Or he could help out with different charities. He had once gone to Tanzania with the Right to Play organization, along with his Flames and Bruins teammate Andrew Ference. And if not Right to Play, then some other organization or group where he could help people. “He was always the first to care about something,” O’Brien says. “I really believed that his hockey career would have been the least of his accomplishments.”
And, of course, Steve being Steve, there would be some fliers in his future. “He was always the locker-room guy with the next big idea,” Vally says with a laugh. A clinic with one of Carrick’s gyroscopes; an online poker site in Russia. “He had this guy who was able to take money from North America, apparently legally, through a wired account and funnel it to Russia, because the headquarters were there. Monty called me and wanted me to invest in it. I said, ‘Monty, I don’t have the money,’ and he said, ‘That’s OK, I’ll front it for you, chum.’ I get off the phone and tell my wife. She’s like, “He’s crazy.’ I said, ‘Yep, he is.’”
Steve made calls on his good days in Hermosa Beach, but more often, unable to escape his present to think about his future, he was on his laptop, reading about all the products and treatments that might make his head better, all the ways of looking at life that might make him a better person. One time he called Vally and told him he had joined a group for sex addicts. Vally told him he wasn’t a sex addict, and accused him of being addicted to rehab groups. “But, Vally, Vally,” Steve said, “if I abstain from sex for eighteen months, then it’s going to be the most amazing experience, and I’ll get a better understanding of which girl is right for me.” Vally recalls, “He was months into it when he stopped.”
Steve also joined various men’s organizations. One called itself MDI, Mentor Discover Inspire. Its mission: “To cause greatness by mentoring men to live with excellence and, as mature masculine leaders, create successful families, careers and communities.” Another was called Full Spectrum Man, created by David Fabricius, a self-described “world renowned leadership, sales-motivation and life optimization speaker resource, a master executive coach, Fire-Walk facilitator and specialist trainer.” Its members went on two-day, sun-rise-to-sunset, intense mind-body-spirit training adventures. Steve liked the way the men talked, the meaning that they sought, the way they cared for each other. They didn’t know what Steve had done before or who he had been. They only knew what they heard when he spoke.
Steve wrote about these groups in his journal, about their principles and purposes, and why they mattered to him. But by this time, late winter 2014, his writing is hard to decipher, his thoughts were often incomplete and difficult to comprehend. Later his entries grew even more frenetic, then got better, then got worse, until they almost stopped.
Steve hadn’t seen his family or most of his buddies for months. But during one email exchange, his brother Chris had suggested that they create an annual tradition, a brothers’ trip to a Stanley Cup Final game. The Rangers had advanced and were going to play the Kings in the 2014 final. The two of them could meet up in New York. Vally, who was now working for the Rangers, could arrange the tickets. They might even see Nick. Early in June 2014, Steve flew to Toronto on his way to New York.
He called Vally from Toronto; Vally told him he’d pick him up at the airport. “Then he says to me, ‘I am going to fly private.’ And I say, ‘Monty, private is 8,000 dollars…250 bucks can get you to Hartford.’” Vally pauses. “He flies private. So he arrives and comes into my place like a bull in a china shop, right away to the fridge, grabbing beers, throwing them back. My mother-in-law, who loves him, stayed up all night with him, trying to talk to him. I woke up in the morning and he was out on the beach with a dozen beers around him in a lawn chair, on the phone. He hadn’t slept. We had a day planned where we were going to feed the kids and go paddleboarding. Now he had to sleep.” The next day was no better. “He’s on the phone, and I’m like, ‘Monty, what are you doing?’ And he says, ‘I’m trying to get a helicopter to go to the city for the game. I don’t want to get stuck in traffic.’ And I’m like ‘Monty, where do you plan to land the helicopter?’ He says, ‘On the beach.’ And I’m like, ‘Monty, what the hell are you doing, man?’ In the end, he took a cab, but he was rude. He was angry. He couldn’t hold a thought.” The weekend was a disaster.
It was the last time Vally saw Steve.
About this time, Steve met Chantelle Robidoux. Chantelle was from Buffalo but had moved to L.A. after high school, more than a decade earlier. She had two friends back home who had married former Sabres players—and teammates of Steve—Rhett Warrener and Sean O’Donnell. Her friends introduced Chantelle to Steve in L.A. A few months later, Chantelle told Steve she was pregnant. Steve, with a hundred thoughts in his head, now had one more.
In late August, Mike Keating visited Steve in L.A. Keats was excited to see Steve; Steve was not excited to see him. “He just wanted to be as far away from everybody as possible,” Keats recalls. “I’d say, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ And the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Everyone’s all over me.’” On this trip, Keats says, “I started to realize this was much more serious than I thought.”
Steve told Keats about the “men’s groups,” and about how they were going to open his mind. “He thought if he couldn’t fix what was already broken, maybe he could open up more of what was already there.” He told Keats about all the other things he was taking and doing. “He had these pills that stop your anxiety. He had pills that stop your depression. I said to him, ‘We know rehab doesn’t work for you. We know AA doesn’t work. Obviously, these mentors don’t work either. What are you looking for?’”
Steve also told Keats about Chantelle and the baby. Steve didn’t know what to do, Keats remembers. He didn’t know what to think. He rambled. Keats interrupted him and told him he thought that the baby might be the answer he needed. He would now have a child to focus on. “Hey, this is the only thing in your life that I haven’t seen you do a hundred per cent,” Keats told him. “Whatever you don’t know, you’ll figure out. You’ve just got to step up.” Steve thought Keats might be right, and got excited, and then panicked, and then he didn’t know.
“I remember one day in L.A., and we were just done,” Keats says. Wrung out. “There was nothing more to say and we started crying. It was like, ‘What’s going on? How? Why?’ And I knew we couldn’t answer our own questions. Finally, I said, ‘Today is going to be a better day than yesterday. Yes it is.’ And I wrote on his mirror, ‘Today is a good day,’ because Monty used to write messages on his mirror all the time. And when he saw it, we laughed, and it was like ‘Yeah, yeah, okay, here we go.’”
In September, Nick Robinson got married in Greece and Steve was one of his groomsmen. Nick had arranged everything. He lined up boat excursions and dinners for all of the guests. Everyone would get there a week early. There would be twenty-five of them in all, the Peterborough hockey guys—Steve, Keats, and Jay—included. Nick bought all of his attendants “these suits,” as he referred to them. “They cost me $600, $700, together! They were as cheap as shit. Polyester. I knew they’d destroy them anyway. Dark blue; with white shirts and a tie.” Nick, the groom, Smokey Robinson; the others, the Miracles.
Everybody arrived, the boat trips and dinners were great, but Steve went off the deep end. Nick sent him and Keats an email a few nights later suggesting they should ease up a bit. Steve responded right back: “I totally agree, chum. I will clean it up.”
“They were both great on our wedding day,” Nick recalls, “but that night, Monty was back in full effect. He was firing the DJ up, he had all the tunes going. He was just covered in sweat, and he was a big boy, probably 230, at this point. Just a beast on the dance floor. He had ripped the ass out of his pants, and by the end of the night he was just in his boxer shorts and his dress shirt.”
At a different time, this would have been another great “Monty story.” But this wasn’t funny anymore.
&n
bsp; “That was the last time I saw him,” Nick said.
—
When Steve returned to California, he checked back into rehab.
Steve’s life was filled with people who wanted nothing more than to help him, because they loved him, and because he had helped them. But he never went to them for help.
“When Monty wasn’t in a good place and things weren’t going well, I wouldn’t see him very often,” Andy O’Brien says. “He’d just kind of disappear, and only reappear after he’d sorted out his problem, when he knew what he had to do and was already doing it.” And whenever O’Brien did see him, he sounded good. He had thought things through. He had made a plan, and the plan made sense. So whatever O’Brien or Vally or Keats or Nick, or Steve’s parents or brother or sister or former teammates had heard, Steve might have gone through a rough stretch, but he was okay again. That’s what they wanted to believe and had every reason to believe, and anything else would mean not believing in him—and out of friendship and loyalty and love, how could they do that? The stories they heard about him were something to wonder about, but not to be concerned about. And Steve came to realize that if he could hide from others, he could hide from himself.
In late September 2014, during his long, quiet hours in rehab, with no alcohol, no workouts, and no CBA to worry about, with nothing to distract him from himself, Steve did a lot of thinking. The past year had been too much: the concussions, the dizziness, the depression, the hope, the loss of hope, the contract buyout, the end of his career, the drinking, the memory problems, the downs, the ups, the downs, the downs, losing himself, trying to find himself. The future. All these balls in the air. Then one more—he was going to be a father—and at Nick’s wedding all these balls had come crashing down.
How could he be a father? His own life was out of control. He couldn’t even manage himself. He loved kids; he was great with kids. But this would be his own kid, all the time, every day, all of his life. And if he was going to be a father, he would have to jump in with both feet. As Vally said about him, he was a “two-foot jumper,” but how could he do that now? But how could he not? He and Chantelle weren’t going to get married. They didn’t even really know each other. She seemed nice enough, but now she would be the mother of their child. He had come close to marriage a few times, then just when it seemed that some really funny, athletic, beautiful woman was finally the right one and there was no other next step left but to get married, he’d find something wrong with her and be gone. He wanted something perfect for his own family. That seemed worth waiting for. Now a different world was closing in. With women, maybe Steve had a problem with commitment—or maybe he just liked his life the way it was. Maybe he didn’t want to give it up. How could he live with himself if he did give it up? How could he live with himself if he didn’t? He was stuck.
He had built up his body only to slowly destroy it, then had learned to build it up again. Now he went to the gym only to get respite from the guilt he felt, to stop thinking about the alcohol and the anti-depression, anti-headache, anti-pain, anti-anxiety stuff he was putting into his system. He had loved to learn—he couldn’t wait until the adventure of tomorrow; now he didn’t have the energy, the attention span, the memory to learn anything. He used to talk to his friends hour after hour, going deep into life and its meaning; now he didn’t talk to any of them unless it was to lie to them about all the great stuff he’d been doing and all the great plans he had for the future. He had lived by a code, The Four Agreements: Be impeccable with your word; Don’t take anything personally; Don’t make assumptions; Always do your best. Principles that had become more than points of pride for him: they had been his identity, that he had now broken again and again.
When he came out of rehab in late September, Steve had made up his mind. He would find stability in his life; he would be a good father to his child; he would move back to Mississauga. So he cleaned up Parros’s condo, flew to Toronto, and rented a house less than 200 metres from his childhood home on the cul de sac on Avonbridge Drive; less than a kilometre from the QEW, the highway that would connect him to his child in Buffalo. Instead of his baby being the one additional ball in the air that would send the others crashing down, the baby would be his answer. Keats was right. The baby would be the only ball that mattered; the one that would give meaning to all the others. The baby would give him the reason for the stability he needed, and the will for him to achieve it. The baby would be the answer. He bought baby and parenting books. He bought baby furniture. His journals began to change. His thoughts were clearer; his writing more legible.
Then a few days before Halloween, he turned dark again and went back into rehab, only for a tune-up. He was there a week, and then back to Mississauga. Some days were good. Other days were not so good.
In December, he and Missy went to Florida together. They saw the Panthers play; Missy had some clients to see. They went to a concert. They flew back to Chicago for Missy’s Christmas party, then drove to Detroit to visit her family. On December 21, Steve drove home to Mississauga. It was his thirty-fifth birthday.
Christmas wasn’t so good, but Christmas often wasn’t very good. It brought out too many family stresses and complications; and now, too many questions, asked and unasked. But by early in the new year, while things were still never not down and up, he seemed largely fine. Keats drove down from Peterborough and they had dinner. It was the first time Keats had seen him since he got back from Hermosa Beach. “It was like one of the old dinners we used to have,” Keats recalls. “It was great. I thought he was getting out of his funk. At dinner, he talked about reading those baby books, and he wasn’t drinking, and I was like, ‘Okay, all right, we’re getting back on track here. This is good.’”
A few days later, in mid-January, Steve chartered a plane and flew to Ibiza, a notorious party island in the Mediterranean off the east coast of Spain. January is not the best month to go to Ibiza, and commercial flights connect the island easily to North American cities. Steve didn’t need to charter a plane, but that wasn’t the point. He wanted to get away. A few days later, he wanted to get away again and flew to Colombia. He had a buddy in California who knew a shaman who performed religious ceremonies in the Colombian rainforest. The ceremonies involved ayahuasca, a tea-like hallucinogenic brew that indigenous peoples in Peru believe produces spiritual understanding about the nature of the universe and one’s true purpose on earth. Ingesting ayahuasca often causes vomiting and diarrhea, which believers see as the purging of negative energy and emotions from one’s body that have built up over a lifetime. Ayahuasca can also be potentially dangerous for those with a pre-existing heart condition, and those who take antidepressants.
When Steve got back to Toronto, he called Nick, all excited. “He was explaining all this to me about all these people in this hut in the woods of Colombia, and everyone is throwing up their demons. And he says to me, ‘I had a spiritual experience; it’s changed my life. Something happened to me there. I am going to get back into the program. I am going to stop drinking. I want to prove to you and to everyone that I can get my shit together. This time it is going to be different.’”
“I will never forget,” says Nick. “We talked about how we all had the ability to change the world through even very small actions. He believed that something as little as spending forty-five seconds with the man in the toll booth, or helping a woman carry her baby carriage down a flight of stairs in the subway, or seeing someone who looks dishevelled on the street and making eye contact with him and saying, ‘Hi, how are you?’ could change the course of that person’s day, and, effectively, their life, and therefore the world.
“He really believed that. He thought he could spread something positive, and that it was infectious. He was talking about all this. He was rambling a bit, but not much. He was like the old Monty. When I hung up I remember thinking, ‘This guy is going to get his shit together, and I’m going to have this friend back, and our kids are going to be about the same age and they’re
going to grow up together.’” Nick and his wife were about to have a baby, too. “He just sounded unbelievable, and I remember saying to my wife, ‘Wow, this guy is going to figure it out.’
“The next call I got was that he had died.”
—
Steve went to lunch with his dad the day after he talked to Nick. “Conversations with any of my kids tend to happen in snippets because they are all incredibly busy,” Paul says. But on this day, neither Paul nor Steve had any other place to go. “We talked about concussions and the state of his brain, and how he was doing, and how he was dealing with that. I asked him what he was thinking of doing next, and right away he said, ‘I think I can have a positive impact on people’s lives.’” He had said the same thing to Paul six months earlier, when he and his dad had their last long talk.
“It was very clear to him what he was going to do,” Paul says. “It was just a matter of figuring out the ‘how.’ But it was pretty clear he wasn’t going to be able to do any of these things unless he was able to clear his mind and get it functioning in a way that he could be reliable and consistent and steady, and not make irresponsible decisions and do irresponsible things, and be so forgetful.”