from Roy MacGregor of the Globe and Mail,

Carson Shields says he needs to tell his story. His mother says he needs to tell it to heal.

He needs to show how far he fell from the simple dream he was chasing, how dark it all became and how, today, he is sober and clean, back living at home, coaching the game that all but destroyed him and attending university - one benefit of which is help in paying for the anti-depressants, anti-anxiety and high-blood-pressure pills he takes each day.

"This story needs to be told," his father says. "I'm just sorry that it was my son had to go through it to have it written."

Too much we concentrate on the far-less-than-1-per-cent, the ones who make it. We forget, as we focus on the troubles experienced by certain NHL enforcers and fighters that, just as the talented players get funnelled tighter and tighter until there are but a precious few that move on, there are the tough ones, many of them, who just were not tough enough. They, too, get left behind.

Carson Shields was, by his own measure, an "average good hockey player." Good enough for junior, not good enough for major junior. He bounced around so much - traded, sold, dropped, picked up - his father nicknamed him "Suitcase."

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