I would compare that to when I first started with the Montreal Canadiens; it was a big family then, where the guys really stuck together and worked like a unit. But when I came back in '88, it was not like that anymore.
The players wanted more money, higher salary caps and they didn't have that family relationship we felt with the players. Mentally, the players were more businesslike.
These are my friends, my family. It would be hell on earth to spend the rest of my life leading them into situations where some of them are going to get killed... but it would be worse watching someone well-meaning but incompetent or untrained double those deaths.
I tell her all the time I'd gladly retire and hang out with the kids and clean the house. I want to have a good life and great family, and from a professional standpoint I want to be successful, but it's not the most important thing at all.
My mother, at least twice, cancelled our family's subscription to the newspaper I was working on, because she was so mad about its treatment of my father.
I see the friends I made over the years who have become family today, people I became acquainted with who have achieved so much in their lives. They taught me something with each meeting.
I savour the adulation and love I have been getting from my fans and the blessings of elders in my family. Fourteen years have given me a lot and I can't thank God and the industry enough.
