In late 1996, Theoren Fleury and Sheldon Kennedy had a meeting of minds—albeit the sort that takes place over bottles of beer and lines of cocaine. Strung out and miserable, the two NHL players were in the midst of a golfing trip to Phoenix, delving into a shared secret that was about to send tremors through the sport of hockey. Kennedy had recently told police he’d been sexually abused by Graham James, a coach both had played for as juniors in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Fleury, too, had been abused by James as often as twice a week while playing for the Moose Jaw Warriors of the Western Hockey League. The story had not yet hit the press, but each knew how deeply the other had suffered. For 10 hours that night, they discussed openly experiences they’d never spoken of before.

When the session was over, however, they took separate paths. Kennedy went public, becoming the face of a sporting scandal, while Fleury maintained his silence for a dozen more years—a decision that left him a shell of a man. “Sheldon’s secret was out, so he was able to start dealing with it,” Fleury explains in a new autobiography, Playing with Fire. “Mine was not. Graham still had control of my life.” To forget, the stumpy winger from Russell, Man., threw himself headlong into booze, cocaine, womanizing and gambling. “The direct result of my being abused was that I became a f–king raging, alcoholic lunatic,” he writes. “[James] destroyed my belief system. The most influential adult in my life at the time was telling me that what I thought was wrong was right. I no longer had faith in myself or my own judgment.” Continue…