers from 1999-2002. He spent parts of those seasons getting drunk and high with the fringes of New York society, too, part of two decades of substance abuse that stemmed in part - Fleury reveals in his book - from being sexually abused when he was 14 years old by his junior hockey coach, Graham James.
"For 15 years, I never slept, man," Fleury said Monday afternoon on the phone from midtown in a day of interviews and publicity. "The only way I could close my eyes was to drink until I passed out. I needed the booze and the drugs to deal with the emotional pain in my life."
He delivered plenty of emotional pain, too, in those crazy, pre-lockout Rangers days. There was the road trip in late December/early January of the 2001-02 season in which Fleury: a) punched out the Sharks' mascot in the tunnel underneath the San Jose Arena; b) got thrown out of a New Year's Eve game in Phoenix and had to be restrained from throwing a table through a plate-glass window in the dressing room; c) took three minor penalties and then left the ice during the third period of a loss to the Penguins and went straight to the team bus.
And don't forget his nights at Nassau Coliseum, doing the chicken dance from the bench. He was a menace to everyone around him, friend or foe, and the Rangers - who are owned by Cablevision, which also owns Newsday - were as big a mess as Fleury was.
But there were highlights for him. "I scored my 1,000th point as a Ranger, played in my 1,000th game as a Ranger. I played for the Canadian Olympic team in 2002. All those games on the Island against the Islanders," he said. "I loved playing here. Loved it. There's no better place to play in the NHL."
His purpose now is not to get back at old teammates and call names, even though there's a bit of that in the book. Of former Rangers coach John Muckler, Fleury writes, "I don't know how guys like him keep getting jobs over and over again."
Frankly, I don't know too many people around the Rangers who would disagree, but Theo was and is entertaining, on and off the ice.
The pain of keeping his sexual abuse quiet, though, nearly killed him. He got sober on Sept. 18, 2005. "I just had a conversation with God. I said, 'Enough is enough, man. You can't throw anything more at me,' " Fleury said. "I went to bed that night, woke up the next day and that obsession to drink and drug was gone."
Then he owned up to his abuse by James, who served three years of a 3 1/2-year prison sentence for sexually abusing players. Fleury gets hundreds of e-mails and letters from others who endured the same, and the book is atop the nonfiction bestseller list in Canada.
Fleury, at 41, had a decent tryout attempt with the Flames in September, but now he's done with hockey. Next up, after the book tour: a play about his life, starring him. "I'm taking acting lessons now," he said in his Saskatchewan drawl. "Imagine that, a play about my life, with me in it.
"It's really wherever life takes me now, right? I finally got out of the driver's seat and into the passenger seat. When I was driving the bus, I crashed it every time."
