June 22, 2021 • 61 mins
For the eighth episode of Charges, Rex brings Chris "Knuckles" Nilan onto the show to talk about his career and post career struggles. Rex and Chris discuss: How he became a hockey player & where he grew up (1:51), how he ended up playing in college & NHL (5:56), how he became an enforcer & fighting as a kid (11:32), winning The Stanley Cup & drinking culture in the NHL (19:57), being out of the game in retirement & surgeries (23:18), opiods & drug use (28:44), his process of getting clean (40:25), an arrest in incident (42:54), his relationship with reputed gangster Whitey Bulger (47:45), & what he is doing now (55:28). This episode is not to be missed!
Follow @KnucklesNilan30 on Twitter & @knucklesnilan on Instagram
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Charges. That's created by Portalais and Control Media. It's produced
by dB Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio. This
time a former Sons player who you might remember as
t Rex. More video in just a moment, But this
is Rex Chapman's mug shot and we are learning a
lot more about the charge up the charge. Okay, so
(00:22):
when did it swiss for you? From pills to heroin?
I end up sluting and I said I'll never shoot it,
and within a week I had a needle on my prawl.
You don't know what a prawling. You have been stabbed,
you have been a hit over the head with a
baseball bat. I don't think so. I grew up in
that culture too. You know you work on play on
work ond you deserve a poll one. I remember looking
(00:44):
at myself in the mirror and saying, I don't fucking
like you. Welcome to Charges. I'm your host, Rex Chapman.
Today We're proud to hit the ice for the very
first time. Hockey players makeup, especially in the NHL, on
and off the rink, requires a toughness seldom seen in
(01:04):
other professional sports. On the ice, you can actually throw
down your gloves and throw fist Mono Imano. Yes, there
was even a time in NHL when this was celebrated
and encouraged. Our guest today is Chris Knuckles Nyland, a
fifteen year veteran and a Stanley Cup champion with the
Montreal Canadians. Chris and I share the experience of battling addiction,
(01:28):
specifically opioids, and again we want to remind any of
our listeners if you're struggling with addiction or know someone
who is, there is help out there and you can
and will beat this struggle. I'd like to welcome the
Pride of West Roxbury, Massachusetts, Chris Knuckles nine. Chris, thanks
(01:51):
for coming on, buddy. Yeah, thanks for having me. X
quite the introduction. We do have something in common and
obviously the opioids, and I'm glad that I have that
part of my life in order right now. So life
is good. You and me both, but you and me both, uh,
And I gotta be up front. I know very little
(02:12):
about hockey. I enjoy watching it. My first experience with
hockey really, you know, growing up in Kentucky, we didn't
have it, you know. I remember seeing it on ESPN
and thinking it was a brand new sport and I
was like twelve years old. But my first experience with it,
I was playing for the Phoenix Suns and we had
a young rookie on the team and I was walking
(02:33):
into practice one day, young rookie named Steve Nash, and
he was out on the ice in his basketball uniform,
flying up and down the ice with the coyotes, and
I was just amazed. I thought, oh my god. Well,
first of all, you guys are so fast. I mean,
it's one thing to be able to skate, but to
(02:54):
be able to do it like that. I can't imagine
playing basketball on skates. It's just beyond me. So kudos
for all the work it took to get to that level. Man. Well,
I gotta tell you, when you think of hockey, you
think it's Canadiana, right. And when you look at hockey
in the States, you know it's a regional sport. The Northeast,
(03:16):
you know, New England, you look at Minnesota, the state
of Minnesota, big hockey town, the Midwest somewhat. And now
with the expansion in the NHL. Uh, when Gretzky got
traded from Medminton went to l A. More So in California,
we're seeing guys getting drafted kids out of California, I
(03:37):
mean Austin Matthews with Toronto maple Leafs from Phoenix, Arizona.
The league has expanded somewhat, and um, you know, the
grassroots level, it's gotten a lot better in the States.
But boy, you need money to play that sport. It's
not like grabbing a pair of sneakers in a pair
of shorts. Go play some hoop now in the school yard.
(03:59):
Tell me about growing up in West Roxbury, mass And
how hockey and that type of neighborhood all come together. Well,
what's Roxbury is a neighborhood borrow in the city of Boston,
predominantly Irish neighborhood and growing up back in the sixties there, Um,
Bobby Or came to the Boston Bruins and man, that
(04:22):
city just went nuts for him. He took the city
by storm and everybody loved him. Every kid wanted to
be like him. And he had such an impact on
the area that the city of Boston, the mayor at
a time when he came was looking at ways to
keep kids off the street, keeping from the street corner,
(04:43):
hanging around doing nothing. And yeah, there were a lot
of basketball courts around the city in all the parks,
but there were no hockey rinks. It was one really
a couple of rinks Boston Skating Club in the Brighton section,
but they weren't a lot of rinks. So the governor
along with the mayor got together and they started building
these rinks that were called m d C Rinks Metropolitan
(05:05):
District Commission, and they built a lot of these ranks
in different neighborhoods South Boston, West Roxbury, Charlestown, dort Chester,
all the inner city. And it gave kids an opportunity
to get off the street corner. It gave families an
opportunity to do public skating, going around and just skating
to music. And then they started coming up with little leagues,
(05:28):
um like Little League Baseball, like uh they started Boston
Neighborhood Hockey League, which was a big thing for me,
but you know, that's what we did back in those days.
They had those leagues just to keep kids off the
street and give them, uh you know, something to do
and sports to play. So it was awesome. It was
(05:49):
it sort a big impact on my my young hockey life,
my young life in general. It's so beautiful uh. You know,
in my research, what came up again and again was
that you were never really expected to go pro. You
played college hockey at Northeastern, great hockey school, but still
the NHL wasn't necessarily on the radar, right, No, it wasn't.
(06:12):
I played for um coach who happened to be a judge.
His name was Paul King, and Judge King was in
charge of one of the busiest courts, were the most
violent offenders in the state of Massachusetts. And he was
an authortic. He was hunched over and his brother was
the governor of the state, Ed King at a time.
(06:35):
And the judge saw something in me that nobody else did.
I don't know what to this day because he's passed
on now, but he always had this faith in me,
always had something for me. He used to take me
off with PiZZ A Lott. He had eight kids of
his own, eight and he had one son who was
don syndrome. And he'd sit on the bench all day.
(06:58):
You know, he get up in the morning and go
down kiro prack the co stit on the bench all day,
come down, get on the ice for hockey practice, all
hunched over in a cold hockey rank. Then he go
home do the family thing. But this guy was a huge,
huge influence on my life and he really helped me,
you know, get to the next level. And I say
(07:18):
that he helped me get into prep school. I played
Catholic memory, I played high school hockey. I was a
young senior. I didn't do that that great in school,
but um, the option came up to go to prep
school for year up and Lake Plastad, New York. He
wrote me a letter of recommendation. I went to prep school.
He told me, you go up there, you do three things. Once,
(07:41):
stay out of trouble. Two do good in school. Three
play hockey. Do your best in hockey. So I did
those three things. At the end of the year, I
was the most improved player in hockey. I was the
most improved student. And I did well in hockey. And
I stayed out of too kind but kind of not
(08:05):
the kind of trouble I get in. Back in Boston
as a kid, and he was friends with a former player,
Fernie Flamman, who coached. He was a former Bruins play
at Legend. He coached at Northeastern. Fernie came to see
me play one game at Northwood School and ended up
offering me a full scholarship to Northeastern. So it was
(08:26):
through the Judge, this coach, friend mentor of mine, that
I was able to go off to college, the first
child in my family to have that opportunity. Isn't that amazing?
I mean pretty much a stranger just saw. He must
have known something about hockey, right, I mean he had
to have been hockey to see something. Yeah, he knew hockey,
(08:50):
but I think he knew people better. And when I
say that, um, you know. I went to Northeastern a
couple of years. I ended up getting drafted by the
Montreal Canadians after my second year in seventy eight. I
come to find out after my career is said and
done from a former Montroal Canadians player who is a
(09:11):
Hall of Famer in a legend, Dickie Moore and Doug Harvey.
There's two of them. Well, they were friends with Judge King.
So Judge Kane, when I was at Northeastern, approach Boltiman said,
here's a deal, do me a favor. Just have the
Canadians draft Chris Nilan and he'll do the rest. This
(09:35):
is what Judge said to these two Hall of Fame
hockey players. So Dicky said, listen, he has a deal.
We'll send a look at him, but we'll draft him.
We'll just pick him with our lots picking the don't worry,
we'll draft him. Sure enough, night comes around, I get
drafted by the Canadians. Now I'm thinking, well, someone scouted
(09:56):
being whooped? He do? I've found out and me I
was very naive, like I didn't know the difference between
the first round pick or a seventeen round pick. It
didn't make a difference. And I find out after the
judge passed away, after my career is over, and Dickie
Moore comes to the funeral um. We went out after
(10:21):
the funeral for lunch and we sat down. He said,
you know how you get drafted by the Canadians in
the seventeenth round. They said, yeah, yeah, it was a
late pick, but obviously doesn't mean much now the way
I turned that thing inside out, He said, well, the
judge never wanted me to let you know this, but
he's responsible for you getting drafted by the Canadians. He
(10:45):
called me and asked to do him a favor. So
that's how I get drafted and for him to say
to me, Chris, the judge said, just draft him. He'll
do the rest. Like man, Yeah, you don't know how
emotional I got when I first heard that. I was
shaken and I was in tears when I heard it
(11:06):
because this man who was and turned out to be
a great mentor of mine. And maybe at the time
I didn't know it so much, but I always had
the time for him. We went to lunch, we did
a lot of things. As he got older and his
health was sotting to fail, we got together quite a
bit and he never let it out of the bag,
the bastard. But I absolutely loved the man. It's just beautiful.
(11:35):
Oh now he just turned through his inside out and
went to the back head and watch it. He had
a beat all the way. Chris, tell me about your
career in the NHL. What it means to be the
enforcer or what would you even call that position? How
(11:57):
did you choose that role and or did the role
choose you? I didn't. I wanted to be Bobby or
remember I grew up in Boston. I wanted to be Bobbio.
Now I could play hockey. I came into my first
training camp with Montreal they just won four Stanley Cups
in a row, and I'm coming to training camp with
(12:18):
all these future Hall of Famous I get sent to
the American Hockey League, which is a stepdown, and I
remember being um in an exhibition game and they all
these Canadian kids play junior hockey. In your fight in
junior hockey, I'm thinking, like, how difficult can it be
(12:39):
if I get in a fight. I fought on the
street all my life, and so what I've seen the
Bruins do it, you know, my whole young life growing up.
I'll be all right. I can handle myself. So my
first exhibition game, there's a big defenseman out of Ontario,
Davy Read Allison, and we had a tough coach, Bert Templeton.
(13:05):
He loved tough players. They didn't know I'm from college.
There no reputation of being tough out of college. So
I end up hitting one of these defensemen. His name
Bam Bam Belonge. So I run Bam Bam into the boys.
He turned around, chopped at me. I pushed him. The
revs get in break it up. We get back to
(13:26):
the bench and Allison looks down the bench he goes, hey,
fucking college kid. Who the fuck do you think you are?
You know you have been in a brawl before, you
know what a brawl is. I said, hey, fuck you
a brawl. You don't know what a brawl is. You
have been stabbed, you have been a hit over the
head with a baseball bat. I don't think so brawl.
(13:48):
The next shift, I go out in the ice and
I kicked the ship out of Bam bam, Belong J.
He comes right after me, Belon J right, and I
give it to him. Now. I get back to the bench.
Red Zi took his socks off and stuck him in
his mouth. He didn't say one word to me. He
didn't know what to say. He didn't know whether the
(14:10):
ship or go blind. And I so I don't talk
to him the rest of the training camp. I don't
say a word, ignore him. I get a five game
tryout for two hundred dollars a game. I get a tryout.
I didn't have a contract two dollars a game. Nineteen.
(14:37):
I'm in Halifax. They play the first three games at home.
I don't play. We go on the road. We play
our first game in Maine, which was the Philadelphia Flyers
the broad Street Bullies. They have farm team. The first shift,
I go out a body check. I hit this guy Cochrane,
(14:57):
big defense and tough kids six four or five, like
two thirty five. Big kid on the ice, long arms,
down with his knees and anyway I run him. He
give me a shot. Boom, we dropped the gloves. I
cut him open with a right I come across. I
(15:17):
cut him bad. Boom. We get kicked out of the game.
The next day, the coach called me down the room.
He said, hey, knuckles, it's the coach. Hey, what's up.
He goes, Uh, do you have an agent? I said, no,
I don't have an agent. I was a in seventeenth
round pick. Why would I have no who wants to
represent me and ain't making no money with me? Anyway?
(15:38):
He said, you better get one. He said, Montreal wants
to sign your contract. That's how it happened that one fight.
I signed that contract a week later, and then everybody
in the league, the American League, all the tough guys,
they wanted to fight me because I beat Glenn Cochrane.
He was one of the heavyweights in the league. So
(15:58):
that's how it began. That's how I became a fighter.
But I became more than a fighter. When I was
down there, I played games. I had fifteen goals in Tennessee.
I had twenty five points in forty nine games, so
I had a point every two games. And christ I
was fighting every night. Crazy to go back, you said,
I've been in a brawl. We all growing up kids,
(16:21):
you get in skirmishes and fights and stuff. I know,
if we got in a fight where I grew up,
you get kicked out of school. What were you fighting
for as a kid? And how early did you start
just scrapping in the streets? Wow, jeez, you know, hanging
around the street corner growing up in the city, everybody's
trying to get over on you. Everybody's trying to do
it a thing. Everybody's trying to be the big guy
(16:42):
in the neighborhood. There was a lot of that, just
stupid stuff that kids do growing up our street corner.
The kids I hung with went tougher than you guys.
Or we'd be out in a bos somewhere and it's
the you looked at me wrong. See you later? Uh
fighting all of the girls, you know. Um. I ended
up in a situation one night and bought some of
(17:06):
a couple of friends who we end up in a
really bad fight. We're out numbered, there were weapons involved.
One of the kids, uh that we fought, got hurt,
really bad crushes, skullar lost and I, um, there was
some bad things and um, you know a lot of it,
quite frankly, was around alcohol, you know, yea honestly you know,
(17:31):
growing up as a kid hanging the street corner with
your friends, guys are doing drug, Guys are smoking weed,
drinking and honestly, hockey the hockey rink, my hockey team,
who I was always accountable to, came before a lot
of that. It saved me in a lot of ways.
(17:51):
I can see that two bustin boys I used to
do this everything turns it used to They had as
being proud too. These are two puss rusts you wouldn't
(18:11):
want to be. They didn't know either one of these.
Not often you can get two Boston boys playing on
two different teams fighting both benches. This is always a
funny thing. The Montreal offenses cheering they say now on one,
and the bus benches cheering they see now. You know,
hockey is a notoriously tough guy sport. As a guy
(18:35):
who once earned forty two penalty minutes, which for the
listeners who don't know, there's only sixty minutes in a
in a damn game. Uh So, as that guy, what
is that life like? Not only on the on the ice,
but you know, everywhere you fucking go. Man, you know
restaurants are people challenging you. You know, what is that
(18:56):
life like? No, you know, I'll be honest for the
most part, those guys who do that job, especially in
the city you're playing, people love you. They hate you.
In the other cities it's like, you know, Bill Mbia,
everywhere he went they hate right, but they love them.
In Detroit, you're treated with a lot of reverence. In
your own hometown, you get the odd asshole who you're
(19:18):
if you're hot to buy drinking, he might say something,
but it's like, forget about it. Listen. I love doing
that job. I always loved. My father is a Green Beret.
In Green Beret, the motto is free those that are oppressed.
My father always taught me to stick up for weaker
kids or kids that got picked on. You always told me,
(19:39):
I ever get a call from that school and you're
picking on something, I'll kick your rats. You'll have a problem.
If anything, they call me and say you beat some
kid up because he was picking on something, Well, I'll
back you. I don't have a problem with it. So
I always stuck up for my my friends, my teammates.
So the job fit me really well and I thrived
on't sure about the cord Center up. Well, what's all
(20:10):
this whole thing? First the fasts? Will they get to
the second round? I guess this whole thing? Calbry five games?
What the so you won the Cup in u um
(20:31):
with Montreal? Is everything like it looks like on TV?
Do you think the legend of the Stanley Cups even
greater you know now than was back then? Or oh yeah,
it's incredible. Like when they say it's the hottest trophy
to win, it is like, man, and listen, I get
basketball and it's physical, but it's a different level hockey,
speed of the game, the guys, the macho pot of
(20:55):
it with man. If Joe hurt, there's no saying coach, listen,
I can't play, it doesn't happen. I I respect all
athletes that wait for what they go through, but when
you look at what you have to go through to
win that thing, man, I know at the end. I
started the playoffs, I was probably two oh two, that's
what I played at I was a hundred ninety two pounds.
(21:18):
At the end, I was all sucked up. I tore
a ligament to my ankle in the game before we wanted,
so I missed the final game. I had a black eye.
I was a mess at the end. But it felt good.
I bet it did. Yeah. What's the culture of drinking
and partying like in the NHL, especially when you're you know,
(21:38):
living and playing in Canada. Well, here's the deal. Back
when I played, it was a little different, right, It
was big culture. Every day we finished practice, we went
across the street a little tavern and we'd have lunch
now lunch, lunch, lunch and have a few bit, you know,
(22:00):
he has how it was. They were the older guys
who have been around for a while would have a
couple go home to their families. The guys in the
middle there stay around a little longer, the young guys.
We had one guy in the team that didn't drink,
but he came every day and he was a born
again Christian. His name was Ryan Walton and as sweethet
(22:23):
of a man, and he will come every day, sit
there with the boys, big smile, have a tomato juice,
good on him. Yeah, the team, but the culture was big,
and I grew up in that culture too. You know,
you work odd, play odd, work odd, you deserve a
(22:45):
cold one. The neighborhood like that, my household like that,
And certainly in hockey and hockey it was big. You know,
after game, cold beer, do your thing, And it was
huge in the NHL back then we played hot. We
I can only imagine a beer on the plane all
the time, you know, driving home from the airport after
getting off the plane. And I'm not proud of it today.
(23:08):
I did it. Thank God. I never killed anybody, hurt anybody.
I didn't, And um I never got a drunk driving
but I shouldn't. Chris Nyland, also known as Knuckles, had
an incredible fifteen year NHL career. He spent ten seasons
as a Montreal Canadian, then three as a New York Ranger.
(23:30):
His career ended in the city where he first picked
up a stick and a pair of skates as a
Boston Brewing for two seasons, six hundred and sixty eight games,
a hundred and ten goals, most penalty minutes by any
American born player, a record that still stands today. The
game gave him so much, but like many pro athletes
before and after him, it took its toll physically. That's
(23:53):
when the pain began to ring. So after you're done playing,
how hard was it to adjust? I know you you
coached and did some things, but just as a pro,
when you hung it up, what what was that like? Yeah?
It was difficult. You know, my identity of being a
professional hockey player and doing the job I did. Like
(24:14):
I said, you can say all the money you want,
you can do well financially, but you think you prepare,
but you'll never prepare emotionally for what you're about to
what's about to happen to you mentally emotionally, you just won't.
And I didn't. I thought I had it all going on.
I had had it all in control. That first year
(24:37):
out of the game. You know, I had a hot
time watching it because I I was like, you know,
I should still be there. You know, I was lying
to myself, how old were you? I was thirty four
when I retired. Geez, I was thirty two, so yeah,
right there the same just young man, And you think
you're ready for whatever, and much the same. I was complete.
(24:57):
My identity was basketball. I had no idea who I was.
Please please continue. Well I struggle with that. You know.
I was married, had three children, and you know, I
got back to Boston. I did some work. Uh the
first year. I didn't work right away, and I started
to get into a job at John Hancock in Boston
in community relations in Olympic projects. They had an Olympic sponsorship.
(25:21):
I had a big office in that high rise in
Boston and Hancock Tower at fifty second floor, got this
big office. I'm looking out great view, nothing to do.
What am I doing? And I we did do something,
but you know what, it was so freaking born. So
I had a friend in there who said, let's you know,
(25:44):
why don't we get in the insurance business. You know,
we can get a payroll deduction with the City of
Boston through the maya. I'm a friend with the mayor.
We'll get that, will enlist cops, fireman boom, It'll be
like an annuity will be got. So I'm a good idea,
you know. So we went and took the personality test
to be um to do sell insurance. So John and
I both took it. They hugged him, loved him, and
(26:07):
the guy told me this ain't for you, and they
have who are you to tell me it is ain't
for you. I did it for like a month. I'm like,
fucking see you later. We'll never find something that will
fulfill us as athletes, like our careers. We just never will.
And I tried to find it somewhere else. I tried
(26:30):
to find it outside my marriage. I tried to find
it with alcohol. I tried to fill that hole and
eventually I tried to fill that hole with drugs, and man,
it did not. It filled the hole, but the hole
kept getting empty and deeper and deeper and deeper. Yeah,
I hear so much of what you're saying and feel it,
(26:52):
you know. I think one of the things Steve Nash
and I were talking about this UM. This was shortly
after he retired, UM because I been retired for a
while now, And he said, you know, the one thing
I knew. I knew that I was gonna miss being
around the guys. I knew that, you know, the adjustment
was gonna be hard, he said, I didn't realize that.
(27:12):
You know, since we were eight or ten, you know,
we've been playing this game where we're out there and
we're running into one another, and we're taking out some
aggression and some frustration every single day, not only in games,
but in the practices. You know, you miss going down.
If you had a bad night at home, you go
down and take out some aggression, running into guys, sweating
and take just kind of getting it out of yourself.
(27:34):
And when you don't have that release anymore, well you're
gonna try to fill it some way. And I think
you did. I did as well. When you know we
both share a history in connection with opioids, when was
the moment you realized you were hooked? Wow, it was
certainly in retirement. Here's a deal. I'll go back. I
broke my leg when I was in the first grade.
(27:56):
I was five years old, and it was a compound fracture.
I did it skiing and I had to stay over
in the hospital overnight, and I remember because they couldn't
set my leg that night, I had to wait for
the doctor to come in the morning. They put me
on morphine as a five year old, and I remember
(28:16):
being in that room and I remember how it felt. Now. Okay,
fast forward, high school major surgery on my knee, had
all my college removed, and I was on demarall at
the same hospital, and man, I'm like, I don't like that.
I couldn't wait. I was asking for the next shot,
(28:39):
and sure enough, then in college, I ended up in
a fight in the street. I almost cut my finger
bit off. I had an infection. I ended up in
the hospital for like ten days, twelve days, and I
was on opioids again, and it's weird. I got out.
I took the pills, the couple percoset for a while,
(29:02):
and I got rid of him my boom. I was
back playing hockey. Everything was great during my career. I
never took pain killers during my career until I broke
my arm. When I played in New York. I broke
my on the bone. I snapped in half and I
had to fly back to New York from Montreal when
(29:23):
I broke it, and they gave me percoset, and I
remember I took it. I stayed up all night because
my arm was really killing me, and I took it
and I got on the plane and I as soon
as I get off the plane, I got in the
car to go to the hospital and I threw up.
They didn't sit with me. I'm like, oh. And then
in retirement, surgery after surgery. You know, I've had over
(29:44):
thirty three surgery on my body, on my knee. I
just had my knee replaced a couple of years ago,
which is awesome. But anyway, I get into all that.
But I got going on the opiates, and they agreed
with me. I was first of was percoset. Then it
was the one to drug oxy cotton eighty milli Graham tablets.
(30:05):
Went from taking them to taking the coding off to
snorting him, you know, snorting ten ten eighties a day
like crazy. And then um, you know, I I had
doctors everywhere, doctor Montreal, doctor in Boston, two doctors in Montreal,
doctor in Ontario. I I get on a plane and
(30:27):
fly to Toronto just to get pilled like crazy and
then fly right back. So like right around two thousand,
I kind of knew, I mean what am I doing here?
I try to stop. I couldn't. I would get sick,
you know the pain you go through, and um, it
(30:47):
was just crazy. And I ended up eventually, um getting
some help through the league and going to treatment back
in two thousand. Um, that was the first time I
had Chris Herron on and I know you're familiar with Chris,
but he was younger than I was, but had a
terrible addiction problem and derailed his career. But all three
(31:09):
of us say the same thing, and it's this thing
really came to a head in and two thousand and
that's when OxyContin really started booming, right, And so it's
not a coincidence. You said, it agreed with me. It
agreed with me as well. And Chris said the same thing.
(31:31):
I'm just one of those unfortunate people that for whatever
reason that you know, really satisfies me for a minute. Okay,
So when did it switch for you from pills to heroin?
And you know how did that happen? Well after I
think they caught onto what the Sacla family was doing.
The bastards, Yes, sir, you know they started to crack down,
(31:55):
you know, and all these doctors of pill factories, you know,
down the Florida all around, and um, then they switched
all the way. You couldn't peel the coating off them
anymore and snort them. They made him snort proof, and
um then it was really difficult to get them. So
I said, I gotta try and kick this stuff on
my own. This is a sect. I went to treatment
(32:17):
of two thousand. I got out. It was good for
a while, did my meetings at all. You know, I
faked it. I took a literal fake it to you
make it. I kept faking it. I never made it.
I started drinking again, went back and right around oh eight,
you know, I was still on the pills, doing the thing,
and I said, I gotta kick this. So I said,
(32:39):
I can go to meeting, but I gotta, you know,
get off the pills, and I gotta sweat it out
tough as out. And I remember being on the couch
like just suffering and suffering. I would try and drink
my way through it, and um, about the third day,
I just couldn't take anymore, you know, and I got
on the phone, made a phone call and I ended
(32:59):
up calling on the drug dealer who I knew, and
he ended up getting me some heroin, and um, I'm
that big deal, you know heroin. I'll I'll snort it.
I'm not gonna shoot it. It's uh, it's the same
stuff basically, but heroin, and it's the same thing. And yeah,
(33:19):
we don't know how much is in certain doses. I
get all that, but that's heroin in pilform. I end
up snotting it and I said I'll never shoot it.
And within a week I had a needle on my
youn wow, and it was sickening like And I went
like that for close to a year, just about about
(33:41):
eight months, and man, I was a mess, and I
ended up over dose in a few times. Just craziness. Yeah.
I remember I woke up in the hotel and in
the bathroom. I woke up and I think I injected
(34:02):
the hen and probably around around twelve o'clock at night,
and I woke up it was like four in the morning.
I was sitting there on the toilet, the needle in
my arm, just bleeding. I got up to walk away
in a panic. I fell forward, my legs one numb
on me. I got up by in a panic. I
hit my head on the wall and knocked myself out
(34:25):
and I laid there and that rex is when I
woke up. I was like a little baby, crying like
a baby. I knew who to call, I just I
wasn't calling him. And that morning I ended up picking
up the phone and calling Dan cronin the guy who
(34:45):
helped me the first time, and I said, dan, Um,
I need you to help the most difficult thing I
have had to do. But I did it, and I said,
I really need to help. He said, who is this?
I said, it's not cause. He said, oh, he said,
I've been waiting for your phone call. You know, like
(35:07):
I thought, I'm sneaking around. No one knows I'm still sold.
But from back, yeah, that'll be the day. Yeah. He
had me on a plane the next day, God bless him. Addiction,
more oftentimes than not, stems from necessity. When the curtains
closed on Knuckles Nyland's career, his body had been put
through over thirty surgeries, more than anyone should endure. The
(35:30):
mind is willing, but the body can no longer go.
I unfortunately, can relate. We as athletes, have been trained
to win at all costs and condition to trust that
medical professionals know what our bodies need, especially when it
comes to prescriptions, while we heal. Oftentimes this can be
a recipe for disaster to the ultra competitive. Sadly, it's
(35:53):
not just the individual that suffers, but oftentimes the surrounding
loved ones who often cannot cope or understand the internal struggle. Afoot.
This is kind of a long winded question, but you know,
I don't know the answer personally. But you got the
drugs at the start from a doctor, same as me.
And these things, you know, for the pain, they work.
(36:13):
But you know, Chris, we're professional athletes with access and
connections to help and everything. Uh, can you imagine dealing
with this thing as a quote regular person? And I
asked because I read at one point, you know, you
said when people get sick with cancer, they get sympathy,
but when people are alcoholics or drug addicts, oh, it's
self inflicts. It just stop. And man, when I read that,
(36:36):
it really hit me, you know, because I think that messaging,
that is a message people need to hear, and maybe
they don't really hear it when it's coming from their
cousin or friend or parent or whoever else. You know. Um,
I guess my real question isn't even a question, but
more just can we talk about that a little bit? Yeah? Well,
you know, it's a lot of people think it's a
(36:58):
model issue. You know, it's like, you know, wake up, son,
I can smarting up. Just stop. They don't Those people
don't have a clue, and it's like, listen, I remember
when I first got my first dog and I was
trying to walk the dog on a leash and it
was way ahead of me and it wouldn't walk next
to me. I'd be pulling on there, come on, ConA,
(37:21):
come on, walk next to me. I'm like, well, you
fucking idiot. Like I was ignorant until I finally realized
and I researched how to walk a dog on a leash.
And if people are ignorant who maybe don't have that problem,
(37:42):
those whole called normal people who do not struggle with
addiction or alcoholism. Maybe they've never been in contact with
someone who has struggled with addictions, so they look at
it like, hey, just stop. And it is so difficult
when you're in that to do and you know, um,
when you're physically addicted, that mental obsession that comes along
(38:05):
with that propensity to keep doing the same thing over
and over, the insanity of it, and your body needs
that you're so physically addicted. And I don't think people
really understand that. You look at a heroin attic and
when I look back at myself and see myself in
pitches when I was messed up. Now, how couldn't you realize?
How couldn't you just well, you realize that. I remember
(38:28):
looking at myself in the mirror and saying, I don't
fucking like you. I don't and I felt so far
and you know that's life. Uh. You know, I don't
put my finger and blame it on anybody. I don't
blame it on mommy and daddy. You know, I don't
blame it on hockey and my fighting and all that stuff. Listen,
(38:48):
I was physically addicted. I took the pills. If I
am alcoholism, if that came through my genes, okay, if
it's in the family gene, that's in the family gene.
I still say, knowing me the way I was as
a my personality coupled with uh, the addiction, Man, it
(39:09):
was easy for me to get where I got. Easy
A recipe for a disaster in many ways, and for success.
You were wired to succeed, and you know a lot
of times our greatest strengths can be our greatest weaknesses.
And as athletes, it's just a it's a hard role.
I know. The nhl p A helped out. What was
your process of getting clean or getting sober well, I
(39:30):
went to treatment. I went out to Oregon for three months.
UH ended up living there for a while. I met
my girlfriend Jamie out there. She's from Hawaii. She's a
sober woman. We relapsed together. You know all the things
they tell you not to do it, Yeah, of course.
Well she finally cut and ran went back to Hawaii.
(39:51):
Se later left me. I still struggled and um. She
ended up putting me in touch with they addictionologists, a
guy from Hawaii, and I flew to Hawaii. I met
with him. He got me on suboxon for the short
(40:12):
term to get through the withdrawals, and I started going
to meetings again every day. When I was in Hawaii,
I got back on the horse, did my thing. I
stayed there for about two months, went back to Boston.
Jamie stayed in Hawaii for another three months. She ended
(40:34):
up moving back this way once I was cleaned up
and had everything under control, and we started our life
new again in Montreal, back in and we've survived. We've
been together eleven years now and and we're both solva
and life has never been better. Life out of the
(40:54):
spotlight comes with an endless array of challenges. Chris accepts
responsibility for his actions, which oftentimes is not the case
amongst those who become drug dependent. To his credit, he
pulled himself up from the abyss and found his zest
for love and life again. Ironically, it wasn't until he
was sober that Knuckles had to run in with the
(41:16):
law doing what is and always has been ingrained in
him standing up for a friend in peril. You know,
this show's charges called charges, as you know, and in
your case, though thankfully outside the time you spent the
penalty box for fighting, you didn't have many charges with
the law except one. Can we talk about the bathing
(41:39):
suit incident? Sure? So? So you steal a bathing suit
and I read where the cops come and you're kicking
The security guards asked, was that real? There? I was
with a buddy of mine. I just did a promotion.
I had a thousand dollars catt cash in my pocket.
(42:00):
I just did the promotion. We went to the mall
to get something. I stopped there. I was going on
the beach with my daughter. I didn't have a bathing
suit because I just got back from I was clean
and sober at the time. I wasn't messed up and
I was trying the bathing suit on. I have my
shorts hanging on the thing, and I heard some guy
(42:20):
given Jimmy the business outside the door. So I opened
the door and I looked and I had the bathing
suit on, and guys, hey, he was trying to grab
his bag. Jimmy bought something he's choose him of stealing.
So I walk out the thing. I said, what are
you doing? Leave him alone. Jimmy walked away, kept walking away.
The guys there come back here, try to grab him.
(42:41):
He pulled away, went out the door. So I falled
him out the door. I have the bathing suit on,
my shorts to my hand with the money, so bom.
The guy grabbed Jimmy rips the bag out of his hand.
What he had in the bag was paid for. So meanwhile,
this guy is six ft three security guard and they
(43:03):
were from um Cape Verdie. I think anyway, we get
out the door. I said, hey, you leave him alone,
leave him alone, and that do you mind your business
and my my business? So he pushed me. I come back,
I said, don't push me back. I hit him with
a fucking shot, broke his nose, put him right down.
(43:23):
Then his partner came out and hit me over the
head with the wakee talkie, and I turned around and
hit him with a shot, knocked him on his ass,
and then I grabbed Jimmy. I said, let's go, so boom,
we uh are gonna run to the car. And before
we know it, we get run up on by both
(43:46):
those guys and another guy. So I square up here.
I am squaring up with him and I have flip
flops on. I'm fighting, yeah, So I square up and
I gotta stay on my feet. I don't want to
go down. All of a sudden, boom, I get jumped
on from behind. And the guy who dumped me from
(44:09):
behind was one of their friends. Don't know who he was,
and I just fell forward with him because I wanted
to get him off me. I fell forward and flipped
them and I went down on my knees. I don't
know that fat basket. I don't how much you wait.
But he went down right on his face right and
ripped the skin right down his face. So boom. Then
(44:30):
they stopped laying the boots to me, and I'm trying
to get back to my feet, and all of a sudden,
I hear the sirens, the cops come, and you know, anyway,
I get up and there's the cops. He's hearing out
fucking paper towels. The three on the one he got
sucking on his nose, the other one on his lip,
and the other one's fucking face is all funked up.
(44:51):
And I'm sitting in the back of the cruise a
handcuff like I want to get out and beat them again. Anyway,
they accused mes steal in the beating suit. Okay, I
told the cop the story, and the cops say, wow,
there's security. God the sob of uh. Anyway, I go
to court and they end up wanting to press charges
(45:13):
against me. Now well, I get a lawyer. We find
out two of them are here illegally, so we file
felony charges. Saw better at dangerous weapon. And then they
dropped the whole thing. As far as they wanted to
as sue me and UH as far as the other
things the on the beading suit, the case got dropped
(45:35):
out of court. I had to pay a cold cause
a hund a bucks because I wasted that time fast
A great story, it was not. The Bureau may have
an even bigger problem trying to explain it's twenty five
year relationship with the notorious boss of the Irish Mob
(45:56):
in Boston, James Whitey Bulger. The FBI recruited as secret
informant to get information about Bulger's arch rivals in the
Italian mafia. In exchange for that information, the FBI in
effect gave Bulger carte blanche, which allowed him to get
away with robbery, drug dealing, extortion, and, according to a
(46:16):
federal indictment, the murders of at least nineteen people. What's more,
one FBI agent has been charged with tipping off Boulger
six years ago that he was about to be arrested
and that let him get away. You spoke recently and
depressed about how you had a relationship with reputed gangster
Whitey Bulger in the early part of your career. Looking back,
(46:40):
how that hell did that connection change you as a
person and how did it come about? It didn't change
me at all as a person. Listen, I've there's one
thing I've always done, and I know I got a
little lost when I was on the drugs and alcohol, right,
but I always stay true to myself, my family and
my friends. Now, if I had some issues. I've screwed
up here and THEMN fine and I have, but I've
(47:05):
always really tried to say true to myself. As far
as miss Sobolgia goes, I married his stepdaughter, okay, and yeah, yeah,
so we became Listen, I knew you of him. I
knew you know, he spent time in Alcatraz. I knew
he was a bank robber. I knew he did that,
(47:27):
not all that stuff. But yeah, like people say, oh,
how good you like a guy like that, Oh, listen
until you're in them fucking true. You want to judge me,
you know, I didn't hang around with him per se.
It's not like I was a yank. He was. It
was my wife's mother. It was her boyfriend. And he
(47:48):
was very good to me. Over he is. He was
very bad to some other people. He remember the first
time he I went to pick Cameron, I'm you know, no,
she told me, listen, be careful what you say around him.
And he's blah blah him now all right, And I've
been a big wasn't gonna shoot me, so you know, yeah,
(48:08):
I'm gonna take you on a date. He's gonna kill
me before the first day. I'm gonna yeah. So I
go in to pick her up and find hey, how
you doing, and you know, good, Hey, how are you Chris? Huh.
So we're walking out the door and taking Karen down
the COI opened the door and then he picks his
(48:29):
head out the door. He said, hey, Chris, come in.
I want to talk to you for a second. I'm like, okay.
Karen's like scared at that. So I go back in
and we sit down on the couch and he had
a pistol. He had a gun, and he goes, hey, listen,
here's a deal. I know Karen loves you, you love
her or whatever. Yeah, I'm just gonna lay it out
(48:50):
for you. Don't ever lay a hand on her, treat
her like a lady, opened the door, blah blah blah,
you know, typical father talk. And if she ever wants
to break up with you, just let her go, don't
fucking chase around and try and hang on. So I'm okay,
and I said, you know, I got you. And I said, honestly,
(49:12):
you didn't have to pull a gun out to tell me,
because he just told me. He said, well that's the
way I do business. And I'm like and Honestly, I
think he respected it because I didn't sit. I wasn't
like shipping my pants, you know, I just okay. Was
Whitey Bulger a hockey fan. Oh he became one, Yeah,
big time. But I went out the door agatting the
(49:34):
cowed Karen and we're ready to leave. He goes hey,
opened the door again. He said, hey, Chris, come in,
I come in. He peeled off, like ten hundred dollar bill. Yeah,
enjoy the evening. It was awesome. And I was a
college kid or a window to throw it out right.
I remember I gotten a problem at the Boston Garden.
(49:55):
I had hit one of their better players, Rick Middleton.
I knocked a couple of teeth and he was home
watching on TV with someone else. And they're going, fucking
n Island's gonna have a hard time. He'll never get
out of the Boston gotten alive that everybody. So all
my family is there anyway, and all the security guys
(50:17):
are walking me out, and I'm they, Hey, I don't
fucking need you guys to protect me. I'm walking on
this bill. I don't need to be well, we have
to do it while you're on our property. Blah blah, blah.
I said, honestly, I don't need you fucking guys. I'll
take care of myself. And so I walked down. We
get to the door and I go out, and my
family's there and my friends, and ain't nobody gonna funk
(50:39):
with me with them there? And the bus team buses there.
All of a sudden, I hear from all the behind
the bus down the sidewalk and I, we're gonna fucking
kill you, blah blah blah. And I looked down and
all of a sudden, two guys in baseball at Crack
Donny went. They laid the fucking boots to him. While
(51:03):
it was it was Whitey and Kevin his partner, and
they kicked the living ship out of that kid. And
I get on the bus. We left. But he used
to come up um, and he came up actually uh
during the playoffs because no one really knew him up here,
and he could sit in the crowd. It was pretty cool.
(51:26):
I remember story. He came up to game with my
mother in law. My mother in law at the time
tersa god rest his soul. Um was a gorgeous woman.
And you know, she come up the game with him
and they game tickets in the red And I'm at
Costco about a year ago, and this guy comes up
to me and he tells me this story that I'm
(51:48):
gonna tell you. He wanted to thank me and never
seen me since he wasn't a wealthy guy, didn't have
a lot of money. They happened to get tickets in
the red seats that night, and he was sitting next
to my father with his son. And I remember like
it was yesterday. White. He came to me and he said, listen.
After the game, he said, I gotta tell you, there
(52:10):
was a little kid sitting next to me with his dad.
Only they didn't look like they didn't have much money,
you know, the clothes with tadded blah blah blah. And
he said, um, I asked a kid. I said, who
your favorite player? He said knuckles knuckles, I on my
favorite player, blah blah blah. So between periods he asked
the father. He said, hey, can I take his son
down to the pro shop, you know, the souvenir shop.
(52:32):
He said sure, go ahead. You know, because he told
the guy was Chris is following blah blah blah blah.
So he takes the kid down. The kid come back.
He had two fucking bags. He had hats, he had
a Nyland Jersey, had fucking Canadians, every fucking thing, and
he comes back with these two bags full things. So
this guy doesn't know who my following law is. So
(52:54):
a year ago I see him at Costco. He comes
up and say, Chris Island, Hey, how are you buddy?
How's it going? He's big fan of yours. But I
gotta tell you back when you would plan, I went
to a game and I sat next to your father
and he told me the story. The guy wasn't fucking tears,
he wasn't beautiful. It was unbelievable story. And I said,
(53:14):
you know what, I know what you're telling me because
the after the game he told me what he did.
And I never forgot that. It was so cool. God,
that's just beautiful. Amazing. People are endlessly complicated and fascinating.
All right, So you got yourself together, you got sober clean,
and you've decided to do what with this new lease
on life? Knuckles? Well, I had an opportunity back here
(53:37):
in Montreal in the radio to move back, uh a
friend again. When you're in our boat, not everybody got
their hand out and say, hey, I'll help you. And
I do believe me. I totally understand that. I don't
have a problem with it. I get it. Um. But
Mitch Melnick, a guy who was here when I played,
(53:57):
he did the radio for years. We always had this
relationship and I had done a few things with him
when I was messed up. You know, I call and
do a show, watch a game, you know, to analyze
the game, blah blah blah. And he said, listen, you'd
be good at this. What do you think? He said,
would you move back here? I said, yeah, I don't
move back So I flew in. I got an interview
(54:18):
with his boss, Wayne Beaues, sat down with both of them.
I left, and Wayne said, the Mitch, he ain't fucking
moving back. He's American. He's living to say, why do
you want to move to Canada? Mitchell, We'll see. Look.
I moved back to like a month and a half later.
I was there. All of a sudden, I show up.
Now Wayne's like, oh ship, he's back. And he followed
(54:41):
through and I was here probably about eight months. I
moved back here. I had a borrowed Cadillac from my
friend Brian McLoughlin. His mother passed away. Cole was sitting
in the garage. He said, I'll let you use that.
Actually get back in their feet. My dentist up here
not wanting these seat in my head of mine. Yea,
(55:03):
we stopped taking care of ourselves right completely. I had
a good stot, but uh my dentist let me live
in his condo. Um, and I chipped away. I moved
back here with Jamie. I have five hundred dollars in
my pocket, borrow vehicle. We each had a bag of clothes.
(55:24):
We started our life all over. Um. We rented for
a while the radio show I've been doing for uh
nine years now. We just bought a house three years ago.
I we chipped away, chipped away. I go and do
my thing. I go to my meetings. Uh, I do
the zoom stuff now I love it. Uh. Since COVID,
(55:46):
we both had COVID H and survived it. Thank God.
The good I had the world. I had the flu worse,
you know, then I had COVID, And yeah, life is
awesome again, honestly. Yeah. I have three children back in Boston.
I got four grandchildren. My parents are still alive. My
(56:07):
mom's not well. You know, my dad was so proud
of my career and all that. But I my dad,
I know today and I've helped a few people along
the way, like I'm sure you have, and he has
seen that, and he's more proud of me what I've
done in my my life now than Evan. And I
could see it in his eyes when I talked to
him every time, every time, And God love him what
(56:32):
he's doing. He's taking care of my mom. She's got dementia.
It's terrible things. But I'm really sorry. I'm glad. I'm
so going to be there for him today, you know,
like a instead of being that you know, fucking blank
numb dope walking around and being a sick man, I
was a sick man. My folks are the same, and
(56:54):
I think they're prouder of me now than they ever were. Right,
that's awesome. You talked about it's not how any times
you fall down, but how many times you get up?
What or who or why is the reason that you
keep getting up? Knuckles. I have a passion for life.
I want to live life like you know, I survived
(57:16):
in my addiction. I was just surviving. I wasn't living
my life and boy, you know I'm not. I don't
live my life and feel like I'm scared to do this.
I'm scared to do that. You know, people are scared
to change. And I always hear that I fucking deal
with it when I was coming. I'm dealing with like,
I don't care what it is like as long as
I don't do something wrong, to hurt another person, to
(57:38):
steal from someone, uh, hurt somebody in a way like
the cops ain't coming to get me. You know, I
might be late in my fucking taxes. Well you gotta
deal with you gotta deal with is me like, But
as long as I don't hurt anybody, Um, I remain teachable. Um,
(58:00):
I enjoy my life. That's all I want. Enjoy my family. No, No,
life is good again. What's next for you? Where can
people find you? And what do you want to leave
people with now that they've gotten to know you? Well,
I guess what's next for me? Um, I'm just gonna
do the radio show. Yeah, as long uh as they'll
(58:21):
have me, and then hopefully one day I can get
down to Boston and spend some time with family, more
time with family, and hopefully one day Jamie and I
will be able to maybe spend four months of the
year in Hawaii with her family because she's from KNA.
And then yeah, just you know, at some point here
(58:41):
in the next few years, I'm too young to retire,
but you know, just do this for as long as
I can and and enjoy the rest of my life
and as far as I guess leaving people with something
I think honestly, listen, I'll always take of my lumps.
One of one thing my that didn't want, not want
(59:01):
me to do, is lie. And there's one thing you
can never call me as a fucking liar, the honesty.
You know, people was struggling maybe with addiction. It's hard
to get honest, right, It's like, yeah, it's hard to say, Okay,
I got a problem, I need help. But man, you're
honest with yourself and you really look deep down on
the side and realize that and you become open minded,
(59:26):
and then you become willing. You can change your life. Um,
you can change it around. There's no question about it. Honestly,
open mindedness and willingness and you can get your life back.
I know it helped me for sure. It's like, uh,
my father always says you know, be coachable. Be coachable, right,
(59:46):
Chris Knuckles. I want to thank you for being so
open and honest with me today. There's so many of
us around the world who revere you, and I can
see why. If there's anything I can ever do for you,
my door has always opened, my friend. Thanks so much
for coming on Charge just today. Hey Rex, I was awesome.
Thanks for having me um you know following basketball for
(01:00:06):
who he has been a big Celts fan. When I
found out I was coming on and I always follow
you on Twitter, you became oh that. I just love
the stuff you put out there. I know you had
a good career, you had some issues, uh like myself.
Just awesome. A lot of respect for you that you
change your life around and you live in life again,
like Knuckles is awesome. Yeah, thank you and I since
(01:00:29):
you're a Celtics fan, My people are at the Celtics.
So one of these days let's meet up in Boston
and go catch the Celtics. I love buddy, Thank you
all about Thanks for having me. Charges seven No Runnians
with the Law, Charges Lee, send the tennis and balls
and Charges the celebrity gank forms Charge. We came along
(01:00:50):
with from living Law. There's a charge seven No run
Nians with the law, charges Lee send the tennis and
balls and charges the celebrity gank forms and charge we
came along. Quit from Living Law. That's just Charges is
created by Portalai and Control Media. Is produced by DV
Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
(01:01:11):
for my heart Radio, visit i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Charges. That's created by Portalais and Control Media. It's produced
by dB Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio. This
time a former Sons player who you might remember as
t Rex. More video in just a moment, But this
is Rex Chapman's mug shot and we are learning a
lot more about the charge up the charge. Okay, so
(00:22):
when did it swiss for you? From pills to heroin?
I end up sluting and I said I'll never shoot it,
and within a week I had a needle on my prawl.
You don't know what a prawling. You have been stabbed,
you have been a hit over the head with a
baseball bat. I don't think so. I grew up in
that culture too. You know you work on play on
work ond you deserve a poll one. I remember looking
(00:44):
at myself in the mirror and saying, I don't fucking
like you. Welcome to Charges. I'm your host, Rex Chapman.
Today We're proud to hit the ice for the very
first time. Hockey players makeup, especially in the NHL, on
and off the rink, requires a toughness seldom seen in
(01:04):
other professional sports. On the ice, you can actually throw
down your gloves and throw fist Mono Imano. Yes, there
was even a time in NHL when this was celebrated
and encouraged. Our guest today is Chris Knuckles Nyland, a
fifteen year veteran and a Stanley Cup champion with the
Montreal Canadians. Chris and I share the experience of battling addiction,
(01:28):
specifically opioids, and again we want to remind any of
our listeners if you're struggling with addiction or know someone
who is, there is help out there and you can
and will beat this struggle. I'd like to welcome the
Pride of West Roxbury, Massachusetts, Chris Knuckles nine. Chris, thanks
(01:51):
for coming on, buddy. Yeah, thanks for having me. X
quite the introduction. We do have something in common and
obviously the opioids, and I'm glad that I have that
part of my life in order right now. So life
is good. You and me both, but you and me both, uh,
And I gotta be up front. I know very little
(02:12):
about hockey. I enjoy watching it. My first experience with
hockey really, you know, growing up in Kentucky, we didn't
have it, you know. I remember seeing it on ESPN
and thinking it was a brand new sport and I
was like twelve years old. But my first experience with it,
I was playing for the Phoenix Suns and we had
a young rookie on the team and I was walking
(02:33):
into practice one day, young rookie named Steve Nash, and
he was out on the ice in his basketball uniform,
flying up and down the ice with the coyotes, and
I was just amazed. I thought, oh my god. Well,
first of all, you guys are so fast. I mean,
it's one thing to be able to skate, but to
(02:54):
be able to do it like that. I can't imagine
playing basketball on skates. It's just beyond me. So kudos
for all the work it took to get to that level. Man. Well,
I gotta tell you, when you think of hockey, you
think it's Canadiana, right. And when you look at hockey
in the States, you know it's a regional sport. The Northeast,
(03:16):
you know, New England, you look at Minnesota, the state
of Minnesota, big hockey town, the Midwest somewhat. And now
with the expansion in the NHL. Uh, when Gretzky got
traded from Medminton went to l A. More So in California,
we're seeing guys getting drafted kids out of California, I
(03:37):
mean Austin Matthews with Toronto maple Leafs from Phoenix, Arizona.
The league has expanded somewhat, and um, you know, the
grassroots level, it's gotten a lot better in the States.
But boy, you need money to play that sport. It's
not like grabbing a pair of sneakers in a pair
of shorts. Go play some hoop now in the school yard.
(03:59):
Tell me about growing up in West Roxbury, mass And
how hockey and that type of neighborhood all come together. Well,
what's Roxbury is a neighborhood borrow in the city of Boston,
predominantly Irish neighborhood and growing up back in the sixties there, Um,
Bobby Or came to the Boston Bruins and man, that
(04:22):
city just went nuts for him. He took the city
by storm and everybody loved him. Every kid wanted to
be like him. And he had such an impact on
the area that the city of Boston, the mayor at
a time when he came was looking at ways to
keep kids off the street, keeping from the street corner,
(04:43):
hanging around doing nothing. And yeah, there were a lot
of basketball courts around the city in all the parks,
but there were no hockey rinks. It was one really
a couple of rinks Boston Skating Club in the Brighton section,
but they weren't a lot of rinks. So the governor
along with the mayor got together and they started building
these rinks that were called m d C Rinks Metropolitan
(05:05):
District Commission, and they built a lot of these ranks
in different neighborhoods South Boston, West Roxbury, Charlestown, dort Chester,
all the inner city. And it gave kids an opportunity
to get off the street corner. It gave families an
opportunity to do public skating, going around and just skating
to music. And then they started coming up with little leagues,
(05:28):
um like Little League Baseball, like uh they started Boston
Neighborhood Hockey League, which was a big thing for me,
but you know, that's what we did back in those days.
They had those leagues just to keep kids off the
street and give them, uh you know, something to do
and sports to play. So it was awesome. It was
(05:49):
it sort a big impact on my my young hockey life,
my young life in general. It's so beautiful uh. You know,
in my research, what came up again and again was
that you were never really expected to go pro. You
played college hockey at Northeastern, great hockey school, but still
the NHL wasn't necessarily on the radar, right, No, it wasn't.
(06:12):
I played for um coach who happened to be a judge.
His name was Paul King, and Judge King was in
charge of one of the busiest courts, were the most
violent offenders in the state of Massachusetts. And he was
an authortic. He was hunched over and his brother was
the governor of the state, Ed King at a time.
(06:35):
And the judge saw something in me that nobody else did.
I don't know what to this day because he's passed
on now, but he always had this faith in me,
always had something for me. He used to take me
off with PiZZ A Lott. He had eight kids of
his own, eight and he had one son who was
don syndrome. And he'd sit on the bench all day.
(06:58):
You know, he get up in the morning and go
down kiro prack the co stit on the bench all day,
come down, get on the ice for hockey practice, all
hunched over in a cold hockey rank. Then he go
home do the family thing. But this guy was a huge,
huge influence on my life and he really helped me,
you know, get to the next level. And I say
(07:18):
that he helped me get into prep school. I played
Catholic memory, I played high school hockey. I was a
young senior. I didn't do that that great in school,
but um, the option came up to go to prep
school for year up and Lake Plastad, New York. He
wrote me a letter of recommendation. I went to prep school.
He told me, you go up there, you do three things. Once,
(07:41):
stay out of trouble. Two do good in school. Three
play hockey. Do your best in hockey. So I did
those three things. At the end of the year, I
was the most improved player in hockey. I was the
most improved student. And I did well in hockey. And
I stayed out of too kind but kind of not
(08:05):
the kind of trouble I get in. Back in Boston
as a kid, and he was friends with a former player,
Fernie Flamman, who coached. He was a former Bruins play
at Legend. He coached at Northeastern. Fernie came to see
me play one game at Northwood School and ended up
offering me a full scholarship to Northeastern. So it was
(08:26):
through the Judge, this coach, friend mentor of mine, that
I was able to go off to college, the first
child in my family to have that opportunity. Isn't that amazing?
I mean pretty much a stranger just saw. He must
have known something about hockey, right, I mean he had
to have been hockey to see something. Yeah, he knew hockey,
(08:50):
but I think he knew people better. And when I
say that, um, you know. I went to Northeastern a
couple of years. I ended up getting drafted by the
Montreal Canadians after my second year in seventy eight. I
come to find out after my career is said and
done from a former Montroal Canadians player who is a
(09:11):
Hall of Famer in a legend, Dickie Moore and Doug Harvey.
There's two of them. Well, they were friends with Judge King.
So Judge Kane, when I was at Northeastern, approach Boltiman said,
here's a deal, do me a favor. Just have the
Canadians draft Chris Nilan and he'll do the rest. This
(09:35):
is what Judge said to these two Hall of Fame
hockey players. So Dicky said, listen, he has a deal.
We'll send a look at him, but we'll draft him.
We'll just pick him with our lots picking the don't worry,
we'll draft him. Sure enough, night comes around, I get
drafted by the Canadians. Now I'm thinking, well, someone scouted
(09:56):
being whooped? He do? I've found out and me I
was very naive, like I didn't know the difference between
the first round pick or a seventeen round pick. It
didn't make a difference. And I find out after the
judge passed away, after my career is over, and Dickie
Moore comes to the funeral um. We went out after
(10:21):
the funeral for lunch and we sat down. He said,
you know how you get drafted by the Canadians in
the seventeenth round. They said, yeah, yeah, it was a
late pick, but obviously doesn't mean much now the way
I turned that thing inside out, He said, well, the
judge never wanted me to let you know this, but
he's responsible for you getting drafted by the Canadians. He
(10:45):
called me and asked to do him a favor. So
that's how I get drafted and for him to say
to me, Chris, the judge said, just draft him. He'll
do the rest. Like man, Yeah, you don't know how
emotional I got when I first heard that. I was
shaken and I was in tears when I heard it
(11:06):
because this man who was and turned out to be
a great mentor of mine. And maybe at the time
I didn't know it so much, but I always had
the time for him. We went to lunch, we did
a lot of things. As he got older and his
health was sotting to fail, we got together quite a
bit and he never let it out of the bag,
the bastard. But I absolutely loved the man. It's just beautiful.
(11:35):
Oh now he just turned through his inside out and
went to the back head and watch it. He had
a beat all the way. Chris, tell me about your
career in the NHL. What it means to be the
enforcer or what would you even call that position? How
(11:57):
did you choose that role and or did the role
choose you? I didn't. I wanted to be Bobby or
remember I grew up in Boston. I wanted to be Bobbio.
Now I could play hockey. I came into my first
training camp with Montreal they just won four Stanley Cups
in a row, and I'm coming to training camp with
(12:18):
all these future Hall of Famous I get sent to
the American Hockey League, which is a stepdown, and I
remember being um in an exhibition game and they all
these Canadian kids play junior hockey. In your fight in
junior hockey, I'm thinking, like, how difficult can it be
(12:39):
if I get in a fight. I fought on the
street all my life, and so what I've seen the
Bruins do it, you know, my whole young life growing up.
I'll be all right. I can handle myself. So my
first exhibition game, there's a big defenseman out of Ontario,
Davy Read Allison, and we had a tough coach, Bert Templeton.
(13:05):
He loved tough players. They didn't know I'm from college.
There no reputation of being tough out of college. So
I end up hitting one of these defensemen. His name
Bam Bam Belonge. So I run Bam Bam into the boys.
He turned around, chopped at me. I pushed him. The
revs get in break it up. We get back to
(13:26):
the bench and Allison looks down the bench he goes, hey,
fucking college kid. Who the fuck do you think you are?
You know you have been in a brawl before, you
know what a brawl is. I said, hey, fuck you
a brawl. You don't know what a brawl is. You
have been stabbed, you have been a hit over the
head with a baseball bat. I don't think so brawl.
(13:48):
The next shift, I go out in the ice and
I kicked the ship out of Bam bam, Belong J.
He comes right after me, Belon J right, and I
give it to him. Now. I get back to the bench.
Red Zi took his socks off and stuck him in
his mouth. He didn't say one word to me. He
didn't know what to say. He didn't know whether the
(14:10):
ship or go blind. And I so I don't talk
to him the rest of the training camp. I don't
say a word, ignore him. I get a five game
tryout for two hundred dollars a game. I get a tryout.
I didn't have a contract two dollars a game. Nineteen.
(14:37):
I'm in Halifax. They play the first three games at home.
I don't play. We go on the road. We play
our first game in Maine, which was the Philadelphia Flyers
the broad Street Bullies. They have farm team. The first shift,
I go out a body check. I hit this guy Cochrane,
(14:57):
big defense and tough kids six four or five, like
two thirty five. Big kid on the ice, long arms,
down with his knees and anyway I run him. He
give me a shot. Boom, we dropped the gloves. I
cut him open with a right I come across. I
(15:17):
cut him bad. Boom. We get kicked out of the game.
The next day, the coach called me down the room.
He said, hey, knuckles, it's the coach. Hey, what's up.
He goes, Uh, do you have an agent? I said, no,
I don't have an agent. I was a in seventeenth
round pick. Why would I have no who wants to
represent me and ain't making no money with me? Anyway?
(15:38):
He said, you better get one. He said, Montreal wants
to sign your contract. That's how it happened that one fight.
I signed that contract a week later, and then everybody
in the league, the American League, all the tough guys,
they wanted to fight me because I beat Glenn Cochrane.
He was one of the heavyweights in the league. So
(15:58):
that's how it began. That's how I became a fighter.
But I became more than a fighter. When I was
down there, I played games. I had fifteen goals in Tennessee.
I had twenty five points in forty nine games, so
I had a point every two games. And christ I
was fighting every night. Crazy to go back, you said,
I've been in a brawl. We all growing up kids,
(16:21):
you get in skirmishes and fights and stuff. I know,
if we got in a fight where I grew up,
you get kicked out of school. What were you fighting
for as a kid? And how early did you start
just scrapping in the streets? Wow, jeez, you know, hanging
around the street corner growing up in the city, everybody's
trying to get over on you. Everybody's trying to do
it a thing. Everybody's trying to be the big guy
(16:42):
in the neighborhood. There was a lot of that, just
stupid stuff that kids do growing up our street corner.
The kids I hung with went tougher than you guys.
Or we'd be out in a bos somewhere and it's
the you looked at me wrong. See you later? Uh
fighting all of the girls, you know. Um. I ended
up in a situation one night and bought some of
(17:06):
a couple of friends who we end up in a
really bad fight. We're out numbered, there were weapons involved.
One of the kids, uh that we fought, got hurt,
really bad crushes, skullar lost and I, um, there was
some bad things and um, you know a lot of it,
quite frankly, was around alcohol, you know, yea honestly you know,
(17:31):
growing up as a kid hanging the street corner with
your friends, guys are doing drug, Guys are smoking weed,
drinking and honestly, hockey the hockey rink, my hockey team,
who I was always accountable to, came before a lot
of that. It saved me in a lot of ways.
(17:51):
I can see that two bustin boys I used to
do this everything turns it used to They had as
being proud too. These are two puss rusts you wouldn't
(18:11):
want to be. They didn't know either one of these.
Not often you can get two Boston boys playing on
two different teams fighting both benches. This is always a
funny thing. The Montreal offenses cheering they say now on one,
and the bus benches cheering they see now. You know,
hockey is a notoriously tough guy sport. As a guy
(18:35):
who once earned forty two penalty minutes, which for the
listeners who don't know, there's only sixty minutes in a
in a damn game. Uh So, as that guy, what
is that life like? Not only on the on the ice,
but you know, everywhere you fucking go. Man, you know
restaurants are people challenging you. You know, what is that
(18:56):
life like? No, you know, I'll be honest for the
most part, those guys who do that job, especially in
the city you're playing, people love you. They hate you.
In the other cities it's like, you know, Bill Mbia,
everywhere he went they hate right, but they love them.
In Detroit, you're treated with a lot of reverence. In
your own hometown, you get the odd asshole who you're
(19:18):
if you're hot to buy drinking, he might say something,
but it's like, forget about it. Listen. I love doing
that job. I always loved. My father is a Green Beret.
In Green Beret, the motto is free those that are oppressed.
My father always taught me to stick up for weaker
kids or kids that got picked on. You always told me,
(19:39):
I ever get a call from that school and you're
picking on something, I'll kick your rats. You'll have a problem.
If anything, they call me and say you beat some
kid up because he was picking on something, Well, I'll
back you. I don't have a problem with it. So
I always stuck up for my my friends, my teammates.
So the job fit me really well and I thrived
on't sure about the cord Center up. Well, what's all
(20:10):
this whole thing? First the fasts? Will they get to
the second round? I guess this whole thing? Calbry five games?
What the so you won the Cup in u um
(20:31):
with Montreal? Is everything like it looks like on TV?
Do you think the legend of the Stanley Cups even
greater you know now than was back then? Or oh yeah,
it's incredible. Like when they say it's the hottest trophy
to win, it is like, man, and listen, I get
basketball and it's physical, but it's a different level hockey,
speed of the game, the guys, the macho pot of
(20:55):
it with man. If Joe hurt, there's no saying coach, listen,
I can't play, it doesn't happen. I I respect all
athletes that wait for what they go through, but when
you look at what you have to go through to
win that thing, man, I know at the end. I
started the playoffs, I was probably two oh two, that's
what I played at I was a hundred ninety two pounds.
(21:18):
At the end, I was all sucked up. I tore
a ligament to my ankle in the game before we wanted,
so I missed the final game. I had a black eye.
I was a mess at the end. But it felt good.
I bet it did. Yeah. What's the culture of drinking
and partying like in the NHL, especially when you're you know,
(21:38):
living and playing in Canada. Well, here's the deal. Back
when I played, it was a little different, right, It
was big culture. Every day we finished practice, we went
across the street a little tavern and we'd have lunch
now lunch, lunch, lunch and have a few bit, you know,
(22:00):
he has how it was. They were the older guys
who have been around for a while would have a
couple go home to their families. The guys in the
middle there stay around a little longer, the young guys.
We had one guy in the team that didn't drink,
but he came every day and he was a born
again Christian. His name was Ryan Walton and as sweethet
(22:23):
of a man, and he will come every day, sit
there with the boys, big smile, have a tomato juice,
good on him. Yeah, the team, but the culture was big,
and I grew up in that culture too. You know,
you work odd, play odd, work odd, you deserve a
(22:45):
cold one. The neighborhood like that, my household like that,
And certainly in hockey and hockey it was big. You know,
after game, cold beer, do your thing, And it was
huge in the NHL back then we played hot. We
I can only imagine a beer on the plane all
the time, you know, driving home from the airport after
getting off the plane. And I'm not proud of it today.
(23:08):
I did it. Thank God. I never killed anybody, hurt anybody.
I didn't, And um I never got a drunk driving
but I shouldn't. Chris Nyland, also known as Knuckles, had
an incredible fifteen year NHL career. He spent ten seasons
as a Montreal Canadian, then three as a New York Ranger.
(23:30):
His career ended in the city where he first picked
up a stick and a pair of skates as a
Boston Brewing for two seasons, six hundred and sixty eight games,
a hundred and ten goals, most penalty minutes by any
American born player, a record that still stands today. The
game gave him so much, but like many pro athletes
before and after him, it took its toll physically. That's
(23:53):
when the pain began to ring. So after you're done playing,
how hard was it to adjust? I know you you
coached and did some things, but just as a pro,
when you hung it up, what what was that like? Yeah?
It was difficult. You know, my identity of being a
professional hockey player and doing the job I did. Like
(24:14):
I said, you can say all the money you want,
you can do well financially, but you think you prepare,
but you'll never prepare emotionally for what you're about to
what's about to happen to you mentally emotionally, you just won't.
And I didn't. I thought I had it all going on.
I had had it all in control. That first year
(24:37):
out of the game. You know, I had a hot
time watching it because I I was like, you know,
I should still be there. You know, I was lying
to myself, how old were you? I was thirty four
when I retired. Geez, I was thirty two, so yeah,
right there the same just young man, And you think
you're ready for whatever, and much the same. I was complete.
(24:57):
My identity was basketball. I had no idea who I was.
Please please continue. Well I struggle with that. You know.
I was married, had three children, and you know, I
got back to Boston. I did some work. Uh the
first year. I didn't work right away, and I started
to get into a job at John Hancock in Boston
in community relations in Olympic projects. They had an Olympic sponsorship.
(25:21):
I had a big office in that high rise in
Boston and Hancock Tower at fifty second floor, got this
big office. I'm looking out great view, nothing to do.
What am I doing? And I we did do something,
but you know what, it was so freaking born. So
I had a friend in there who said, let's you know,
(25:44):
why don't we get in the insurance business. You know,
we can get a payroll deduction with the City of
Boston through the maya. I'm a friend with the mayor.
We'll get that, will enlist cops, fireman boom, It'll be
like an annuity will be got. So I'm a good idea,
you know. So we went and took the personality test
to be um to do sell insurance. So John and
I both took it. They hugged him, loved him, and
(26:07):
the guy told me this ain't for you, and they
have who are you to tell me it is ain't
for you. I did it for like a month. I'm like,
fucking see you later. We'll never find something that will
fulfill us as athletes, like our careers. We just never will.
And I tried to find it somewhere else. I tried
(26:30):
to find it outside my marriage. I tried to find
it with alcohol. I tried to fill that hole and
eventually I tried to fill that hole with drugs, and man,
it did not. It filled the hole, but the hole
kept getting empty and deeper and deeper and deeper. Yeah,
I hear so much of what you're saying and feel it,
(26:52):
you know. I think one of the things Steve Nash
and I were talking about this UM. This was shortly
after he retired, UM because I been retired for a
while now, And he said, you know, the one thing
I knew. I knew that I was gonna miss being
around the guys. I knew that, you know, the adjustment
was gonna be hard, he said, I didn't realize that.
(27:12):
You know, since we were eight or ten, you know,
we've been playing this game where we're out there and
we're running into one another, and we're taking out some
aggression and some frustration every single day, not only in games,
but in the practices. You know, you miss going down.
If you had a bad night at home, you go
down and take out some aggression, running into guys, sweating
and take just kind of getting it out of yourself.
(27:34):
And when you don't have that release anymore, well you're
gonna try to fill it some way. And I think
you did. I did as well. When you know we
both share a history in connection with opioids, when was
the moment you realized you were hooked? Wow, it was
certainly in retirement. Here's a deal. I'll go back. I
broke my leg when I was in the first grade.
(27:56):
I was five years old, and it was a compound fracture.
I did it skiing and I had to stay over
in the hospital overnight, and I remember because they couldn't
set my leg that night, I had to wait for
the doctor to come in the morning. They put me
on morphine as a five year old, and I remember
(28:16):
being in that room and I remember how it felt. Now. Okay,
fast forward, high school major surgery on my knee, had
all my college removed, and I was on demarall at
the same hospital, and man, I'm like, I don't like that.
I couldn't wait. I was asking for the next shot,
(28:39):
and sure enough, then in college, I ended up in
a fight in the street. I almost cut my finger
bit off. I had an infection. I ended up in
the hospital for like ten days, twelve days, and I
was on opioids again, and it's weird. I got out.
I took the pills, the couple percoset for a while,
(29:02):
and I got rid of him my boom. I was
back playing hockey. Everything was great during my career. I
never took pain killers during my career until I broke
my arm. When I played in New York. I broke
my on the bone. I snapped in half and I
had to fly back to New York from Montreal when
(29:23):
I broke it, and they gave me percoset, and I
remember I took it. I stayed up all night because
my arm was really killing me, and I took it
and I got on the plane and I as soon
as I get off the plane, I got in the
car to go to the hospital and I threw up.
They didn't sit with me. I'm like, oh. And then
in retirement, surgery after surgery. You know, I've had over
(29:44):
thirty three surgery on my body, on my knee. I
just had my knee replaced a couple of years ago,
which is awesome. But anyway, I get into all that.
But I got going on the opiates, and they agreed
with me. I was first of was percoset. Then it
was the one to drug oxy cotton eighty milli Graham tablets.
(30:05):
Went from taking them to taking the coding off to
snorting him, you know, snorting ten ten eighties a day
like crazy. And then um, you know, I I had
doctors everywhere, doctor Montreal, doctor in Boston, two doctors in Montreal,
doctor in Ontario. I I get on a plane and
(30:27):
fly to Toronto just to get pilled like crazy and
then fly right back. So like right around two thousand,
I kind of knew, I mean what am I doing here?
I try to stop. I couldn't. I would get sick,
you know the pain you go through, and um, it
(30:47):
was just crazy. And I ended up eventually, um getting
some help through the league and going to treatment back
in two thousand. Um, that was the first time I
had Chris Herron on and I know you're familiar with Chris,
but he was younger than I was, but had a
terrible addiction problem and derailed his career. But all three
(31:09):
of us say the same thing, and it's this thing
really came to a head in and two thousand and
that's when OxyContin really started booming, right, And so it's
not a coincidence. You said, it agreed with me. It
agreed with me as well. And Chris said the same thing.
(31:31):
I'm just one of those unfortunate people that for whatever
reason that you know, really satisfies me for a minute. Okay,
So when did it switch for you from pills to heroin?
And you know how did that happen? Well after I
think they caught onto what the Sacla family was doing.
The bastards, Yes, sir, you know they started to crack down,
(31:55):
you know, and all these doctors of pill factories, you know,
down the Florida all around, and um, then they switched
all the way. You couldn't peel the coating off them
anymore and snort them. They made him snort proof, and
um then it was really difficult to get them. So
I said, I gotta try and kick this stuff on
my own. This is a sect. I went to treatment
(32:17):
of two thousand. I got out. It was good for
a while, did my meetings at all. You know, I
faked it. I took a literal fake it to you
make it. I kept faking it. I never made it.
I started drinking again, went back and right around oh eight,
you know, I was still on the pills, doing the thing,
and I said, I gotta kick this. So I said,
(32:39):
I can go to meeting, but I gotta, you know,
get off the pills, and I gotta sweat it out
tough as out. And I remember being on the couch
like just suffering and suffering. I would try and drink
my way through it, and um, about the third day,
I just couldn't take anymore, you know, and I got
on the phone, made a phone call and I ended
(32:59):
up calling on the drug dealer who I knew, and
he ended up getting me some heroin, and um, I'm
that big deal, you know heroin. I'll I'll snort it.
I'm not gonna shoot it. It's uh, it's the same
stuff basically, but heroin, and it's the same thing. And yeah,
(33:19):
we don't know how much is in certain doses. I
get all that, but that's heroin in pilform. I end
up snotting it and I said I'll never shoot it.
And within a week I had a needle on my
youn wow, and it was sickening like And I went
like that for close to a year, just about about
(33:41):
eight months, and man, I was a mess, and I
ended up over dose in a few times. Just craziness. Yeah.
I remember I woke up in the hotel and in
the bathroom. I woke up and I think I injected
(34:02):
the hen and probably around around twelve o'clock at night,
and I woke up it was like four in the morning.
I was sitting there on the toilet, the needle in
my arm, just bleeding. I got up to walk away
in a panic. I fell forward, my legs one numb
on me. I got up by in a panic. I
hit my head on the wall and knocked myself out
(34:25):
and I laid there and that rex is when I
woke up. I was like a little baby, crying like
a baby. I knew who to call, I just I
wasn't calling him. And that morning I ended up picking
up the phone and calling Dan cronin the guy who
(34:45):
helped me the first time, and I said, dan, Um,
I need you to help the most difficult thing I
have had to do. But I did it, and I said,
I really need to help. He said, who is this?
I said, it's not cause. He said, oh, he said,
I've been waiting for your phone call. You know, like
(35:07):
I thought, I'm sneaking around. No one knows I'm still sold.
But from back, yeah, that'll be the day. Yeah. He
had me on a plane the next day, God bless him. Addiction,
more oftentimes than not, stems from necessity. When the curtains
closed on Knuckles Nyland's career, his body had been put
through over thirty surgeries, more than anyone should endure. The
(35:30):
mind is willing, but the body can no longer go.
I unfortunately, can relate. We as athletes, have been trained
to win at all costs and condition to trust that
medical professionals know what our bodies need, especially when it
comes to prescriptions, while we heal. Oftentimes this can be
a recipe for disaster to the ultra competitive. Sadly, it's
(35:53):
not just the individual that suffers, but oftentimes the surrounding
loved ones who often cannot cope or understand the internal struggle. Afoot.
This is kind of a long winded question, but you know,
I don't know the answer personally. But you got the
drugs at the start from a doctor, same as me.
And these things, you know, for the pain, they work.
(36:13):
But you know, Chris, we're professional athletes with access and
connections to help and everything. Uh, can you imagine dealing
with this thing as a quote regular person? And I
asked because I read at one point, you know, you
said when people get sick with cancer, they get sympathy,
but when people are alcoholics or drug addicts, oh, it's
self inflicts. It just stop. And man, when I read that,
(36:36):
it really hit me, you know, because I think that messaging,
that is a message people need to hear, and maybe
they don't really hear it when it's coming from their
cousin or friend or parent or whoever else. You know. Um,
I guess my real question isn't even a question, but
more just can we talk about that a little bit? Yeah? Well,
you know, it's a lot of people think it's a
(36:58):
model issue. You know, it's like, you know, wake up, son,
I can smarting up. Just stop. They don't Those people
don't have a clue, and it's like, listen, I remember
when I first got my first dog and I was
trying to walk the dog on a leash and it
was way ahead of me and it wouldn't walk next
to me. I'd be pulling on there, come on, ConA,
(37:21):
come on, walk next to me. I'm like, well, you
fucking idiot. Like I was ignorant until I finally realized
and I researched how to walk a dog on a leash.
And if people are ignorant who maybe don't have that problem,
(37:42):
those whole called normal people who do not struggle with
addiction or alcoholism. Maybe they've never been in contact with
someone who has struggled with addictions, so they look at
it like, hey, just stop. And it is so difficult
when you're in that to do and you know, um,
when you're physically addicted, that mental obsession that comes along
(38:05):
with that propensity to keep doing the same thing over
and over, the insanity of it, and your body needs
that you're so physically addicted. And I don't think people
really understand that. You look at a heroin attic and
when I look back at myself and see myself in
pitches when I was messed up. Now, how couldn't you realize?
How couldn't you just well, you realize that. I remember
(38:28):
looking at myself in the mirror and saying, I don't
fucking like you. I don't and I felt so far
and you know that's life. Uh. You know, I don't
put my finger and blame it on anybody. I don't
blame it on mommy and daddy. You know, I don't
blame it on hockey and my fighting and all that stuff. Listen,
(38:48):
I was physically addicted. I took the pills. If I
am alcoholism, if that came through my genes, okay, if
it's in the family gene, that's in the family gene.
I still say, knowing me the way I was as
a my personality coupled with uh, the addiction, Man, it
(39:09):
was easy for me to get where I got. Easy
A recipe for a disaster in many ways, and for success.
You were wired to succeed, and you know a lot
of times our greatest strengths can be our greatest weaknesses.
And as athletes, it's just a it's a hard role.
I know. The nhl p A helped out. What was
your process of getting clean or getting sober well, I
(39:30):
went to treatment. I went out to Oregon for three months.
UH ended up living there for a while. I met
my girlfriend Jamie out there. She's from Hawaii. She's a
sober woman. We relapsed together. You know all the things
they tell you not to do it, Yeah, of course.
Well she finally cut and ran went back to Hawaii.
(39:51):
Se later left me. I still struggled and um. She
ended up putting me in touch with they addictionologists, a
guy from Hawaii, and I flew to Hawaii. I met
with him. He got me on suboxon for the short
(40:12):
term to get through the withdrawals, and I started going
to meetings again every day. When I was in Hawaii,
I got back on the horse, did my thing. I
stayed there for about two months, went back to Boston.
Jamie stayed in Hawaii for another three months. She ended
(40:34):
up moving back this way once I was cleaned up
and had everything under control, and we started our life
new again in Montreal, back in and we've survived. We've
been together eleven years now and and we're both solva
and life has never been better. Life out of the
(40:54):
spotlight comes with an endless array of challenges. Chris accepts
responsibility for his actions, which oftentimes is not the case
amongst those who become drug dependent. To his credit, he
pulled himself up from the abyss and found his zest
for love and life again. Ironically, it wasn't until he
was sober that Knuckles had to run in with the
(41:16):
law doing what is and always has been ingrained in
him standing up for a friend in peril. You know,
this show's charges called charges, as you know, and in
your case, though thankfully outside the time you spent the
penalty box for fighting, you didn't have many charges with
the law except one. Can we talk about the bathing
(41:39):
suit incident? Sure? So? So you steal a bathing suit
and I read where the cops come and you're kicking
The security guards asked, was that real? There? I was
with a buddy of mine. I just did a promotion.
I had a thousand dollars catt cash in my pocket.
(42:00):
I just did the promotion. We went to the mall
to get something. I stopped there. I was going on
the beach with my daughter. I didn't have a bathing
suit because I just got back from I was clean
and sober at the time. I wasn't messed up and
I was trying the bathing suit on. I have my
shorts hanging on the thing, and I heard some guy
(42:20):
given Jimmy the business outside the door. So I opened
the door and I looked and I had the bathing
suit on, and guys, hey, he was trying to grab
his bag. Jimmy bought something he's choose him of stealing.
So I walk out the thing. I said, what are
you doing? Leave him alone. Jimmy walked away, kept walking away.
The guys there come back here, try to grab him.
(42:41):
He pulled away, went out the door. So I falled
him out the door. I have the bathing suit on,
my shorts to my hand with the money, so bom.
The guy grabbed Jimmy rips the bag out of his hand.
What he had in the bag was paid for. So meanwhile,
this guy is six ft three security guard and they
(43:03):
were from um Cape Verdie. I think anyway, we get
out the door. I said, hey, you leave him alone,
leave him alone, and that do you mind your business
and my my business? So he pushed me. I come back,
I said, don't push me back. I hit him with
a fucking shot, broke his nose, put him right down.
(43:23):
Then his partner came out and hit me over the
head with the wakee talkie, and I turned around and
hit him with a shot, knocked him on his ass,
and then I grabbed Jimmy. I said, let's go, so boom,
we uh are gonna run to the car. And before
we know it, we get run up on by both
(43:46):
those guys and another guy. So I square up here.
I am squaring up with him and I have flip
flops on. I'm fighting, yeah, So I square up and
I gotta stay on my feet. I don't want to
go down. All of a sudden, boom, I get jumped
on from behind. And the guy who dumped me from
(44:09):
behind was one of their friends. Don't know who he was,
and I just fell forward with him because I wanted
to get him off me. I fell forward and flipped
them and I went down on my knees. I don't
know that fat basket. I don't how much you wait.
But he went down right on his face right and
ripped the skin right down his face. So boom. Then
(44:30):
they stopped laying the boots to me, and I'm trying
to get back to my feet, and all of a sudden,
I hear the sirens, the cops come, and you know, anyway,
I get up and there's the cops. He's hearing out
fucking paper towels. The three on the one he got
sucking on his nose, the other one on his lip,
and the other one's fucking face is all funked up.
(44:51):
And I'm sitting in the back of the cruise a
handcuff like I want to get out and beat them again. Anyway,
they accused mes steal in the beating suit. Okay, I
told the cop the story, and the cops say, wow,
there's security. God the sob of uh. Anyway, I go
to court and they end up wanting to press charges
(45:13):
against me. Now well, I get a lawyer. We find
out two of them are here illegally, so we file
felony charges. Saw better at dangerous weapon. And then they
dropped the whole thing. As far as they wanted to
as sue me and UH as far as the other
things the on the beading suit, the case got dropped
(45:35):
out of court. I had to pay a cold cause
a hund a bucks because I wasted that time fast
A great story, it was not. The Bureau may have
an even bigger problem trying to explain it's twenty five
year relationship with the notorious boss of the Irish Mob
(45:56):
in Boston, James Whitey Bulger. The FBI recruited as secret
informant to get information about Bulger's arch rivals in the
Italian mafia. In exchange for that information, the FBI in
effect gave Bulger carte blanche, which allowed him to get
away with robbery, drug dealing, extortion, and, according to a
(46:16):
federal indictment, the murders of at least nineteen people. What's more,
one FBI agent has been charged with tipping off Boulger
six years ago that he was about to be arrested
and that let him get away. You spoke recently and
depressed about how you had a relationship with reputed gangster
Whitey Bulger in the early part of your career. Looking back,
(46:40):
how that hell did that connection change you as a
person and how did it come about? It didn't change
me at all as a person. Listen, I've there's one
thing I've always done, and I know I got a
little lost when I was on the drugs and alcohol, right,
but I always stay true to myself, my family and
my friends. Now, if I had some issues. I've screwed
up here and THEMN fine and I have, but I've
(47:05):
always really tried to say true to myself. As far
as miss Sobolgia goes, I married his stepdaughter, okay, and yeah, yeah,
so we became Listen, I knew you of him. I
knew you know, he spent time in Alcatraz. I knew
he was a bank robber. I knew he did that,
(47:27):
not all that stuff. But yeah, like people say, oh,
how good you like a guy like that, Oh, listen
until you're in them fucking true. You want to judge me,
you know, I didn't hang around with him per se.
It's not like I was a yank. He was. It
was my wife's mother. It was her boyfriend. And he
(47:48):
was very good to me. Over he is. He was
very bad to some other people. He remember the first
time he I went to pick Cameron, I'm you know, no,
she told me, listen, be careful what you say around him.
And he's blah blah him now all right, And I've
been a big wasn't gonna shoot me, so you know, yeah,
(48:08):
I'm gonna take you on a date. He's gonna kill
me before the first day. I'm gonna yeah. So I
go in to pick her up and find hey, how
you doing, and you know, good, Hey, how are you Chris? Huh.
So we're walking out the door and taking Karen down
the COI opened the door and then he picks his
(48:29):
head out the door. He said, hey, Chris, come in.
I want to talk to you for a second. I'm like, okay.
Karen's like scared at that. So I go back in
and we sit down on the couch and he had
a pistol. He had a gun, and he goes, hey, listen,
here's a deal. I know Karen loves you, you love
her or whatever. Yeah, I'm just gonna lay it out
(48:50):
for you. Don't ever lay a hand on her, treat
her like a lady, opened the door, blah blah blah,
you know, typical father talk. And if she ever wants
to break up with you, just let her go, don't
fucking chase around and try and hang on. So I'm okay,
and I said, you know, I got you. And I said, honestly,
(49:12):
you didn't have to pull a gun out to tell me,
because he just told me. He said, well that's the
way I do business. And I'm like and Honestly, I
think he respected it because I didn't sit. I wasn't
like shipping my pants, you know, I just okay. Was
Whitey Bulger a hockey fan. Oh he became one, Yeah,
big time. But I went out the door agatting the
(49:34):
cowed Karen and we're ready to leave. He goes hey,
opened the door again. He said, hey, Chris, come in,
I come in. He peeled off, like ten hundred dollar bill. Yeah,
enjoy the evening. It was awesome. And I was a
college kid or a window to throw it out right.
I remember I gotten a problem at the Boston Garden.
(49:55):
I had hit one of their better players, Rick Middleton.
I knocked a couple of teeth and he was home
watching on TV with someone else. And they're going, fucking
n Island's gonna have a hard time. He'll never get
out of the Boston gotten alive that everybody. So all
my family is there anyway, and all the security guys
(50:17):
are walking me out, and I'm they, Hey, I don't
fucking need you guys to protect me. I'm walking on
this bill. I don't need to be well, we have
to do it while you're on our property. Blah blah, blah.
I said, honestly, I don't need you fucking guys. I'll
take care of myself. And so I walked down. We
get to the door and I go out, and my
family's there and my friends, and ain't nobody gonna funk
(50:39):
with me with them there? And the bus team buses there.
All of a sudden, I hear from all the behind
the bus down the sidewalk and I, we're gonna fucking
kill you, blah blah blah. And I looked down and
all of a sudden, two guys in baseball at Crack
Donny went. They laid the fucking boots to him. While
(51:03):
it was it was Whitey and Kevin his partner, and
they kicked the living ship out of that kid. And
I get on the bus. We left. But he used
to come up um, and he came up actually uh
during the playoffs because no one really knew him up here,
and he could sit in the crowd. It was pretty cool.
(51:26):
I remember story. He came up to game with my
mother in law. My mother in law at the time
tersa god rest his soul. Um was a gorgeous woman.
And you know, she come up the game with him
and they game tickets in the red And I'm at
Costco about a year ago, and this guy comes up
to me and he tells me this story that I'm
(51:48):
gonna tell you. He wanted to thank me and never
seen me since he wasn't a wealthy guy, didn't have
a lot of money. They happened to get tickets in
the red seats that night, and he was sitting next
to my father with his son. And I remember like
it was yesterday. White. He came to me and he said, listen.
After the game, he said, I gotta tell you, there
(52:10):
was a little kid sitting next to me with his dad.
Only they didn't look like they didn't have much money,
you know, the clothes with tadded blah blah blah. And
he said, um, I asked a kid. I said, who
your favorite player? He said knuckles knuckles, I on my
favorite player, blah blah blah. So between periods he asked
the father. He said, hey, can I take his son
down to the pro shop, you know, the souvenir shop.
(52:32):
He said sure, go ahead. You know, because he told
the guy was Chris is following blah blah blah blah.
So he takes the kid down. The kid come back.
He had two fucking bags. He had hats, he had
a Nyland Jersey, had fucking Canadians, every fucking thing, and
he comes back with these two bags full things. So
this guy doesn't know who my following law is. So
(52:54):
a year ago I see him at Costco. He comes
up and say, Chris Island, Hey, how are you buddy?
How's it going? He's big fan of yours. But I
gotta tell you back when you would plan, I went
to a game and I sat next to your father
and he told me the story. The guy wasn't fucking tears,
he wasn't beautiful. It was unbelievable story. And I said,
(53:14):
you know what, I know what you're telling me because
the after the game he told me what he did.
And I never forgot that. It was so cool. God,
that's just beautiful. Amazing. People are endlessly complicated and fascinating.
All right, So you got yourself together, you got sober clean,
and you've decided to do what with this new lease
on life? Knuckles? Well, I had an opportunity back here
(53:37):
in Montreal in the radio to move back, uh a
friend again. When you're in our boat, not everybody got
their hand out and say, hey, I'll help you. And
I do believe me. I totally understand that. I don't
have a problem with it. I get it. Um. But
Mitch Melnick, a guy who was here when I played,
(53:57):
he did the radio for years. We always had this
relationship and I had done a few things with him
when I was messed up. You know, I call and
do a show, watch a game, you know, to analyze
the game, blah blah blah. And he said, listen, you'd
be good at this. What do you think? He said,
would you move back here? I said, yeah, I don't
move back So I flew in. I got an interview
(54:18):
with his boss, Wayne Beaues, sat down with both of them.
I left, and Wayne said, the Mitch, he ain't fucking
moving back. He's American. He's living to say, why do
you want to move to Canada? Mitchell, We'll see. Look.
I moved back to like a month and a half later.
I was there. All of a sudden, I show up.
Now Wayne's like, oh ship, he's back. And he followed
(54:41):
through and I was here probably about eight months. I
moved back here. I had a borrowed Cadillac from my
friend Brian McLoughlin. His mother passed away. Cole was sitting
in the garage. He said, I'll let you use that.
Actually get back in their feet. My dentist up here
not wanting these seat in my head of mine. Yea,
(55:03):
we stopped taking care of ourselves right completely. I had
a good stot, but uh my dentist let me live
in his condo. Um, and I chipped away. I moved
back here with Jamie. I have five hundred dollars in
my pocket, borrow vehicle. We each had a bag of clothes.
(55:24):
We started our life all over. Um. We rented for
a while the radio show I've been doing for uh
nine years now. We just bought a house three years ago.
I we chipped away, chipped away. I go and do
my thing. I go to my meetings. Uh, I do
the zoom stuff now I love it. Uh. Since COVID,
(55:46):
we both had COVID H and survived it. Thank God.
The good I had the world. I had the flu worse,
you know, then I had COVID, And yeah, life is
awesome again, honestly. Yeah. I have three children back in Boston.
I got four grandchildren. My parents are still alive. My
(56:07):
mom's not well. You know, my dad was so proud
of my career and all that. But I my dad,
I know today and I've helped a few people along
the way, like I'm sure you have, and he has
seen that, and he's more proud of me what I've
done in my my life now than Evan. And I
could see it in his eyes when I talked to
him every time, every time, And God love him what
(56:32):
he's doing. He's taking care of my mom. She's got dementia.
It's terrible things. But I'm really sorry. I'm glad. I'm
so going to be there for him today, you know,
like a instead of being that you know, fucking blank
numb dope walking around and being a sick man, I
was a sick man. My folks are the same, and
(56:54):
I think they're prouder of me now than they ever were. Right,
that's awesome. You talked about it's not how any times
you fall down, but how many times you get up?
What or who or why is the reason that you
keep getting up? Knuckles. I have a passion for life.
I want to live life like you know, I survived
(57:16):
in my addiction. I was just surviving. I wasn't living
my life and boy, you know I'm not. I don't
live my life and feel like I'm scared to do this.
I'm scared to do that. You know, people are scared
to change. And I always hear that I fucking deal
with it when I was coming. I'm dealing with like,
I don't care what it is like as long as
I don't do something wrong, to hurt another person, to
(57:38):
steal from someone, uh, hurt somebody in a way like
the cops ain't coming to get me. You know, I
might be late in my fucking taxes. Well you gotta
deal with you gotta deal with is me like, But
as long as I don't hurt anybody, Um, I remain teachable. Um,
(58:00):
I enjoy my life. That's all I want. Enjoy my family. No, No,
life is good again. What's next for you? Where can
people find you? And what do you want to leave
people with now that they've gotten to know you? Well,
I guess what's next for me? Um, I'm just gonna
do the radio show. Yeah, as long uh as they'll
(58:21):
have me, and then hopefully one day I can get
down to Boston and spend some time with family, more
time with family, and hopefully one day Jamie and I
will be able to maybe spend four months of the
year in Hawaii with her family because she's from KNA.
And then yeah, just you know, at some point here
(58:41):
in the next few years, I'm too young to retire,
but you know, just do this for as long as
I can and and enjoy the rest of my life
and as far as I guess leaving people with something
I think honestly, listen, I'll always take of my lumps.
One of one thing my that didn't want, not want
(59:01):
me to do, is lie. And there's one thing you
can never call me as a fucking liar, the honesty.
You know, people was struggling maybe with addiction. It's hard
to get honest, right, It's like, yeah, it's hard to say, Okay,
I got a problem, I need help. But man, you're
honest with yourself and you really look deep down on
the side and realize that and you become open minded,
(59:26):
and then you become willing. You can change your life. Um,
you can change it around. There's no question about it. Honestly,
open mindedness and willingness and you can get your life back.
I know it helped me for sure. It's like, uh,
my father always says you know, be coachable. Be coachable, right,
(59:46):
Chris Knuckles. I want to thank you for being so
open and honest with me today. There's so many of
us around the world who revere you, and I can
see why. If there's anything I can ever do for you,
my door has always opened, my friend. Thanks so much
for coming on Charge just today. Hey Rex, I was awesome.
Thanks for having me um you know following basketball for
(01:00:06):
who he has been a big Celts fan. When I
found out I was coming on and I always follow
you on Twitter, you became oh that. I just love
the stuff you put out there. I know you had
a good career, you had some issues, uh like myself.
Just awesome. A lot of respect for you that you
change your life around and you live in life again,
like Knuckles is awesome. Yeah, thank you and I since
(01:00:29):
you're a Celtics fan, My people are at the Celtics.
So one of these days let's meet up in Boston
and go catch the Celtics. I love buddy, Thank you
all about Thanks for having me. Charges seven No Runnians
with the Law, Charges Lee, send the tennis and balls
and Charges the celebrity gank forms Charge. We came along
(01:00:50):
with from living Law. There's a charge seven No run
Nians with the law, charges Lee send the tennis and
balls and charges the celebrity gank forms and charge we
came along. Quit from Living Law. That's just Charges is
created by Portalai and Control Media. Is produced by DV
Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
(01:01:11):
for my heart Radio, visit i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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