How many times has a buddy said, “You really should have been there last night. It was great. I couldn’t believe the ending.”
Well, one of those missed opportunities happened this past Monday night in Oswego. Syracuse Crunch hockey player Brandon “Sugar” Sugden was in town. It wasn’t to promote the Crunch, but provide a tremendous learning moment for student-athletes or sports fans.
Fans simply see Sugden as a fighter. By his own admission he knows that if the NHL was the way it used to be he might be up there, but he is a fighter. Fans might say, “Yeh, he’s a fighter,” but I learned that he is a fighter also off the ice.
This guy is fortunate to still be alive. Wearing his Crunch jersey and sitting on a stool under the spotlight at the Ralph M. Faust Theatre the professional athlete told about his life. At 28 years of age he is living every moment of his second chance and knows that “one strike” will end his career in Syracuse (and probably in hockey).
He has remained clean for five years. He said, “I will be a drug addict and an alcoholic for the rest of my life.”
He noted he didn’t drink when he was younger, but when he went to the OHL it started and didn’t end for several years.
At one time he was the fifth round draft choice of Toronto, but alcohol and cocaine ended that. He then got a shot at St. Louis with the Blues, but messed that up as he brought a “half ounce of cocaine” to camp with him.
He talked of his abuse of alcohol and drugs in the “Eastern Cocktail League” when he was in Dayton, the time he hurled a hockey stick at a screaming female fan who remembered his drug problems in the previous minor league town, a nightmarish cocaine infested bus ride after he failed a drug test that saw him urinate down the aisle of the bus, wear his t-shirt as a diaper and crawl on the floor licking white dots that he thought were drugs. He talked about his lifetime ban from hockey and his selling of ecstasy and other drugs on the streets of Toronto. He spoke of his parents telling him to leave home and of his destroying his dreams.
It was in Peoria where he threw the stick at an irate fan. His career effectively ended. A long time later he got a chance to play in a “fighting league” in Montreal. His dad, a sparring partner for Muhammad Ali, worked with him. Sugden was a boxer and had over 200 amateur bouts. He was successful with his fists playing hockey in Montreal and four years ago after numerous appeals he was able to play again.
He noted the Syracuse Crunch gave him the chance to play, but he had only “one strike.” He has become a fan favorite for his pugilistic ability and by his own admission in 97 fights and has lost one.
Sugden spent nearly 20 minutes answering any questions that students threw at him.
Afterwards one Pulaski student said, “It was good. He didn’t lecture us. He just told us about his life and how things affected him."