A Purpose Worth Fighting For: Breakdowns and Breakthroughs from a Career in the NHL

By Billy Huard

"Having been a teammate of Billy's, I can say he was the epitome of the NHL's 'tough guy.' His courage and strength to open up about the physical and mental toll that carried over to his personal life makes this a must-read!"
Craig Ludwig
Two-time NHL Stanley Cup Champion

"Billy was the best teammate both on and off the ice. A true team player who loved every one of us as if we were his family. This book walks readers and sports fans through just how hard the enforcer role really was and the toll it took on those guys throwing the punches."
Jim Dowd
NHL Stanley Cup Champion

"Hard work and perseverance are vital ingredients for everything in life. That is the secret not only to Billy Huard's rise to play in the best hockey league in the world but also to how he has transitioned after hockey into his current life, where he finds joy in family, friendships, and faith."
Gary Kunath
Businessman of the Year and keynote speaker

• Language: English
• Publisher: Billy Huard
• Release date: Jan 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9798989038824

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Copyright © 2023 Billy Huard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical (including any information storage retrieval system) without the express written permission from he author, except in the case of brief quotations for use in articles and reviews wherein appropriate attribution of the source is made.

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First Edition

This book is dedicated to all my brothers who fought battles with me and against me, to those still with us today and those who have passed on. We were all in this together, and what we did mattered and served a purpose. As enforcers, we have our own noble membership. Wear that badge of honor proudly.

CONTENTS

Bonus Resources

Introduction

1. Hometown

2. Maverick

3. Recast

4. Persistence

5. The Great One

6. Welcome to the Jungle

7. Music City

8. Tommy Time

9. False Start

10. Time-Out

11. Taking On the Champ

12. Big D

13. True North

14. It’s Over

15. Lifeline

16. Forgiven

17. Stability

Conclusion

Bonus Resources

Acknowledgments

Bonus Resources

Scan the QR code below or visit purposeworthfightingfor.com/bonuses to unlock exclusive resources and bonuses to help you master your mind, discover your potential, and create your own impact.

You are truly important to me, and I hope these tips, tools, and strategies help you on your journey to discover your purpose worth fighting for.

Introduction

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

—Dr. Wayne Dyer, Author, Speaker, Coach

When you look at a rose bush, do you see all the flowers blooming on it and wonder how they can be so beautiful? Or do you see all the thorns sticking out of it and wonder how long it’s going to be before you’re bleeding?

For way too long, I was a thorn guy. The long, tough journey I took to get to the NHL and the role I played once I finally got there tainted my perception of the world. All I could see was darkness and pain. I was shattered and broken, the same way my nose, fingers, wrists, and who knows how many other bones were while I was out there fighting on the ice.

And after all that fighting on the ice stopped? Well, then I had to fight for my life.

Honesty check here: I’ve never been a big fan of self-help. I think most times when people try to change by themselves, they usually end up in the same place that they started. I don’t believe many people wake up one day after getting stuck as a thorn guy and suddenly smell the roses. So it’s kind of funny that I’m here now, writing about how I found my way back to the flowers in the hope that I can help you do the same.

I know. It’s ironic. But so is the fact that we look at our heroes, the people doing things we most wish we could do—like play hockey in the NHL—and imagine they must be the happiest people in the world. I’m living proof they can actually be the ones in the most pain. Because I was suffering out there, man, and I was suffering long after I wasn’t out there anymore. I’m so grateful I’m no longer suffering today because I found a way to infuse meaning and purpose into my life.

If you’re suffering like I was, I want you to know you can transform your life like I did. As unlikely as that may sound from where you’re standing right now, it’s the truth. I’ve been there. I’ve fought my way back to happiness and personal success with the help of my family, friends, grit, determination, and faith—in both myself and something far bigger than myself.

***

As a young boy playing hockey on frozen backyard rinks in Canada, my biggest, wildest, yet still somehow most concrete dream was to play in the NHL. I loved the sport with my whole heart. It was my entire identity, who I was to my very core.

Every other kid I knew said they wanted to be a doctor or a fireman when they grew up, but not me. My answer was always that I wanted to be in the big leagues. I didn’t care who laughed at me. Who said I was too small or too slow. A dream is a dream, and my dad always told me I could do anything I put my mind to. My mind was dead set on the NHL.

Against all odds—after a crazy number of tryouts, getting cut so many times I can’t believe I’m not still bleeding, and playing for a bunch of minor league teams in the middle of nowhere—I finally fulfilled my lifelong dream. What I quickly found out once I finally got there, however, was that the only way for me to stay was going to be devastatingly unfulfilling. Rock, meet hard place. Make that, hard fist.

Playing in the NHL was the only measure of success I ever knew or wanted, but I don’t think I ever once considered what it was going to be like once I got there. (Notice I didn’t say if. There was never any if. I was going to do whatever it took.) My guess is if I ever stopped to think about it, I would have figured it’d be all wine and roses. What it actually turned out to be was lots of cheap beer and many, many thorns.

Live and learn.

As I inched closer and closer to my dream, my physicality on the ice made coaches start viewing me as a good prospect for a fighter. With some of the best athletes in the world competing for an infinitesimally small number of jobs, that was simply the only role they saw me fitting into at the elite level of the NHL. The job description was pretty cut-and-dry: protect my teammates and change the momentum of the game with a crushing hit.

It was nothing like what I’d trained for all those years—it wasn’t about how fast I could skate, how well I could anticipate a pass, or how hard I could shoot a puck. All that mattered was how violent and aggressive I could be on the ice for a few minutes every game. After spending so much time and energy at the rink trying to become the best hockey player possible, it now seemed like I would have been better off training in a boxing gym that whole time.

The truth was, I could hit guys until the cows came home, but I’d never actually dropped the gloves—or ever wanted to—until I had to either do it or quit the game. I didn’t want to quit, so I accepted the job. Reluctantly. It didn’t even feel like a choice. I had to keep playing. It was all I’d ever wanted. I didn’t have a Plan B.

But I wasn’t naturally wired to beat the shit out of other people for no reason. As a little kid, I was terrified of the dark. I had such terrible anxiety, I went through a phase where I was having regular bathroom accidents. I refused to sleep alone and would always beg one of my three older sisters to let me crawl into their beds at night. I was a total mama’s boy, so scared she’d die that I often refused to leave her side.

Still, I fought, and kept right on fighting until I barely recognized myself anymore. The only way I found to manage the pressure of the role was to ditch William Huard whenever I got out on the ice and become William Wallace, aka Braveheart. Unfortunately, living life as someone I’m not took an incredible toll on me.

I looked to my father, always my biggest supporter, for advice, but he had zero experience undoing deals with the devil like the one it seemed I’d signed. For the first time in my life, he had no words of wisdom to impart on me. My mother, shocked that the sweet boy who had once clung to her leg was now a guy who’d drop his gloves to bloody up another player on command, came to my games but most of the time couldn’t bring herself to actually watch them. She’d walk circles around the concourse until they were over, when that monster on the ice morphed back into the son she knew and loved.

And that’s how my biggest dream started turning into my biggest nightmare.

***

While fighting has always been a part of hockey and always will be, for most of the game’s history, each individual player decided when and if to fight. In today’s NHL, where speed and skill are king, fighting doesn’t play much of a role anymore. But for a window of about twenty years, fights became an expected and highly anticipated part of the game, and the position of enforcer emerged.

Everyone wanted an enforcer on the roster and counted on them in a big way, especially on the road. He became the guy responsible for fighting the entire team’s battles but was generally stuck on the fourth line and used for only a few minutes a game, if at all. Fulfilling only that one function was often demoralizing for fighters, especially since they’d trained long and hard to be so much more than that.

There were some enforcers who didn’t have the skills to deserve to be in the NHL in the first place, who were strictly there for intimidation and had nothing more to contribute than their iron fists—but that was the exception and not the rule. On the other end of the spectrum, there were some fighters who got moved to the first, second, or third line and stayed there. (Players like Rick Tocchet and Al Secord come to mind.) Given a chance by a coach who realized their potential, they escaped, flourished, and never looked back.

The rest of us accepted the position because we had no other option if we wanted to play in the big leagues—which we wanted more than anything in the world—and we remained in that fourth line enforcer role for our entire careers. Our biggest wish was that someday a coach would see us as something more than just an enforcer, move us up a line or two, and let us get back to playing more and fighting less. We generally were skilled players with high levels of hockey sense, so being used only for our fists hurt us even more than the guys we were beating on. We, too, wanted to escape, flourish, and never look back.

Sure, we all could have walked away whenever we wanted. But we’d finally gotten what we’d always dreamed of and simply could not let go. Even if that meant becoming someone we never wanted to be.

That isn’t to say it was all bad. Nothing ever is. There were definitely times it felt very cool to be that guy. In most cities, fighters were even the fan favorite—and while I may not have liked fighting, I liked being liked. Doesn’t everyone?

People often ask me what it felt like to be the guy going toe-to-toe with a rival player on the ice, bare knuckling it in front of eighteen thousand hockey fans. They always want to know who the toughest guy to fight was. The truth is, I barely remember throwing punches out there.

What I remember most about those days is getting ready to fight. How intense gearing up for a fight was. The mental preparation, prolonged anticipation, and emotional warfare would start up days, even weeks, before a fight. It was mentally torturous and completely exhausting. By the time I was finally out on the ice to meet my match, I always felt like a soldier going into battle. I had to let William Wallace take over and make Billy Huard recede into the shadows—and that transition was a killer.

So was the mental disorder many of us were left with after being enforcers. I’m lucky I made it out alive. Many guys didn’t, and I’m so sorry for them and their families.

People may say I didn’t have it as bad as others, given the length of my career—just seven seasons and a little over two hundred games—but believe me when I tell you it took an incredible toll on my body, brain, relationships, and life in general. And just saying, I was actually in the NHL for more than four hundred games, but injuries and a lockout year cut short my opportunity to play more games.

In total, I played twelve seasons of professional hockey. Obviously, my body didn’t know the difference between the hits I took in the NHL and the other leagues I played in. My head still felt the sting, no matter what team I was on.

Besides, there’s nothing to argue with when it comes to my stats. I fought all the toughest players of my time—Kocur, Twist, Probert, Brown, McKenzie, Grimson, Ewen, Domi, Brashear, Berube, McCarthy, Ray, Kypreos, Churla, Poeschek—and had one of the highest winning percentages in the heavyweight class during that era. The proof is all there on YouTube, if you care to watch.

From the outside looking in, I’m sure it looked like I’d gotten everything I ever dreamed of and more: I won a few minor league championships. I made it to the NHL. I was on the ice with some of the greatest players of all time. I was even fortunate enough to play on Hockey Night in Canada several times, every Canadian boy’s biggest dream. So if you’re saying to yourself right now, I would give anything to have accomplished that, I’m sure I’d be thinking the same thing if I were in your shoes.

But I’m not. I was in my skates, and I carry the scars of what being an enforcer in the NHL did to my body and soul. After finishing this book, I want you to ask yourself if you still think you’d want to switch places with me. Would you have taken the path I did to lace ‘em up for even one shift in the NHL after hearing my story?

I’m pretty sure your honest answer will be absolutely not.

***

I wish I’d been able to walk away, turn it all off, and be happy with what I’d accomplished when I retired, but William Wallace wasn’t about to die that easily. He’d been living inside me for seven-plus long, violent seasons. Learning how to be Billy Huard again was one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced, before or since.

I paid a huge price for compromising my dream. Those closest to me did, too. It took me down a very dark path, and I am forever