Calgary’s Ferland marks one full year of sobriety
Michael Ferland easily — and comfortably — accepts handshakes and congratulations.
Because this morning, besides the extra on- ice work for the healthy scratch, is not like any other.
Friday was the Calgary Flames winger’s one-year anniversary of sobriety.
“This is probably one of the biggest days of my life,” Ferland was saying in a vacated Flames lockerroom at Xcel Energy Center. “I never ever thought I’d quit drinking or be sober for a year, be where I am right now.
“I look back at everything I’ve been through and that was the best decision I ever made in my life.”
It’s never been an easy road for the 22-year-old from Swan River, Man., who has come to many crossroads in his young professional hockey career.
A year ago, Ferland had been rehabbing a knee injury he suffered around Christmastime after a collision during a practice with the Flames’ farm team in Abbotsford.
But the ups and downs started long before that.
Following the 2011-12 WHL season, the Flames’ 2010 fifth-round pick ran into some trouble with the law. In the summer of 2012, he was involved in an altercation outside a Cochrane bar.
Then, during the 2012-13 season, he began his first year of professional hockey in the AHL with Abbotsford.
It did not go well. Ferland was soon demoted to the Utah Grizzlies of the ECHL. At 234-pounds, he wound up back in the WHL with the Brandon Wheat Kings and was later traded to the Saskatoon Blades.
Trimming 24 pounds off his sixfoot-one frame, Ferland was the feel-good story of the 2013 training camp. But disappointment struck again and he found himself on the surgeon’s table. And, later, in Bob Hartley’s office. “With the way my season ended in (the AHL), everything just kind of fell apart,” Ferland recalled. “You know, the way things were going over there, ‘I don’t even know if I’d be playing hockey right now . . . going to Abbotsford, down to the East Coast, and going back to junior. The way things were going, I don’t even know if I’d still be playing hockey if I was still going down that road. That’s the biggest thing I thought about. If I kept doing what I was doing, maybe I’d slip by half a year and play a few games.
“But if I stopped and focused on hockey, maybe I’d have a good career. And that’s what I chose.”
During Ferland’s first NHL callup at the beginning of the year, he suffered a concussion in his first NHL game Oct. 31 versus Nashville. He was recalled again during the Flames’ seven-game road trip during the 2015 Tim Hortons Brier.
In total, Ferland has 20 games in the NHL — none of which, he figures, would have been possible if he hadn’t gotten sober. But it wasn’t easy to ask for help. “He broke down in my office and went to see Brian (Burke) and we got (treatment) going,” said Flames head coach Bob Hartley. “I’m tremendously proud of Ferly. He’s a good man.”
With the Flames, Ferland also leaned on Brian McGrattan, a longtime champion and survivor of substance abuse.
His family, girlfriend Kayleigh Chapman, a defenceman for Bemidji State University, and Mike Thompson, the Flame’s longtime strength and conditioning coach in the American Hockey League, have also been factors.
Ferland attended rehab for a month and now attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings regularly. “It’s just great,” Hartley said. “For me, coaching is to win hockey games. But, also, careers versus lives ... sometimes lives are way more important than careers.”