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THE RETURN OF THE RING

When the NHL playoffs approach each spring, we go down the list of talented greybeards who’ve had great careers and pinpoint those we deem most deserving of “getting their ring,” and the sport as a whole seems to root for them. We talk vaguely about “being a winner,” and we talk about the team pursuit of winning the Cup, but in the context of individual hockey players it’s common to refer to their championship pedigree as including—or not including—rings.

I grew up with an innate understanding of the magic of the ring. My father, Bob Bourne, earned four of them as an integral part of the New York Islanders’ Stanley Cup dynasty in the early 1980s. For as long as I can remember, those rings have been part of our family history.

My perception of the ring has changed over the years. I share the reverence for the ring as some historical tomb that holds the magic of greatness past, a piece of fossilized amber to be handed down through generations, containing something capable of bringing old stories forward to the present moment. They’re larger than life (both figuratively and literally these days), and almost supernatural, like something action heroes fight over in comic books. Within hockey, they’re proof of immortalization.

For me, though, other adjectives exist, too, others that are generally unfamiliar in the daily orbit of a Cup ring. There’s disappointment, there’s hurt and mistrust, and more specifically, there’s the pains of addictions and their consequences. I still revere rings, but there’s a heaviness beyond their physical weight.

I was young during my dad’s heyday—too young to fully appreciate the skills, talent and determination that made him a success. But I was fortunate that we spent enough time together at events and in dressing rooms as I got older to gain an understanding of what made him special to his teams and his teammates. I saw the way a grinning Al Arbour—the long-time coach of the Islanders, and fifth-winningest coach in NHL history—would shout an affectionate “Shithead!” when Dad would pop up years later, moments before they’d share a warm embrace. That particular brand of nickname comes from the special bond you form when you’ve been to the sport’s mountaintop together, having pushed and pulled with another person to get the most out of them, to achieve the type of goal you immortalize with gold.

I saw the numerous friends that would come through to be a part of Dad’s charity events years after retirement. I watched old VHS tapes and heard enough stories to appreciate what Life Before Me had been like. It had been successful, and it had been good, mostly.

During his career my dad banked respect away from the rink to go with what he earned on it. The scrapbooks and trophies around our family home in my early years spoke volumes about his character. In one corner, a Bill Masterton Trophy for perseverance and dedication to hockey. In another, a Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year award for his work to raise money for children’s health care, a pursuit that grew from the needs of my incredible brother, Jeff, who was born with spina bifida. (Jeff ’s life has been worthy of a non-hockey Bill Masterton, as his endurance through nearly 40 surgeries and navigating life in a chair has truly defined perseverance and dedication.) And we had a closet filled with “Good Guy” awards from the New York media, who annually recognized him for being an athlete who could be counted on for honest, straightforward answers after a win or a loss.

What you wouldn’t see in our family home was a complete set of my dad’s four Stanley Cup rings, in part because he was generous with his success. He presented his first ring to his father, Victor Bourne. Grandpa Bourne raised his family on a farm near the dozen-person town of Netherhill, Saskatchewan, about two hours west of Saskatoon. The second ring went to his father-in-law, Jim Juba. Grandpa Juba was another solid prairie farm guy with an endearing Ukrainian accent who naturally vibed with my dad. It was a measure of love that my dad shared those rings with two men who had a big influence on his life. (In time, both of those rings would find their way back to him.)

In that same spirit, Dad eventually passed on one his rings to Jeff at his high school graduation, a family treasure meant to last a lifetime.

In the year 2000, it was my turn.

Dad left when I was about eight and Jeff was eleven, and so by high school graduation, my mother, Janice, had spent years with us, grinding over the day-to-day details of life. Mom was lovely, and the picture of patience and commitment through some days that weren’t easy. Because of that, I admit to feeling like she got jobbed out of some much-deserved attention the day my ring came. She had put in the work as a single mom for roughly a decade by that point. It was in June and at my high school graduation—an event I see as a triumph over the mundane details of daily life—when a day known for celebrating the rote turned its attention to the rare. It was a substantial piece of gold, with two sizable diamonds (to represent the second Islanders Cup) set in the middle of an Islander-blue stone, and it instantly became the star of the show.

To a 17-year-old kid, it was an incredible gift. You might think the weight of something like that could crush a kid that age, particularly one with some hockey aspirations, but not for a second did I consider it something to live up to. It was so far beyond where I was in the sport that it didn’t even feel like it was earned in the same field. I wasn’t on track for the draft (I didn’t even know when that was); I was off to see if I could crack a Junior A team (I did not, that first summer), with the grand end goal of having some university pay for my education (that I did eventually manage to accomplish).

Maybe it would’ve been different had I grown up in a house with my dad, or had he coached my hockey teams or something along the way, but the field in which that ring was earned somehow felt entirely separate from whatever it was I was doing. I was beyond proud to have it.

That generosity and connection meant a lot then, but even more later. Life after hockey has not been easy for my dad. A variety of factors affected his life, his demeanour and his personality. Concussions and alcohol are a part of that story—he’d tell you the same—and good luck untangling which to hold accountable for what. It’s also well established that children of alcoholics have a much greater likelihood of developing their own issues with alcohol. Let’s just say if your father is both an alcoholic and a Stanley Cup winner, your odds of following in his footsteps down one path is far more likely than down the other.

If life ever leads you to the epiphany that it’s time to boil a frog, apparently there are some loose guidelines to help you on your way. I’m told that if you boil the water first, then drop the amphibian in, it will jump directly out. The contrast from its previous normal is just too much. But if you put one in a pot on the stove and turn the heat up ever so slowly, a degree at a time, it won’t notice the temperature increases, and before you know it, voilà, you’ve made frog legs.

That seems relevant when discussing my relationship with Dad in the years after he retired. Intermittent incidents became part of the increasing temperature of the water, and I never jumped out, strange as that might have seemed to those on the outside. I probably looked like the frog in the water, continuing to put up with the ever-rising heat, even if just a degree at a time. I assure you, though, that wasn’t the case. I never got used to the new temperatures that came with Dad’s struggles, period. I just consciously chose to tolerate them, because what was the alternative—not having a relationship? I usually saw the next small heat increase coming, and steeled myself yet again rather than hopping free. I’m not sure that choice, which I made over and again, was ever right or wrong. I still don’t know.

Today I make a living analyzing hockey. I imagine the reason I’m at least somewhat useful in that gig is that I’ve always excelled at reading the play, both on the ice and off. It’s what got me as far as I did as a professional player, and what led to me being hired as a video coach in the American Hockey League. Show me how a breakout is unfolding at one end, or a forecheck, and I can make a reasonably accurate guess as to how things will unfold over the next 10 seconds, even if they end up 200 feet away.

With that attribute as a strength, it’s possible I knew Dad was going to take the ring even before he did.

His mind hadn’t been right for a while, but he was particularly unwell then, and so avoiding disaster on his visit to Toronto from Kelowna in 2013 seemed unlikely even before he’d arrived. We were on high alert. But the odd range of what could go sideways didn’t hit me until we were five steps inside my apartment and he asked to try on the Stanley Cup ring he had given me for high school graduation over a decade before.

The ask to try it on was odd phrasing, coming from the person for whom it was sized. And it was an odd interest coming from the man who at some point had three more similar rings in a sparkling quartet.

Since something was off, and it was Dad, I had reason to worry it might be the start of something bad. By then, the trust was gone.

I considered that he might have asked for nostalgia’s sake, and fought back the type of doubts that could cloud the opening hour of his weeklong visit. I wasn’t ready for trouble—particularly where, I hoped, it might never come.

At the time, that 1981 New York Islanders Stanley Cup ring sat in a cloudy Plexiglas display case that was made for an autographed baseball, tucked inside an open ring box atop a flimsy brown IKEA shelf in our bathroom. I had bigger plans for it, someday, but given my financial situation at the time, the presentation had seemed sufficient.

My relationship with Dad had shifted more to the “drinking buddies” side in those days, and so I did what I’d become accustomed to doing: I simply agreed to whatever to avoid any type of confrontation, handed over the ring, and encouraged the procession to move down to the Foggy Dew. The Dew, you see, was a fully functioning Irish pub located on the bottom floor of our apartment building, so it was essentially in the basement of our living quarters at the time. A fireman pole from our worn green living room couch would’ve taken you to a spot directly in front of the leading taps at a V-shaped bar, taps that were generally stocked with Guinness and a decent IPA, two of my favourites at the time.

A basement pub—that should’ve been fine, right? As the famously naive Simpsons quote goes, “Nothing could possibli go wrong.”

And so my dad, a large man with a large past, brought the large ring down with him that first day.