from Tina Comeau of The Vanguard,

Tom McCarthy sat on the bus, shackled and handcuffed, being driven to Leavenworth Penitentiary. The man sitting next to him, a convicted murderer, he only knew from having seen him on the news.

He couldn’t help but think to himself, why had he allowed himself to travel on the wrong path? More significantly, how was he going to handle this?

In his early years, McCarthy had driven on a lot of buses. But none like this particular one.

“I went from being in the NHL and riding buses, to now I’m in the federal system riding a different bus,” he says. “And that was the toughest team I ever played on.”...

McCarthy had gotten to do in life what so many young hockey players dream of. He got to play in the NHL. He was just 18 when he was drafted, surrounded by men in the dressing room, some old enough to be his father. Admittedly it made him grow up faster than he might have otherwise.

Still, he had great success in the years after he had played midget hockey for the Oshawa Generals, where he was one of two midget players drafted ahead of Wayne Gretzky in the 1977 OMJHL midget draft. In the 1979 NHL entry draft he was chosen 10th overall in the first round by the Minnesota North Stars. He also played with the Boston Bruins, played in an NHL all-star game and had two cracks at trying to win a Stanley Cup.

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