Chris Therien: Road to Redemption

By Chris Therien and Wayne Fish

A riveting memoir of hockey, family, and addiction from a veteran NHL defenseman.

In Philadelphia Flyers orange and black, Chris Therien cut an imposing figure on the ice, a stalwart physical presence for over a decade in the NHL. But by the end of his playing career, he was concealing a much greater battle with alcoholism which bled into his professional and family life.

The defenseman-turned-analyst now opens up candidly and completely, reflecting on his life and career with perspective gained from over 10 years of sobriety. Therien takes readers from the blue line to the broadcast booth, sharing untold stories from life in pro hockey while laying bare his private struggle with addiction, including his ultimate low in 2006 after the death of his sister.

Road to Redemption also details Therien's deep bond with the city of Philadelphia and his new path helping others find recovery from drug or alcohol abuse.

Hockey fans will not want to miss this heartfelt and vulnerable tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Oct 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637271599

Book preview

Contents

Foreword by Craig Berube

1. The Decision

2. Saturday Night Fever

3. Another Lake Placid Miracle

4. Last Dance with Mary Jane

5. Coming of Age

6. Dreaming of a Big Man on Campus

7. Draft Day Vindication

8. Joe College Arrives

9. The Lost Years

10. Welcome to the NHL

11. A Trade to End All Trades

12. Behind the 88 Ball

13. On a Tear with LeClair

14. First Signs of Trouble

15. Cashing In, Roger That

16. Land of Confusion

17. All Work, No Play

18. Here’s to Your Mental Health

19. Wasted Away in Margaritaville

20. You Bettor You Bet

21. Beginning of the End

22. Loss of a Loved One

23. Skating Away from Skating

24. Radioactive

25. Time to Make the Decision

26. An Honor to Play for Snider, Clarke

27. A Life in the Balance

28. Sex and the Road City

29. Doing Right by My Loved Ones

30. Transition Time

31. The Road to Redeeming Myself

Foreword by Craig Berube

When you’re putting on a hockey uniform alongside a guy several lockers away, day after day, year after year, you don’t need to be a detective to recognize when something isn’t right.

That player a few lockers down had the name Therien and the number 6 stitched on the back of his jersey. For a decade, he was one of the most likable, fun-loving, and talented competitors on the Philadelphia Flyers. His nickname is Bundy because he loved the father figure, Al Bundy, on the television show Married with Children, and that plays into his personality of not taking himself too seriously.

But as his playing days wound down and he transitioned into a career behind the microphone—first on radio, later television—one could sense there was something troubling going on away from the bright lights.

That is why I approached him one night a little more than 10 years ago on a train ride home from a game at the New York Rangers. In so many words, I warned him about the use of alcohol as to how it pertained to his job. Left unsaid but probably understood was the need for a lifestyle change.

It takes courage for one to look in the mirror and admit something has to be done, not only for his own sake but for the love and welfare of his family, friends, and the countless fans who look up to that person as a role model. Chris did exactly that.

And it requires emotional strength, both to make the decision to stop drinking and to seek out help from a professional organization to aid with recovery and rehabilitation. It’s a humble man who acknowledges his flaws and is willing to do something about them.

Finally, a person must have mental fortitude to be willing to help others with a similar problem. The only people who can really assist those with an illness like this and say they understand what those people are going through are those who have walked in their shoes.

Believe me, Chris is not alone in his own personal battle. Over the years I’ve been aware of many others who faced similar adversity, some handling it better than others. The amount of pressure on your typical professional hockey player is nothing short of incredible and everyone has their own way of coping.

I got to know Chris quite well over the years, both as a player on the Flyers and later, when he was in broadcasting, as an assistant coach with the team. I watched how he paired with Éric Desjardins to form a No. 1 defensive unit in Philadelphia and dominate superstars such as Jaromír Jágr in head-to-head matchups.

It’s no accident No. 6 wound up as the Flyers’ all-time leader for games played by a defenseman. For his entire Flyers career, he never had a minus number after his name at the end of a season.

In the locker room, he kept everyone loose with his booming laugh and witty observations. That unfiltered personality made him so popular when he went on the air to analyze games. Fans were aware they were getting the straight stuff.

That is why I believe so many people are glad to see he’s not only been clean and sober these past 11 years but also that now he’s involved with an organization called Pennsylvania Recovery Center, which helps recovering alcohol abusers through a holistic approach.

The 1999–2000 Flyers team truly was a band of brothers, with veterans such as Keith Jones, Rick Tocchet, Keith Primeau, Bundy, and me forming a tight group that came within a game of the Stanley Cup Final.

We didn’t win the championship that year, but I know one guy from that team is going all the way now to his own personal Cup with his life’s work.

His name is Chris Therien.

—Craig Berube

1. The Decision

Although it happened more than 10 years ago, I remember the moment like it was yesterday.

Life-changing events have a way of staying fresh in your memory and this one will never fade from mine. Much of my adult life had been spent secretly battling a silent demon: one shared by millions of people, but each struggle unique in its own way.

It took an act as simple as cleaning an upstairs closet for me to come to grips with a harsh reality.

I was an alcoholic.

While rummaging through clothes and the like, I came upon a shoe with a water bottle jammed inside it. Only the bottle wasn’t half-filled with water.

It was vodka.

I stared at the bottle for a moment, then gulped down its contents and threw the bottle in the trash.

There are two birthdates in my life: The first, December 14, 1971, when I officially entered this world and the second, February 7, 2011—the day of the infamous shoe incident—when I became the person I truly believe I was meant to be.

It took me decades to come to the reality I could be comfortable in my own skin without dulling my senses through various outside means.

We all make choices in life and I’m no exception. Some of my decisions were good; others—like acquiring and accepting an addiction to alcohol—were not.

Whether you become a professional athlete like I did or just someone who lives a so-called less glamorous existence, it’s all pretty much the same when it comes to personal responsibility. We don’t reside on an island. We have people who depend on us, people who we want to set a good example for, both in our public and private lives.

There was a long period in my adult years when I failed at that. It hurt to know I was letting myself down by not functioning at full capacity and even more painful that I was doing the same with the people I love.

As I alluded to earlier, just about every alcoholic can tell you the date he decided to give it all up. Mine was that day in early 2011 with an act as mundane as sorting out an upstairs closet.

* * *

My first step on the road to redemption might have taken place on a train ride back from New York City where the Flyers had played the Rangers in a Sunday night game.

By this point in time, I was retired as a player and sharing the Flyers’ radio broadcast booth with play-by-play man Tim Saunders.

Craig Berube, a Flyers assistant coach in those days, walked up the aisle to my seat on the train.

Hey, he said, can I talk to you for a second?

Berube’s stern expression told me this was something pretty serious.

Sure, I said. I knew Craig had my best interests in mind and that he’s not judgmental in a business that can have a lot of whispers and rumors.

Chief, as he is called affectionately by teammates and opponents alike, looked me straight in the eye. We’d been friends for a long time and we’d done our fair share of partying together during our days as teammates. But he realized my issues ran much deeper than just some late nights on the road. It was time for some straight talk.

One of the coaches may have smelled booze on your breath over the past couple days, he said. Quietly, I admitted I had been drinking.

Keep an eye out, Berube said, because people are probably watching.

That was the same night my friend, Ben, picked me up upon returning to Philadelphia. It was snowing pretty hard as we set out for my home in New Jersey.

As we approached my town, I turned to him and instructed him to stop at the start of a dirt road near my house. I told him to pull over at a certain point on the dirt road, set the trip odometer back to zero.

The area was deserted. I had left a bottle of red wine hiding in the woods. As soon as the odometer hit about a quarter mile, I told Ben to stop the vehicle. I got out with my dress shoes and dress pants on and trudged through eight inches of snow. Ben had no idea what I was doing. I reached in and grabbed a brand-new bottle of Carlo Rossi wine.

Cheap stuff, but it was going to get me through the night.

At that point, I hadn’t really taken Chief’s advice seriously or that the (assistant) coach who had probably detected the offending odor on me was Hall of Famer Joey Mullen, whom I love.

I remember getting back to the house about 12:30 am and drinking that bottle of wine. In the next couple days, I talked to Chief again. I had dried out to a certain degree; I had tried to stop in 2006 when I was a complete mess. The difference leading up to the moment of truth was that I had medication that would help me with the withdrawal. That’s why the times of sobriety in between relapses apparently lasted longer.

The medication had helped prevent me from suffering through the shakes and all the symptoms that alcohol withdrawal brought to me before. The pills and the meds that I had used before were working. But they were essentially a crutch. I was allowing myself a reason to keep drinking. But within myself, I did recognize it was still a major problem.

I knew that even though Craig had confronted me in a professional and very teammate-like manner, I already was aware this was the end of the line. I was tired and this time I was really tired of being like this and trying to chase the day—every single day—like this…of being a good father, husband, person, and a productive member of society.

With help from friends and colleagues who had been in the same dark place, I put myself in the AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) community.

I pledged to the Flyers, "You will never, ever hear about me drinking again because I never will.’’

Paul Holmgren, the Flyers general manager at the time, was really supportive. I’m truly grateful for that. That was the beginning of 11 years of continued sober broadcasting in good standing. It really got my feet under me. I became the great dad, the person I always wanted to be.

I started going to AA every day. We have a nice little community of guys who lean on each other. I realized the first time I decided to stay sober was when I chose to remain with the AA people. There were 120 meetings in 90 days.

Let’s go back to February 7, 2011, for a moment.

When I found the aforementioned shoe in the closet and saw the water bottle with the vodka in it, I recognized instantly what it was before I opened it. I had hidden it there as every alcoholic seems to hide his liquor for whatever reason. It was an embarrassment. I saw it, took that bottle, and swigged that last one and a half ounces of vodka.

That was my farewell; that was the end. That was the last time I ever used alcohol. I bid it goodbye. I rinsed the bottle out and threw it in the trash can. The last day Chris Therien ever touched a sip of alcohol was February 7, 2011. That began the greatest 11-year journey of my adult life. And it was certainly the most meaningful because it wasn’t just about me anymore. It was about my family and specifically my kids getting a dad that was all-in. All-in on being a parent, doing all the right things I had wanted to do.

There was nothing I wanted more in this world than to be a good dad. And I was sure not going to let these kids down. Nor my wife, Diana, who has done such a great job raising them.

My second chance at life was about to begin.

2. Saturday Night Fever

Did I find hockey, or did hockey find me?

Maybe it was a little bit of both.

It’s safe to say being born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, had something to do with it.

And having two hockey-loving parents, Beth and Emile, certainly helped put me on course for a life journey on ice.

In his youth, my dad played hockey for St. Lawrence University in upstate New York and that undoubtedly provided a role model for my early years.

Ottawa has a history of great hockey players. More than a few have gotten out of the nation’s capital and made careers for themselves.

Bill Clement and Guy Lafleur, just to name a couple. Larry Robinson was another, the great defenseman for Montreal. That was a team I always followed. As a kid I was programmed to be a Montreal Canadiens fan as early as I can remember. I had Habs memorabilia all over the place. Half the city of Ottawa were Toronto Maple Leafs fans, but the eastern part of the city was Montreal Canadiens fans.

That’s just kind of how it worked out. I was a diehard Canadiens fan even as a young kid. When my parents had dinner parties, I was allowed to watch the first period of the Canadiens games on our black and white TV in my bedroom. Those games started at 8:00 pm. It was like a thrill tradition. Saturday night the whole country was watching the game—Hockey Night in Canada. It felt like everyone was getting tuned up to watch hockey.

Because I was young, six or seven years old, I got to watch on Saturday night for one hour, just the first period. Then I got up in the morning full of anticipation to see how my beloved Habs did.

Most of the time in the ’70s they were very, very good. In those days, they won four straight Stanley Cups (1976–79). After the Flyers and Bruins had won, Montreal took over and it was a real dynasty. I was enamored with the Canadiens. They were my team. I bled rouge, blanc, et bleu. Oddly enough, I somehow also owned a Flyers shirt when I was kid. I don’t recall how I got it but there’s a childhood photo of me standing next to my sister, and I’m decked out in my Flyers shirt. Go figure.

As much as I loved the Habs as a kid, my feelings changed over time. I can tell you, having played against them, been in the building, and gotten to know members of the organization, I gained a different perspective on that franchise. The Montreal Canadiens pissed me off because, on one hand, they exuded arrogance and a superiority complex. On the other hand, they perpetually whined and played the victim when something didn’t go their way. My hockey life began in earnest at about that age, when my dad took me to tryouts for the South Ottawa Warriors, which was a very prominent minor hockey team in Ottawa at the time.

It was then my earliest friendships and relationships began. It was also a period in my life when I realized I was about to see some of the biggest idiots in the history of mankind with the minor league parents in the late ’70s and early ’80s. They were completely out of touch with reality.

There were kids from that team who went on to have collegiate careers, though none of them went as far as I did. Jay Flowers played at Union College, which was NCAA Division II at the time. Russell Hammond started for Cornell. A fair share of guys did go on from those youth teams. It was these youth teams that shaped and formed my voyage in life.

I realized about that age I was not always socially compatible. I went against the grain many times. I was not a favorite or more celebrated player at that age. I will say this: Canadian kids were far nastier, meaner than any experience I had when I went on to prep school in the United States.

Canadian kids were punks and there were a lot of them. In retrospect, that period in my childhood in Canada was not that great.

This probably had something to do with my birth month. Yes, if you were born later in the year, you were already behind most of your class in terms of development. I was a December birthday. I was almost a year younger than half or three-quarters of the kids I played with. I think that maturity and physicality at a younger age played a huge factor. Quite frankly, a lot of kids born in the last three or four months of a year don’t make it because of their age.

I know now the only thing that was going to beat age, or a late birthday, was size alone. If you look at guys in the NHL that were all late birthdays, most of them were big people. The ones who made it from October, November, and December were all bigger people. Guys like Keith Primeau, me…it’s not written in stone but it’s absolutely a factor. And it probably played into a lot of nastiness, a lot of the stuff I had to deal with. As a kid, I was always younger than everybody else in my grade and certainly in sports as well.

My best friends were Rod Foley, Chris Rheaume, and Bino Cesario. They still are. They were all a year older than me. They were the next age group up, but we all clicked. We’ve all been in each other’s weddings. And if it weren’t for those guys, I probably wouldn’t have a lot to call home about.

I was a mischievous kid at times. I saw a lot as a kid, some things that still stay with me. I saw a kid kept after school for something that wasn’t even important. I was kept late, too. The kid got beaten with a meter stick. He pissed his pants all over the floor. It was unbelievable to see that happen. I was sitting next to him and thinking to myself, This is insane.

My dad had come to pick me up at school. I was 20 minutes late coming out. He stormed up into the room to see what was going on because there had been rumors about this authority figure being a bully. And, in my eyes, she was.

The interesting thing about my dad: I was not allowed to play or partake in summer hockey. He felt that I needed a break. I played soccer a little bit when I was very young and then my second sport was baseball. I was a pretty good little player until I was about 12, 13 years old.

When I went to high school at St. Pius, baseball was still my second sport while I was playing hockey and then when I packed it in for the year, I started playing football. I was a starting offensive lineman.

My dad felt that maybe a different sport was good for me. I wasn’t particularly the best student either. I was a hard worker, though. I was intelligent enough to meet the bare necessities in grade school to pass my classes. But when more focus or concentration was needed, I could do that, too.

Later, going to a prep school in the United States was my dad’s idea. He looked at it from an academic standpoint. He had a real affinity for the United States education program because he attended St. Lawrence.

He was thinking of me, sort of Let me get this kid out of here. Even though Ottawa was a hockey hotbed, I think he felt like I needed to get out of the area and get a change of scenery, which he thought would be good and important for me.

That’s where his idea for prep school in the United States came in. I’m sure glad I didn’t end up in Wilcox, Saskatchewan.

3. Another Lake Placid Miracle

Any American hockey fan of a certain age remembers where he or she was the weekend of February 22–24, 1980. Most likely in front of a television set with millions of other like-minded USA citizens.

It was the Miracle on Ice, the home country’s memorable upset of the powerful Soviet Union team by a 4–3 score on Friday night and a rousing 4–2 win over Finland on Sunday for the XII Winter Olympic Games gold medal at Lake Placid.

Many sports experts consider it the No. 1 achievement of American athletics in the 20th century. Some believe it gave American hockey just the sort of boost it needed to compete with Canada and Europe. No doubt it certainly re-energized the town of Lake Placid, which had previously hosted the Games in 1932. But that first version of the Olympiad was held before the advent of television, so results were a fairly well-kept secret.

To this day, one can spot 1980 USA memorabilia in store fronts along the town’s main thoroughfare. Images of captain and hero Mike Eruzione, goaltender Jim Craig, and coach Herb Brooks abound. It was into this still hockey-crazed environment that I arrived just seven years later to start my stay at Northwood Preparatory School.

I probably wasn’t one hundred percent certain at that point that hockey was going to be my destiny for life, but Lake Placid and Northwood certainly had the right culture and atmosphere to foster that future decision. As it turned out, the opportunity to go to a prestigious school, regardless of the hockey side of it, was a godsend.

Northwood had everything a young student with college aspirations could hope for—small, almost individualized, classes (at times, one teacher for, say, five students), a flexible curriculum, personalized schedules—not to mention the beautiful Adirondack Mountains as a backdrop.

I really didn’t know Northwood had started way back in 1905 as the Lake Placid School, founded by Yale University graduate John Hopkins, and later became Northwood Preparatory School in 1927.

But I did know of two recent graduates who turned out to be pretty good hockey players: Mike Richter (Class of 1985), a goaltender who became famous for his play at the University of Wisconsin and later as the backstop on the 1994 Stanley Cup champion New York Rangers; and Tony Granato (Class of 1983), a future star with the Rangers, Los Angeles Kings, and San Jose Sharks.

So, in May 1987, I made the decision to go Northwood. I was thinking, Man, I’m never going to have to see these (Canada) people again! I actually felt good about that. I thought to myself, I’m really looking forward to this change.

I knew I was going to miss my parents and I had a lot of good things to remember about Ottawa, too. It wasn’t all bad. There were a lot of good kids, too. But it wasn’t a great time for me. I certainly welcomed anything new that was going to happen to me in life. It wasn’t just about hockey. I still didn’t believe I was a real, good player. I’d been cut from two teams.

Did I mention I might have been a bit overweight?

I was excited about going to Northwood and didn’t tell anybody. A couple friends asked, and I said, Yeah, I’m going to another school next year. Nobody knew, nobody cared. There were a lot of high schools in Ottawa but what they didn’t know was that I was headed south of the border.

Summer came, high school at St. Pius had ended, and I was so excited about what was to come. My grandparents were there on getaway day. It was a rainy Sunday morning. My mom, dad, and sister standing there for the picture—that image is still with me. I had a short haircut, appeared really raw, and kind of looked like I was three months short of my 16th birthday, which I was.

I showed up at Northwood with a bunch of other kids. It was a totally different experience for me. They had meetings every night, 7:00 pm sharp and there would be a team huddle with the whole school. Teachers would have comments, and everyone would listen.

The hockey coach, Tom Fleming, was one of the most instrumental people in my hockey career, at least in terms of working. I went down two months early and met Fleming as well as athletic director Steve Reed. Both men were extremely bright: Tom went to Dartmouth and was voted athlete of the half century. Steve played at Colby College in Maine.

They gave us a tour and they had no idea who I was, no clue, and why would they? I had no accomplishments to hang my hat on. No accolades of any sort. They just knew there was this Canadian kid coming in. I wasn’t big yet but I guess they figured if the kid was coming in from Canada, he could play hockey.

Tom and Steve introduced me to Brett Kurtz, who happened to be the best player on the team and, in Fleming’s words, one of the best prep players in the country. I never understood exactly what he meant until the next year when 10 or 11 players on the team received NCAA Division I scholarships.

That is really remarkable. Northwood was, for all intents and purposes, the greatest United States powerhouse prep school that there ever was. Now, people can hang their hat on certain schools and say certain things. But when you talk about high school hockey in the United States, Northwood was at the top of the food chain for many, many years.

I actually repeated my sophomore year to get more American curriculum. Of course, we studied Canadian history, along with the metric system and the different mathematical formulas that the two countries have. In some ways, it was just an extra year to get another $9,500 out of my dad. With the exchange rate, I realized what a toll that had taken on him. It was a lot. We