from Eric Francis at Sportsnet,
On a rare day when Micheal Ferland isn’t surrounded by a horde of media-types asking about his latest heroics as an unlikely addition to the Calgary Flames top line, he sits in a quiet corner of the dressing room, reflecting.
Happy, healthy and engaged to the mother of his 10-month-old daughter, his life and his career are moving in a far better direction than they were three years ago.
Back then his life was dominated by a rage he fueled with alcohol, jeopardizing everything he has today.
“I just couldn’t have two beers — I’d want to keep going,” said a candid Ferland, 24, of a drinking problem he developed shortly after he started drinking at 15. “I was a pretty aggressive person. I was always trying to pick fights. It was pretty dumb. Thinking about the stories now, there were just a lot of embarrassing moments. All the dumb stuff I ever did I was always drunk. When I went out I would just do dumb s–t.”
Caught up in a hockey culture in which regular nights out on the town as a Brandon Wheat King turned into sloppy incidents, the hulking winger was regularly lectured by team owner/coach/GM Kelly McCrimmon, who’d heard plenty of reports about Ferland’s antics.
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