All right, so i'm here with sean avery and sean, had me on his podcast, no gruffs given a few months ago, and he said he dm'd me and he said i want you to build me a baby gate. So pretty soon we're going to be cutting to me building sean's baby gate, which i did two days ago and it came out pretty great, but i did leave three enormous grease stains in his pristine driveway that we'll try to fix. At the end of this, i brought all this stuff. This is an experimental thing you guys are going to watch me, build a baby gate and listen to sean, and i talk for an hour because i love podcasts they're like ritalin for me and i listen to them when i'm building and making things and it oddly Helps me concentrate and makes me less forgetful and i get into a flow state better.

So maybe some of our people listen to it. So sean was an nhl hockey player which to me is absolutely astonishing. I don't know anyone from my county where i grew up, who went pro in any sport. I don't know anybody who knows anybody who went pro in a pro sport.

It is such unbelievable, rarefied air and i think that's one of the things that sean brings to his podcast. Is this point of view, and it's this like killer point of view and also very strong and sturdy so like so, you must have been the best hockey player like always right when you were a kid like you were the like, they were like they had their Eye on you, everybody knew right yeah is that how it went yeah. So, first of all i want to. I want to rewind a little bit because the baby gate i'm going to call it baby gate.

Okay, your first video, i believe, yeah, you showed your baby gate when you were walking everyone, everyone around the the house in topanga - and it was just a quick. It was probably six to eight seconds. You showed a couple of cuts and you showed the baby gate right. So i hadn't seen you since probably new york and i said oh van lives in california, now topanga canyon.

So that's when i dm'd you and said i need you to build me. A baby gate um. So that's that's how we ended up here, but was i always the best player yeah? I think so i mean it's funny because you think about like i don't really know anyone else. That became a professional other than the professionals that i played with right.

So, like i didn't know, an nhl player until i played in the nhl, which kind of is interesting because think about from the time i was eight until i was 18. I played with a lot of different players so yeah. I guess it is very rare when you think about it and when i think about was, i always the best player. I think that i was always the player that had a lot of different attributes, but the one that i think was the most important was that i was never affected by anyone else like.

I never really gave a what anyone else said about me or if they said that i played too dirty or if i was too mean, or if i didn't pass the puck enough or if i didn't back check hard enough, which i think in your early development Years those types of things can affect a player and, and a kid can go well. Maybe i don't. Maybe i'm not good enough right. I think the guys that separate themselves that do make it they don't get affected by all of that other stuff, because i don't think that it's something that you know god gives you that determines whether or not you play.

I think it's, whether or not you work harder than everyone else. Um. Were you not coachable when you were really young, did you like um? I i wouldn't say that i was. I wasn't coachable, but i had intuition so sometimes when you had, i think and that's what you're sort of born with, because i don't know my dad played so maybe maybe there's something genetically inside of me.

I had intuition my intuition sometimes challenged the intuition of the coaches that were coaching me. You know that maybe didn't play hockey um and i also had a little bit of intuition on like where i was gon na go like i thought i was. I always thought that i was gon na, be a better player than all the guys that i was playing with how how young were you when nhl like hit your mind like oh, my god i could go, i could go all the way i mean i. I think, without knowing how much work it was going to be, i think i decided that that's what i was going to do when i was 10., like i didn't, think about being a fireman.

I didn't think about anything else. It was complete. Singularity like this is what i'm gon na do wow. That is, that is that's like genius.

That's finding your thing early, i heard you know bob ross, the painter yeah. I watched that documentary about it yeah and he said i don't want to butcher this quotation, but he said that talent is an interest pursued and i think the guys that get their ten thousand and gals that get their ten thousand hours in early billie, jean king, Said the same thing, i think she said she was either eight or ten and she knew she wanted to be number one yeah in the world, yeah think about it. I mean that's why i say that i don't think you were born with a special skill set. I think you were given something that you really really were attached to, and you decided that you were going to do that earlier versus a guy that decides to do it when you know he's 18., it's very rare that an athlete decides that they're going to be A professional athlete later in life, it's happened in a couple occasions: you've heard of like a south african rugby player that came over to play rugby in america and decided to play football and american football.

There's that philadelphia eagles guy, who was a bartender yeah yeah? How much of a role did your dad play? I think um. He played an interesting role in the fact that he never pushed me in either direction. No kidding, no, which i think is the biggest faux pas parents now, is that they burn their kids out yeah. You know my dad, never said a word and you know he played you know it's like uh.

He never said a word. It was always, i think he probably kind of laughed, maybe to think like. I would being a dad now thinking like a 12 year old, like pissed off at himself at how he played you, know yeah. So maybe there's something to that.

You know um, and i think there is because there was always kids that were better players than us when when when i was younger, i say us because i know some of my peers would probably say the same thing where they had crazy parents: okay and they Just burned the kids out yeah, you know um, but i also think my parents didn't they never said. You know what you you can't focus entirely on this. You have to like play some you have to play soccer in the summer. I think there's something something there with like how i was just helped fuel the fire without really doing it and where are you from toronto? Okay, yeah toronto's.

I lived in toronto for um six months like in 2005, maybe 2006 and one of the things that i found so so beautiful about toronto. First of all, canadians generally speaking, love winter and they're, really good at it. Yeah and like i could tolerate winter. I can't do new york winter anymore, because it's like 33 degrees and raining yeah, but in toronto it snowed every day in the winter.

One of the magical things about toronto is like every neighborhood. I don't know if all of canada is like this: every neighborhood had not only an ice hockey rink that was like publicly maintained, but also like a free skating, rink next to it and a zamboni yeah to maintain both of them and, i believe, they're free. I think you just show up and go like almost 24 hours a day. Yeah yeah i mean it's, it's the it's our it's our national sport and i think that uh accessibility is definitely one thing.

You know, there's a lot of ranks. The weather is perfect for it because it's freezing cold for eight months of the year, no matter where you are in canada, um but yeah, i think, and - and everyone plays at some point - you know even the kids that don't really like it know how to skate. You know, because we go on skating trips for school yeah like you go to the the rink and or the outdoor rink, and we skate as part of like a field trip, so it's just kind of ingrained in the in the dna of everyone. I remember hearing canadians say: oh i was skating before i could walk and thinking.

Well, obviously, that's an exaggeration, but then, when i lived there i saw what they meant and parents hold their kids between their legs as they're skating, kids that can't walk with skates on their feet and like low as if they're lowering them down into water, lower them Onto the ice and the kids, you can see the kids getting a feel for their skates, going going back and forth yeah. That's that's true or you that you would uh. You'd have a chair. Oh yeah, yeah yeah.

They just give you a chair, so you could hold on to the chair and you can push the chair and yeah, so the pursuit must like start to accelerate and then, when you're, about what like 17, how old, like hockey guys are really young. Aren't they? No. I mean i, i think uh, so i left home at 15 to play in canada. Has this um sort of a really a beautiful feeder system? They have this.

This major junior hockey league, which is set up uh, there's a western league, there's a a quebec league and there's an ontario league. So really all of canada is covered by this, these three leagues and when you're 15 they have a draft. So it's it's. It mirrors the nhl to a certain extent, so you get drafted so i got drafted when i was 15..

When are you playing for a school or are you playing for a club? It's a it's like uh before you get drafted like who are they? Where are you drafting you from yeah, so so from uh a team, not a school? It's all private private uh i played in this league called the metro toronto hockey league, the mthl, which is uh the all the toronto team, so there's probably 15 different toronto teams and they're private organizations uh not for profits. They they run them like businesses. So you you go and pick what team you want to play for, and you know the best teams usually are always the best teams because they have the best organization and they give their players equipment because they've been winning for so long and do they cost more. Do the best teams cost more to play? No, no.

The best teams cost the same. You just get more stuff given to you, so it's a little bit rigged in that. But you know it's a private business. They just run their business better than some of the other organizations, so i got drafted from a team from the i played, which is um.

Basically, that's that's the age you play in minor hockey to move you on to junior hockey. Okay. So then, you pack up your bags and you go and i went and played in owen sound ontario, which was about a three hour drive from my home that i lived with my parents and um. I think the cit that the town it was a town.

It wasn't a city had uh, i think there was twelve thousand people in the town and the arena held three thousand and wow. You know it was like very similar to high school football in the states or texas, but um in canada. They call it major junior hockey so yeah, so you pack up and you move away and like that, was it when i left when i was 15, i haven't lived at home since wow yeah. So who are your? Who are your guardians like? Who are the people that tell you you can't go out drinking? You live with a local family, they call them billet families, okay, so sometimes these families had kids that played previously um.

I lived with some legendary billet families. I lived with my billet in kingston ontario, a guy by the name of larry bullet, who i still talk to today. Like regularly. He was a prison guard at kingston penitentiary, which is, i think, canada's uh mult like max prison.

A lot of all the bad canadian killers go there, but my billet larry bullet was he was just like a hockey fan and he just decided. I was the first player that he had ever billeted. He just decided like uh. This could be fun and it's really amazing because you live with this family who aren't your parents, it's like living with a family where you have two step: parents yeah, you know.

Normally you have one parent, yeah, yeah and the step parent was probably like. Well, i can't really discipline you right, but now you have two of them yeah. So it's kind of just a like an honor trust system like there's, probably a little bit more respect than if they were your real parents right in a weird way. Definitely that if you were brought up with any sort of um family atmosphere, yeah yeah.

But we ran wild, i mean totally wild like being a dad now and thinking about the stuff that we did you weren't out of control in lac. This scares me about l.a. Well, yeah we were in a town with yeah. We were in a town with with 12 000 people.

Yeah i mean you couldn't really any time. We did anything, everyone knew about it, you know like uh and you guys were probably a little bit like kind of famous for the town right. Definitely i mean we didn't, you know we never really had um. We never really had towny friends.

It was very rare to have towny friends, because the towny guys didn't like us, because we no, of course not. You know taking their towny girls and we were like this, the famous guys right um and we weren't from there. So very interesting owen sound was in the snow belt of of ontario. So like sometimes you would go to bed and you would wake up and you could go online youtube and check these videos.

You'd go to bed and you'd. Wake up and the whole entire house would be covered in snow, so you'd have to. They could keep shovels inside wow because when you open the door in the morning, you'd have to shovel your way out the front door yeah. So how deep so the snow is it like up to your eyebrows or your neck or it would be over? It would be on a let's say: you had a one-story house, it would be over the front door of a one-story house.

Yeah, you go, you go to bed and you get six or so. Where do you put the snow from inside? Where do you put the first like two feet of snow? You just pat it down? Okay, because it's so fluffy right, yeah! It's like the snow that i'm talking about is like beautiful snow. It's not raining! It's really cold weather snow. It's just perfect and you could just compact it down to get yourself out.

You know we were also broke. We we would get 150 bucks every two weeks and a twenty dollar gas voucher. We would actually get a voucher because they knew if they gave us the cash. We would blow the cash.

So we had 20 every two weeks in gas and we got 300 bucks a month. Okay - and that was you know what we lived on and is that for you and larry bullet or no he got it, he got. He got his own check, all right, uh. I couldn't drive so you're, because you're only 15 right, uh, i couldn't drive.

I drove my second year. Okay, so my second year i went back with a car. You barter your 20.. If you can't drive, you still get your 20 gas money.

So then you, you barter that and it's a crazy system. I was looking at at um players that made the nhl from the metro toronto hockey league the league that we got drafted out of and for our birthday year. I think there was four players that made the nhl now this is the best league and how many total kids in the league there was probably 900 just in our war just just in our birth year and those are the elite. Those are the 900 elite.

Kids, that's that's the best league in canada in the elite country for hockey yeah. Oh, my god and four of us made the nhl. It was nuts you know like we would take. We.

We took a bus everywhere. The first time i tried everything was sort of on this bus. Like the first time i tried chewing tobacco was on this. This bus.

We were on a bus from uh owen, sound to sault ste marie, which is an eight and a half hour. Bus ride um and i was like passed out in my own puke on the floor of the bus for the for most of it were you drinking and dip? No just just yeah. It was a very interesting atmosphere to grow up in you know we would go to school. Our schedules were set so that we wouldn't have to go, go to school past one o'clock and then you'd go right to the rink and you would work out and then we would practice and we'd be done by probably six.

And then you know so one to six or five hours a day and then on saturdays and did you ever get a day off uh? No! Is that uh the odd monday or sunday, depending on the schedule, because you'd always play two games on the weekend so friday, night or saturday or saturday sunday, depending it, takes like 10 years to learn how to skate right? No, not necessarily depends how old you are. Yeah, you know yeah. If you start at eight uh, no, you you could learn how to skate in a year or two okay, because i've been trying my whole life and i'm terrible. But you probably only do it a couple times a year right, that's true! You know, like the rito canal in ottawa, i've done that.

It's a that! That's what people do to take to work yeah, they skate to work. Yeah, that's uh! That's one of the one of the great things and it's a world-class wonderful thing that doesn't even happen. Every year, yeah and uh, what it is is they freeze is it called the ottawa canal yeah it's 11 miles or something like this yeah of ice rink, and it's i mean i would be so proud to be a canadian just because of that yeah and i Drove up one day and did it and it's miles and my imagine hans brinker you're skating for miles and there's little like what do they call them. Beaver tails shops set up with hot chocolate and little warming stations.

It's rightly cold. It gets like 30 below yeah, easily 30 below 30. Below would be, it would be the norm. Yeah people skate to work like they.

Don't because there's no transit, i mean in the winter, and they just put their skates on people skate to work. The kids skate to school yeah, i mean it's wild wow. I think, out of all the major sports, it's it's the most difficult like. I would say that hockey players are the most athletic athletes out of out of baseball football soccer basketball like any of those athletes.

If you put them in a room with with a hockey player, a hockey player is getting out of that room or if we did a mini olympics yeah, because we are the only ones that aren't on our feet. We do everything in our sport on a um. It's like an eighth inning yeah, less than less than uh half an inch yeah blade yeah with a stick in our hands and then a puck. So it's like there's two things that aren't even attached to us.

There's three things: the skates, the stick and then a puck. If you do, if you're a basketball player or a football player you're using your feet and your hands yeah we're we're. Our sport is the hardest by a landslide, yeah um, maybe surfing's harder, because you don't have tides and weather and all that stuff i mean of everything. I've tried, nothing comes close to surfing yeah.

I guess the test would be you get a representative from each sport and then you have them all. Try a sport that none of them have ever played. We would we would we would blow them blow them away, yeah, because you have to be good with your fingers, every everything and your feet yeah we're not here we're not native to the ground crazy. Is it true? You is there's like a legend that you threw your skates into the hudson river when you retired.

That's not true. I mean i said i i said that i did, but i haven't skated once since i stopped playing. I understand that, and i also can't imagine it like. I understand it, yeah, not a lot of people, do it like that but um, but i also feel like i could play today like i could put skates on and like i can still feel in my head.

The feeling of what it feels like to take a pass or take a shot or just be on my edges and move like it's just hardwired into my head yeah. I was watching boxing last night. They had uh this youtuber jake paul yeah. Did he have another fight? Last night yeah he fought tyrone tyron woodley, who woodley's a ufc guy and who won uh paul won, but they went wow, but they went eight rounds and i, i think woodley he knocked paul down like he like.

It was a good fight, but to watch woodley um. I would work both of those guys. You really think you could work a ufc guy yeah. Do you have a ground game? Did you ever wrestle? No, but so i'm saying from a boxing standpoint: okay, oh i see i see you say this, you take that out of it because they don't have um, there's no fluidity to them.

You know conor's a different, a different beast, because, and even when conor box, like uh their athleticism is, is it's it's caged think about it like it's it's in a in an octagon. The way they walk is very specific. They walk with their toes pointed out. They're, not um they're, not they're, not i i.

I don't think that they're as developed athletically as um a lot of athletes, because they don't move anywhere, there's no think of a football player or gazelle. You know you get to open it up. Yeah and you have to jump in the air and catch like a wide receiver or um - i don't know. I just find it interesting to to see the different dynamics of some of the sports.

You know and you've been in so many fights that you can kind of have uh you're, not speaking from the from the armchair, i mean i fought on the street a lot. I fought in hockey quite a bit um yeah. You have to there's a movement like um and you see mayweather's a great example of like when you fight you're you're, you fight to not get hit, but you also fight to win, which means you have to like it's all about timing and movement. It's not it's! Not, and to do that, you have to be able to like move your body and kind of um.

You can work in a phone booth, but you don't necessarily have to like and watching that fight last night, like it lacked that type of athleticism, hmm um. I i'm i'm really in favor of these guys, like the paul brothers going and bringing more money and attention to the sport. I think whoever says that those guys are idiots are idiots yeah, they're they're, because you can't be an idiot and be on the world stage, whether it's podcasting athleticism you just there's too many potholes to step in yeah, so the so the two of them have the Highest selling pay-per-views of the year logan paul fought mayweather yeah. I think again same same sort of thing with those guys they don't care.

What other people think yeah yeah and i think, that's sort of like a make or break it in in the world that we're living in today, yeah um! If you care what other people think you're in big trouble, yeah, because you're just always going to be affected by comments and likes and yeah, it's a different we're in a totally different world now yeah and neither of them care and they're doing they've done they're. Also entertainers, but they're, actually you know backing it up with athleticism. I mean jake paul is going to be the the highest earning athlete in the world soon yeah, because he's podcast and because of the. If not, if not this year he's, he maybe has already done it, i mean i don't know what he'll end up making from these last from these two pay-per-view fights that he's done, but um he's definitely in the top 20 highest-paid athletes right now, yeah - and you Know was he a youtuber, or was he always an athlete that was youtubing? You know matter yeah, it doesn't matter.

Yeah jake fought a a youtuber, then an nba guy, then a ufc guy that couldn't didn't know how to fight. He was a wrestler, okay and then just fought another ufc guy, who was a striker um, the guy, who got knocked out in seven seconds. What was his name ben askren? Okay, after that fight, i heard your podcast yeah and you were just like. You were talking about paul yeah and you were like yeah.

I would make him reconsider it and i thought man. I would oh somebody please make that happen. What a cool thing i mean. I don't want you to get hurt, though no i would i would.

I would him up bad. I would rather uh, but he's a trained boxer sean like don't you think that that's like just i just mean technique, i'm just talking about technique and hours in the ring. Yeah, i mean he's been doing it for three years. If i had, if i had a three-month camp um, i fought on skates yeah dude.

I know that's your advantage, which the only difference between what we did. So i did it. We did it on skates. Technically, we fought in phone booths because we fought attached to each other because the only way you can fight in hockey is to be attached to the other guy, because that's how you get your leverage to punch.

So if you can use your feet instead of using the other opponent, like that's amazing, yeah, so much easier, oh yeah, um so think about it like for us to fight in hockey. We we start separated and then we come together to fight and then the only way we can throw a punch is by using the leverage of holding on to the person that we're fighting to throw a punch. Because, with with skates, you can't um. It's not like a figure skate, we don't have any stopper on it.

Yeah. We can't dig into the ice yeah. You know um, it's totally different. So if you put me in a boxing ring it's game over, like i i can you know like.

Have you seen a hockey fight so there god it's unbelievable. I watched your feet that last replay. I watched your feet. Okay, no one gets the nhl moment and very few of us get the moment where it's just like.

For me, it was like when we got the hbo show yeah like casey, and i got the hbo show and it just there must have been like near misses like i'm going to get in, i'm not going to get into or was it like a lock? No, i mean i i didn't get drafted, which i think um growing up. That's the main goal is to get drafted. You kind of have to get drafted now, not so much um, but then you did so i didn't get drafted when i didn't get drafted. I i i remember, i was at a pool party and um.

I came home and i was like. Did i get drafted and no i didn't get drafted? Was it larry? Was it who larry bullet like who had the news? Oh, i was. I was home for the summer, so i was with my parents. I wasn't deterred whatsoever like i remembered, not an ounce.

It was like okay, whatever how old were you uh, 17? Okay, so then i went uh because i didn't get drafted. I could get like uh invited as sort of like a walk-on to go to a training camp, but i could get to choose any camp that i wanted to go to really, because i was still in a position that i could go as a walk-on. So i ended up going to detroit red wings camp and long story short. Is i went to training camp as a 17 year old? Most of my peers were drafted, so they were just going to camp to get their first nhl camp.

Like a little experience, i went to camp and i left camp with a contract before any of the the guys that got drafted got contracts, because if detroit wanted to keep me, they would have had they had to sign me to a contract because they didn't own Me because they didn't draft me, they had to pay me to go back to my junior team and play for. I think i played two years. Okay, until um, i actually went played pro so then i went to detroit didn't make the team played a full year in their minor league team, which was in cincinnati. Ohio, okay in the american hockey league, which is the the triple a baseball sure played there for a year following year, went back to training camp again.

So now this is my probably my fourth training camp nhl training camp and that year that training camp i made the team first 21, 21 yeah. And so when is the moment like the when you were reduced to tears, um and you're like oh, my god, i mean i, i just remember my first nhl game, which is that that's you know when you're growing up. You just think to yourself. I just want to play one nhl game yeah.

If i play one nhl game, then i made the nhl yeah, then i that's what i wanted to do since i was 10 years old, eight years old yeah and i did it and i made it, did you ever win a stanley cup? I won a stanley cup my first year, no with detroit 2002. I think that the team detroit in 2002 was maybe the greatest nhl team ever assembled. Just from a pure statistic, standpoint, like 11 12 hall of famers, i think it was the best team on paper that ever played the nhl wow was that the team you were talking about um, you were on set with christian bale and that he had this energy About him that when you were in the room with him - and you said that there was somebody i want to say it was yarmouth yager, but it wasn't yarmouth, steve eiserman, that's it! That's it. So steve eiserman was the greatest.

In my opinion, the greatest captain in nhl history, which you know, means he's a very special person like he has a energy and an aura to him that he leads men into battle. Yeah right, like i love that you called the war. I've been to the war yeah he's been to the world. Yeah he's been in the war he's been in the trenches he's led he's led the battle into you know the line of other men yeah these guys have a an aura to them.

You know they understand what it feels like to carry huge amounts of stress on. They might be enlightened on their sh. That might be what enlightenment i see these surfers and these motocross guys - and i say you can't you're - he's enlightened yeah in these moments that you're watching them. He is not conscious, he is not.

He is enlightened yeah. He is just a body in the he's just and pure energy yeah. They have that feeling to them. Yeah right um so, but to see it in two different mediums like to see eiserman and in the sport world the hockey world and then christian bale on a movie set um.

There's really not that much difference between the two like uh: they they have the same. The aura is the same yeah: they they nothing can phase these these men, their success, isn't hollow. Yeah they've seen every nook and cranny of every situation. You know they can identify with with everything, because they've been there and seen it, but i guess they also understand what it needs to be done to make the final product as good as it can be.

I did a movie with him. I worked one day as a david o'russell movie. This was a couple of months ago. I got the part on a monday.

Okay, we were shooting on a wednesday tuesday. I spent the whole day i had to get a covered test. I had to go for a fitting. I got the sides to the scene on tuesday night at like 9 15..

I think we had a 6 30 call time. It was a an hour away. I i couldn't get the the lines like. It was two and a half pages.

Oh, i had no idea what the movie was about. Okay, i got to set, i walked on set and the scene was with bale john david washington and chris rock. I start the scene with bale and i'm with him the whole scene and we have a long walk like a f, probably a 25 to 30 yard walk where we have dialogue back and forth. I didn't know my lines, i didn't know what the movie was about.

He knew this, he had no idea who i was. He didn't know that i had had this life previously. I was a hired day got day player actor. I think he felt something off of me that didn't that made him understand that and i'm not putting myself in christian bale's category, but like that i've been in a war somewhere yeah.

He felt that yeah and what he did he just every single time in between takes. He just ran the lines with me. He ran the lines with me, yeah and one of the producers. I think, like an hour in or something kind of pulled me aside, and he was like you know, we're all like everyone's just like in in awe of what's going on right now, just watching christian bale just run the lines with me, yeah in between every single Take yeah and like wow, you know most would probably i don't know what they would do, but they wouldn't do that.

No right, yeah and uh yeah. I mean it was like uh. It was like uh, it's not even a real moment in my head like to think about it. You know because, first of all, if i that up, i don't know what happens to me right yeah, you know, and it's not and there's no it's different between you know in sports.

You can you can go out and work your ass off and and perform, and if you make a mistake everyone's, like you know what that happens, but in this medium we don't have time for that, like we're not here for you to work hard, but you can't Do it like you, have one job, you have to say the lines. If you don't know the lines, you can't say the lines yeah, but i got them. You know i just couldn't i couldn't, but we got it and the only reason we got it was because of bail. If bale had of you know done what i think most have done and put the heat on me.

I don't know if i would have got through it, but he he. He helped me through that wow. What's the movie called canterbury glass and it's not out yet? No, no, i think it's yeah it's coming out soon. Well, uh and that's fantastic yeah yeah, but but you know those are the those are the um.

I think special moments too, that you, you have to be in in moments of conflict, to be able to like learn from i mean that's why all drama is it's conflict, conflict, conflict? That's what drama is and story is and story is what we built our entire civilization on yeah um yeah. You know it's more real than real life story. Um. I want to get to like your conversion from athlete to artist um.

But what can you give me like? A like the nhl life, like what yeah, so professional sports isn't a it's an emotional roller coaster, but you can control that by how hard you work? Okay and how well you prepare yeah yeah, i mean, i think it's a it's a it's a great life, it's a very demanding life, but i i i don't know why you would want to do something else. You know yeah yeah yeah, that's the most fun part of it, and so did you get in. Did you injure out or what no i played? I played 12 years in the nhl at 32. I just decided, i didn't want to play anymore.

Okay, that's rare! Isn't it yeah i mean i could have kept going, you know, i don't know what what it was. I don't know what gave me the strength to make that decision, but i made it and i got a lucky bounce and a friend of mine put me put me in a movie one day: um peter berg who's like a pretty well-known american director, and i was Like oh, this is, was it patriot day, patriots, yeah, yeah patriots? I have one line in the movie, but i remember you're at the boat on set yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah um and i just was like. Oh, the you know, i think, when i played there's something very artistic about playing a game. I was a character.

You know there was a storyline built into it. This is a new challenge and when i pull this off i'll be able to say to people like you, don't know how hard this was right, because you have to basically learn a full new medium. I mean for the last seven years. I've been learning a new medium yeah, your ten thousand hour clock is starting at zero and age, whatever thirty or whatever, yeah thirty, thirty, four yeah so and now i'm just able to finally like work, but i'm gon na do it till, hopefully i'm 80.

yeah. So i have no problems with that yeah and it's fun it's fun because it has all the same ingredients. You know the pressure's high there's money on the line. You've got one last take to get it.

Everything relies on you mm-hmm, you know it's big bucks. It's performance: if you up yeah, you know people are gon na talk, yeah, um and the better. Your performance is the more opportunity you get yeah, it's the same as sports yeah. So there's a ton of similarities um, but it's also quite fun and challenging, and i think that's the the addiction that i have to it.

I want to ask you what you think i should do like career-wise yeah and then i'll tell you what i think you should do. Yeah so van. If you were, if you were to ask me what you should do career wise moving forward, i i would say to you that i mean the writing is on the wall for today for tomorrow, for the next for the foreseeable future, you have to keep making these Videos, these youtube videos, it's paying that you're getting paid to do it right, the accumulation of it is going to grow because we need the consistency of seeing these videos and then we send them to more people. It's going to put you in a position every time you get a view that gives you your currency to make more of these either outside of youtube or inside of youtube.

Where brands are going to then pay you to do this. So i see the writing on the wall for this like for the next three four five years. I don't think you should do anything else, all right, so just keep doing what i'm doing yeah that's what i was hoping you'd say so now my turn yeah. Okay.

So i heard the other day i heard you um. You had your buddy on from canada, who was a stand-up, oh yeah, yeah, aaron, burke, aaron, berg yeah, and you talked about going and doing stand-up comedy yeah and i was just like: don't do it not don't do it but don't pursue it as anything. Beyond an experience, because i just think that is not that you're not funny one of the things about your podcast, that's amazing is how serious and earnest you are and hilarious. In just your honesty, it is funny i laugh on my run yeah, but i think that we underestimate what that art is, that i think it's a 20 year.

Why so few people, i think it's one of those 20-year investments, whereas my thing was a 10-year investment. After 10 years i was earning a living, but that's a 20-year thing so, just like you've now sort of invented a new medium like this video is going to be something new that i don't think a lot of people have seen like you're you're doing two things. You're you're you've recorded a podcast that you're going to lay over uh a baby gate: video yeah, okay, let's hope it works. My whole desire from a comedic standpoint yeah.

I i'm not looking to do what they do, which is they try and calculate a room and work off of emotion. I want to do what i have been doing for the last 20 years, which is talk. I want to walk into a room, yeah and obliterate. Everyone in the room to the sense that crowd work is going to give me my material yeah.

So if i say to you, if i walk in and i go uh so you're, the the workwear guy yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah like how did you become a workwear guy yeah and do you would you do you think you would let the person respond? Yes, i'm asking you right now: how did you become a worker, i'm as as evidenced by your um driveway, i'm dirty, i'm just a dirty person. My life is dirty they're, the only clothes i can work where and this like car hearts and stuff. You can just get this stuff, always so excited wouldn't like like imagine if we all thought in in that red and black white and gray area like you're a workwear guy, so you you're smart. You don't step out of your lane.

No, but this guy over here yeah, who decided to dress up for tonight because you're clearly on a first date yeah. This isn't your lane! Why didn't you just lean into what your lane is? Yeah and now i've shifted off of you right without offending you yeah, but i've sort of, but now you're offending this guy. But you can fight, let's see where it goes with him: yeah yeah yeah. Maybe i'm going to offend him, but i'm also going to empower him right because i'm going to get him to leave this show deciding that he's never going to put himself in that box again: okay, okay and everybody's, developing a thing: yeah, yeah, okay, based on intuition And a skill that no one really else has yeah and the reason i have it is because i mastered it over a 20-year career yeah, which we didn't really talk about.

But i talked more than anyone. That was one of my tools because i was smaller and i wasn't as big as everyone. I played psychological warfare, so i want to do comedy. I i have all of this untapped material in front of me that i don't need to hone yeah.

I can just blow right through it and go from the workwear guy to this guy and maybe we'll get him out of his shell and in that i've gotten out of him um something with her and you know - and i can just go through a room and Decimate a room with laughter and fear, because you know we're also kind of bringing everybody together, yes yeah, but what i think you should do is is really definitely do this yeah, but really lean into acting, and i think all actors should be writers right every day. Sean yeah see you aren't scared, no you're gon na go up there and you're, not gon na, be scared and that's zero at zero, zero, a room of 200 people, yeah zero, fear, fear physically fear of, like not the stage fight. None of that like off wow. Nothing, nothing i'm going to look good, feel good.

I'm going to be able to back up anything that i that i yeah, and but also i'm not it's it's going to be this knack of like i want to empower him. While i make fun of him, that's going to be the art like, i want to celebrate the fact that you're, the workwear guy yeah, but also everyone's going to be like you know you laugh at them like this guy's the work, no meanness, because you can a Little bit a little bit: okay it'll be meanness that you need to make it fun and interesting. Yes, yeah yeah. What, if that's, what makes small talk? Small talk is, there's no meanness in it right, true yeah! Well, i love this.

I can't wait to see it, so your podcast is called no gruffs, given it's not on youtube yet, but we're working uh, all the other places, spotify apple, podcasts and um, and your book that you wrote is called um offside or ice capades, depending on, if you're In canada or the us, and is it offside in america, yeah, okay, cool, yeah, uh, anything else, uh! No, no, all right! Sean avery! Thank you! Thank you! So much and i'm gon na go. Do your we're gon na go. I brought i bought a gallon of degreaser and we're gon na get those things all right, all right, brother. Thank you.

You.