Playing With Fire

By Theoren Fleury and Kirstie McLellan Day
Harper Collins, 272 pages

In Theoren Fleury’s Playing with Fire, Fleury and co-writer Kirstie McLellan Day take readers on an incredibly raw, emotionally charged roller coaster ride that corkscrews into Fleury’s personal hell with intermittent interruptions of bliss. The book seems to be a cathartic experience for Fleury. With every page you can feel the weight coming off the man’s shoulders.

All the experiences of Fleury’s life are not only put out into the open, but also onto the audience; the book creates a dynamic where  readers feel like a friend along for Theo’s wild ride, but powerless to help despite our sincerest wishes to do so. Since we know Fleury overcomes his demons, you can’t help but read to the last page to learn how the chaos didn’t kill him.
There seemed to be too few instances where Fleury got to celebrate his life; he did have his children, his Stanley Cup championship in 1989, and his Olympic gold medal in 2002, but the absence of joy in his early life was palpable.

The NHL has its share of legends whose careers were cut short; Mike Bossy only played until he was 31. Bobby Orr and Mario Lemieux played until they were 30. All of these players are considered all-time greats.

Theoren Fleury’s NHL days ended in a blaze when he was 34, and Playing With Fire reveals that the player who everybody said was too small to make it, could have been in the conversation of “greatest of all time,” if the only opponents he had to face off against were on the ice.

— Luc Welner-Monchuk

September/October 2011