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Souray on life after hockey
Former Canadiens defenceman Sheldon Souray was thinking a lot about his dad on Father’s Day Sunday.
Wednesday will mark the second anniversary of Richard Souray’s death at age 69 after suffering a massive stroke. Souray described his father as a hard-working “man’s man” and a “great guy” who was a truck driver and loved hockey and hanging around rinks watching his son play. He was also an alcoholic while Souray was growing up. Souray lived with his father from age 9 after his parents divorced.
“I never saw my dad as a raging alcoholic ... that was never my dad,” Souray said over the phone Sunday from his summer home in Idaho. “My dad was just the last guy to leave … he didn’t want to miss anything. So I never saw a part of him that was mean or abusive or anything like that but, obviously, there was something going on.”
On May 1, 1994, Richard decided he was going to stop drinking with his son eligible for the NHL Draft the next month. The New Jersey Devils selected Souray in the third round and he went on to play 14 seasons in the NHL, including six with the Canadiens.
“He said: ‘If you’re going to play in the NHL, you don’t need a drunk dad hanging around the rinks,’ ” Souray recalled his father telling him.
Richard never drank again. May 1 would become a bigger day of celebration for him every year than his birthday.
“As the years went on, he got to 10 years, which was a massive deal, he got to 20 years, which was major,” Souray said. “That was one of his motivations for sure … to be sober and enjoy what could possibly happen with me playing in the NHL. He was so proud of his sobriety.”
Souray can now relate to what his father went through. The former NHLer has now been sober for nine months. Alcohol wasn’t Souray’s addiction, painkilling pills were and the sudden death of his father didn’t help.
“I have never told this story, but today on Father’s Day is probably a good day to tell it,” Souray said. “My career ended and I had (wrist) surgery. I just started messing around with the pills. I was never a really big drinker because I had seen the effect it had on my dad. But I started doing pills and then when my dad passed away, I started doing more. I didn’t do it very long … I didn’t need to do it very long to know that it was going to kill me if I kept doing it like that. So I reached out for some help and I’ll give the NHL doctors a ton of credit.
“At the beginning, it was embarrassing,” added the 41-year-old, whose career ended after playing 44 games with the Anaheim Ducks during the 201213 season. “I never felt really like telling my story. All my friends know, obviously, and I’m very proud of it now. But I read more all the time about mental health and I reached out (to the NHL and NHL Players’ Association’s substance-abuse program) and asked for some help. It’s hard for a lot of guys, right. You’re proud and all that. But we’ve also seen what happens when you don’t reach out and ask for help. So I did. I got the help and it just changed my life, man, it changed things around. I don’t live for myself now, I live for my family and the good things in my life.”
Souray has two daughters — Valentina, 14, and Scarlett,
11 — from his first marriage to Baywatch actress Angelica Bridges. Last year, his three-year relationship with Barbie Blank — a former WWE star who used the ring name Kelly Kelly — came to an end. Scarlett is with Souray now for the summer in Idaho and Valentina will join them in about a month after her school year ends in Missouri.
“A lot has happened, a lot has changed in the past year and I woke up today just grateful for what I have,” Souray said. “The sun’s shining and the birds are singing and there’s just a lot to be grateful for. But a lot of perspective has changed and a lot of what’s going on in my life I attribute to changes I had to make because of dealing with something like that when you lose someone who’s close to you.
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t have enough sobriety to tell,” Souray added. “But I also feel that everyone has a story that could maybe help someone else who is going through something they might think nobody else would understand. If you can help one person … one person helped me. My dad’s not here, but his story helped me get to where I am today right now and helped me make a change, even though he wasn’t around.
“The man I admire most who has ever walked the face of the Earth has already done this, so I can do it, too.”
I don’t live for myself now, I live for my family and the good things in my life.