If you’re a Maple Leafs fan with a weakness for juicy dressing-room drama, there haven’t been many better sources than Nazem Kadri’s new memoir, “Dreamer.”
Just one example: It’s the end of the 2015-16 season. The Leafs, in their successful tank for Auston Matthews, have finished dead last in the NHL. And Kadri, while he’s out with teammates at a season-wrapping party, gets a call from Leafs general manager Lou Lamoriello. The GM wants to see Kadri in his office the next morning at eight — “pretty early after a team party,” as Kadri writes.
And when Kadri sits down, Lamoriello — who won three Stanley Cups in New Jersey while crafting an image as hockey’s closest equivalent to a mafia don — wants information. Who was at the party? What were they up to? Where had they been?
Lou had me by the balls. He wanted names, he wanted places. A full interrogation. I was sweating,” writes Kadri in the book, co-authored by Dan Robson. “I knew a bunch of names. I knew what everyone was up to. We all did.”
Kadri, then a 25-year-old restricted free agent without a contract for the coming season, is concerned Lamoriello means business. “This isn’t good for you,” Lamoriello tells him. But he still refuses to snitch on his teammates.
“When the Godfather tells you something isn’t good for you, you listen,” Kadri said. “For the next few days, I thought I was gone. I was almost certain my time in Toronto was done.”
Nazem Kadri book
But Lamoriello never does trade Kadri. To the contrary, it’s possible that moment is among the contributing factors that turns Kadri, once labelled a problem child by previous iterations of Toronto management, into one of Lamoriello’s favourite players, to the point that teammates rib Kadri as “Lou’s son.”
“He was testing me,” Kadri writes.
All these years later, Kadri has passed more than his share of tests. As he begins his 16th NHL season, now with the Calgary Flames, the 34-year-old Kadri is an unmitigated success, and an unlikely one. Not only has the kid from a humble Lebanese family in London, Ont. overcome persistent racism and no shortage of doubters to build a career worthy of $53 million (U.S.) in earnings to date. He’s also a two-time all-star and a Stanley Cup champion, thanks in part to a remarkable run with Colorado in 2022 that saw him return from surgery on a broken thumb to score a game-winning goal in the Cup final.
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