Bobby Robins

Man, I fought my way to the NHL and got my head messed up and went into a deep dark pit and almost ended my own life after making the @NHLBruins in 2014. In the midst of that insanity, Steve Montador killed himself (another NHL enforcer). It was a tough time for me and for the hockey world at large. If anyone out there is struggling with this kind of stuff from one too many hockey hits or whatever you're struggling with, please know that you can call out to God for help...thats the only thing that worked for me. He's real and he'll listen. I hope you'll hear my story. There are forces in the hockey world that don't want this story getting out, maybe because the Steve Montador lawsuit is happening right now against the NHL. It's very strange, but I'm forging ahead, full steam, one speed mf. I don't know what it is, but all i know is that I've written something profound, the greatest sports memoir of all time (in my humble opinion). If you're looking for the real deal and are tired of the fluff like I am, i have a savage memoir that will blow your mind, about fighting my way to the NHL, losing it all, a sexual journey, potent drugs and visions, a spirit quest, my life, a savage fkn story (that's from the back cover). BobbyRobins.com

It Only Fuels Me More by @BobbyRobinsPro a excerpt from SEX DRUGS PUCKS AND SOULS - - - AFTER FOUR MONTHS OF TRAINING TO PUNCH AND DESTROY, I’M hard and I’m ready. In the best shape of my life. Finally free from the endless flow of nicotine through my heart, and there’s a pulse of hope radiating in my body, of redemption and glory. I have a call on my life again. A purpose. This is my quest. I don’t know how I’ll get there, but I’m a man on a mission to fight my way to the NHL. The only thing that’s going to stop me is my death. So, come and get it, motherfucker. Samantha and I talk long into summer nights about our future. She’s the only one who believes in me. We agree to give it two years and if nothing happens, I’ll quit hockey and get a real job. Essentially, we’ll give it two years until I’m making actual money that qualifies this hockey gig as an actual job, something sustainable. I know I’ll most likely be starting in the East Coast Hockey League on a five or six hundred dollar a week contract that can be terminated at any time. Fuck security, I never knew you anyway, I think to myself, feeling insecure and vulnerable. This aspect of no security makes it very clear to me that I’ll be fighting every game. Leaving everything on the ice, my juicy balls exposed for the world to see if I’m really a man. Or if I’ll cower in fear again like I did five years ago. This time is different though. I’m ready now. Samantha will stay in Wisconsin working at the hospital as an X- ray tech and make the real money while I go to war. She’ll provide for us for the next two years while we have a long-distance relationship. I promise her that I’ll stay faithful and I’ll never cheat. I mean it too. I’d rather cut my dick off than see the look of defeat in her eyes as she catches me with my pants down. Or scrolls through my phone to find secrets and deceit—some sexting prose that’s poetic and pulsating. Or dick pics sent to some barroom slut at three in the morning. Or a grainy video of some puck bunny blasting her box with a French-tip manicured middle finger. I’ll never do it. I’m waging this war for us and for our future. It’s the only way. The voices of doom are still there though. They always are. But any of those self-doubts or self-defeating thoughts get smashed away by my newfound confidence in myself—my sixpack abs and bulging muscles and that menacing stare I’ve perfected in the mirror. For once I know what my mission is. I’m going to fight. Fight everyone and fight my way to the top. Period. That’s it. And I know it’s going to be a slow burn. I just have to show up every single day with my knuckles up. Be ready to chuck ‘em. Like my life depends on it. After a bunch of phone calls to coaches and lost leads to get a new agent, I realize this: no one’s willing to take a chance on a washed-up old failure like me. One guy is, though—and just like that, I have a new agent. It’s all falling into place. He gets me a weekly contract in California with the Bakersfield Condors in the East Coast Hockey League. Then he calls and tells me he got me a tryout with the Houston Aeros of the American Hockey League, farm team for the Minnesota Wild of the NHL. I worked my bag off all summer for this. I’ve conditioned myself. I’m in shape and dangerous. I’m willing to fight anyone. I still feel the fear, but I’ll use it as a motivator. It’s fight or flight, and any time the fleeting feeling comes up, I’ll picture my girl. I want to marry her someday, as soon as I get some money and some stability. It’s for her now. And for us. Our family. There is no turning back. I drive down to Texas for a tryout to fight my way onto the Houston Aeros’ roster in the AHL. I crush testing and see immediately that I’m already at the top of the pecking order, physically speaking. That’s the only metric worth tracking, as far as I’m concerned. I’m the alpha male. When it comes time to take the ice, I’m throwing massive crosschecks on my opponents and playing with piss and vinegar, with snarl and jam. I’m a fucking wildman out there! This is my unveiling. I’m looking for blood and teeth. Coach pulls me aside after the first couple of drills, “Bobby, I love the way you play. Just watch those crosschecks—we can’t have you taking penalties out here. We want you on the ice.” I flash back to my first hockey coach that I remember when I was seven years old. It’s right before a hockey game and he’s addressing the team, saying, “We don’t want any sick birds out there, do we?” Everyone’s confused and looking around to see if anyone else knows what Coach is talking about. He pauses and lets us have the moment of confusion to try and figure it out. He speaks cryptically and in riddle form, and I always get a sense that he’s trying to teach me something, that there’s always a lesson to learn. “Sick bird...anyone get it?” he says. “We don’t want you to be a sick bird—sick bird is an ill eagle, get it? An illegal—no penalties, no sick birds, ok?” I should have listened to my first coach. I’ve spent eternities in that sin bin. I’m a sick bird alright. For the rest of practice at that rink in Houston, I keep my crosschecks at bay and try to play good, hard-nosed hockey. This is the easy part. If I’m working as hard as I possibly can, I reach that state where my mind turns off and there are no more doubts or uncertainties. There’s nothing in there except reactions and neurons firing like fine clockwork machinery. There’s a calmness in there when I achieve this flow state. Everything becomes effortless and clicks into place. It’s my secret to hockey performance—just black out! I’ve made a career of coming back to the bench after something amazing, or horrifying, or violent, or silky—something happens on the ice and when it does, it’s astonishing. I’ve always felt like it wasn’t even me out there doing it. What was controlling me? I come back to the bench, and calmly state, “I blacked out.” This gets a laugh from the boys and I usually just growl and flap my tongue around and spit and, “Let’s fucking go, boys!” This is it. First exhibition game of my new life, this new version of me. It feels so good to be wearing a Houston Aeros jersey, back in the American Hockey League, one step away. Even if this is a tryout and most of the guys who will be on the team are still up at NHL training camp in Minnesota, it doesn’t matter. I’m not playing the numbers game. I’m only counting one number—it’s me, me and my quest, and it’s going to happen. We take the ice for warmups against the San Antonio Rampage at their home barn, and there are three tough-guys on their roster. Their entire fourth-line, meat. I decide, “I’m going to make a splash today. I’ll fight all three of them.” I’m going all in. No turning back now. I skate around warmups and each time I approach the center redline, I peer over to the other team with the hairiest eyeball the world has ever seen and pick fights with subtle nods of the head and quick twitching winks of eyelids and sneered lips. I’m sweating profusely. I must have been flying around and skating like a maniac. I think I blacked out already in warmups! We get back into the locker room for our fifteen-minute intermission before the drop of the puck. I look around at all these other players at the tryout and think that this is it, I still belong here, even though I’m pushing thirty. “I can keep up. Please keep up—please Frog—please. I’m going to bring it! I can, I will!” I keep telling myself under my breath as I rock back and forth with nervous energy. Coach comes in and goes over our systems. 1-2-2 in the neutral zone and left-wing lock on the forecheck. Got it. We’re prepped and prepared and ready to do battle, but we’re told we have to wait for an extra ten minutes while the ice gets a chance to freeze. This is Texas right at the end of summer and it’s still hot and humid outside. There’s a bunch of water out there and we need to wait for the ice to settle. We sit in the locker room, with that anticipation hum. Every so often, I shout something like, “Here we go, boys! Lotta talk out there!” Some of the guys bellow back, “Let’s go, boys!” Some keep looking down at the gray carpet and remain in deep contemplation about what will take place on the ice. “Guys, there’s a lot of water on the ice, especially around the Zamboni door,” Coach updates us. “They’re going to wait another fifteen minutes, so just hold tight. Stay loose and we’ll be out there in no time.” Talk about torture. It feels like forever in here. I look down at my knuckles and think about what I’m about to do. Three fights. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but the one thing I’m certain of is that my gloves will be off and I’ll be fighting to the death. “Just black out, just black out,” I keep telling myself. I think about this journey I’ve been on over the past five months. I think about how I don’t chew tobacco anymore. Normally I’d be stuffing great wads of it into my mouth right at this moment. But I don’t need that shit anymore, I’m free. I think about Samantha and how I want to give her the life of her dreams—and if I make it to the NHL, then everything will be alright for us. When I make it to the NHL. I think about how hard I’ve worked every day over the past summer, right down to the bones, to the core of me, my essence, my soul. Nothing is going to stand in my way. But then. Word trickles down from outside the locker room and flows through the staff of equipment managers and medical trainers and stick-boys like a game of telephone, but the words at the end of the line aren’t garbled or mispronounced or misunderstood—it’s a definitive message that the exhibition game has been canceled. The ice melted when the refrigeration died in the Texas heat. My heart sinks. Then I feel a sense of thank God that I don’t have to fight those three guys today. Then I get a sense that everything happens for a reason and to trust the process. A voice inside of me tells me that today wasn’t the time and that something bad was going to happen out there. I feel it. I picture myself lying there dead on the ice, with fractured orbital bones and a caved-in nose and chiclets and enamel scattered all over the ice from teeth that exploded out of my gums from punch after punch to my face from those goons on San Antonio. And they scoop me up and put me on the gurney and carry me out the Zamboni door and dump me into the ditch out behind the arena, still in my full uniform and still holding on to the hope that I can actually make this impossible dream come true. We pack up our gear and go back to the hotel where I spend the rest of the night on the phone with Samantha, in disbelief that the game got canceled. I go to sleep knowing that I’ll show up and have the best practice of my life tomorrow. I get called into the coach’s office when I get to the rink in the morning, and I know what it means. “Bobby, sorry you didn’t get a chance to get into an exhibition game, but we just got a handful of guys sent down from Minnesota and we’re going to make some cuts here.” He tells me that they like how I play. That they will keep an eye on me while I do my thing in Bakersfield. That they’ll look to call me up at some point during the season. But I know what it means. Fuck your formalities. I got cut. I don’t need to hear anything else. I don’t let it deter me, though. It only fuels me more. Anger swelling, resentment growing. Must keep my focus. I have that weekly contract with the Bakersfield Condors. I’m going to honor it by fighting as hard as I can. I pack up my gear and my car and drive all the way across Texas and the southwestern United States, through deserts and desolation, until I pull into Bakersfield, California. Oildale, elite. I’m back in the East Coast Hockey League. Two steps away from the NHL. - - - Thanks for reading. If you wanna hear more, check out my savage memoir SEX DRUGS PUCKS AND SOULS. It's for the boys... BobbyRobins.com

I Lived in the Woods with a 115 Pound Wolf my First Year of Pro Hockey by @BobbyRobinsPro. An excerpt from the savage memoir SEX DRUGS PUCKS AND SOULS: Secret Life of a Hockey Fighter I’m jerked awake by the jolting thump of airplane tires smashing onto the runway. I make a mental note that I’m really at NHL training camp, on the flight back from an exhibition game against the Montreal Canadiens. My second game in as many nights. I don’t do anything in this game either, invisible out there. The head coach walks up and down the aisle, pointing at various players and saying, “Come to the rink at 11:15 tomorrow morning.” I watch him fumble down the aisle through the turbulence. Based on the guys he’s pointing at, you know what it means. Tomorrow is cut day. First round of cuts. The big round where most of the herd is cleared. There are about fifty players at training camp, and this cut gets rid of just about half. Most of us will play on the farm team in the AHL, way across the border in Binghamton, or worse, back to Juniors for the young guys or down to the AA East Coast Hockey League, the ECHL, or as it’s known in some circles, Easy Come Hard to Leave. “Please don’t point at me. Please don’t point at me.” I squint my eyes and try my hardest to send mental vibrations right into the heart of the head coach. “11:15, tomorrow at the rink,” he says and points at me. My fate is sealed. I didn’t stand a chance of making the team out of camp. Not this primitive version of me. No way. The group of failures who are being sent to Binghamton pack up our rooms and decide to caravan from Ottawa to Upstate New York together. We stop at a breakfast place and get disgusting with chocolate chip pancakes and endless strips of bacon and sausage links. It’s depression-eating at its finest. With bellies full and bursting, we talk about living arrangements once we get to Binghamton. Everyone’s already matched up with a roommate, and I start to feel panicked and insecure. “You have a roommate yet?” a growling voice asks from across the table. It’s Fitzy, a brute of a man who plays like I do out there, and as we look into each other’s eyes and wipe bacon grease from our faces, we both know that we’re meant to be roomies. “Just one problem,” Fitzy explains. “I’ve got this pet wolf, and I need to be out of the city. I really need to be in the country. He needs some space.” “Like a wolf-wolf?” I ask. “Yeah, a wolf-wolf,” he says. “His name’s Beo.” “Sounds good to me, man,” I say, and we shake hands. All I can think about is how I can’t wait to cross that border and stuff the biggest wad of Grizzly Wintergreen the world has ever seen into my lower lip. Let the sweet nicotine pulse through the tiny cuts in the mucus membrane of my gums, lips, and tongue. I’ve been chewing these mini-cans in Canada all training camp and I’m ready to reunite with my one true love. We make it to Bingo and get situated with a cabin out in the sticks. Welcome to pro hockey Year One, living out in the woods with a wolf, back in the American Hockey League, one step away. But I’ve had a taste now, of The Show, and I’m not far off. I can play up there in the NHL. I know I can. Soon it becomes clear that I’m the lowest male on the pecking order in this cabin. Fitzy is the alpha, and Beo is the beta, and that puts me somewhere between the omega and the eggman. I come home from practice exhausted and want nothing more than to sit on the couch and watch Entourage and melt into the cushions. Then Beo, the giant wolf, sits there and places my head in his mouth and keeps his teeth on my skull and looks around. I push him away but this gets him more excited, and he playfully nips at my ears with his fangs. Finally, I have to do something about this and I bring the issue up with Fitzy. “Seriously man, this is starting to get old,” I say desperately. “What should I do? This isn’t going to fly.” “Well, as far as Beo’s concerned, he’s the alpha male and you’re his little bitch,” Fitzy enlightens me. The truth hurts. I’m already a little scared inherently of Beo—one, because he’s a wolf, and two, because of the times when Fitzy gives him a steak and dares me to see how close I can get my hand to the meat. I slowly creep up on Beo, and I’m sure he senses that it’s just a game, I hope. I inch closer and closer, and Beo tenses up and the hair on his back stands on end and his black lips begin to curl and twitch. And he exposes his fangs and a growl wells up from somewhere inside of his chest cavity. I never make it closer than three or four feet. I figure he’s just being playful, but I don’t trust him a hundred percent. “Bottom line, you’re gonna have to show him that you’re the alpha male,” Fitzy says calmly as he eats potato chips. “He’s just dominating you because he can.” The crunching of the chips is loud, and I realize that my senses are heightened already from the reality at hand. The fight-or-flight response is firing in my body. “Ok, tell me what to do.” “You gotta pin him down.” Fitzy says nonchalantly. “You gotta choke him a bit.” “Seriously!?” I think about this for the next few minutes as the wolf leans his weight on me and nips at my ears and breathes and drools all over me. “So, I just pin him?” I ask. “Yeah, maybe choke him a bit,” Fitzy instructs. “Grab him by the snout and growl in his face too.” I chicken out and watch the rest of The Phantom Menace with my head in the mouth of a wolf. I show up on the couch the next day in the same predicament. With legs quaking in misery and lactic acid from the bag-skate we just had at practice, all I want to do is sit on the couch and watch Mallrats in peace. Like clockwork, Beo sits there next to me and places my head in his mouth. I swear he’s smiling the whole time we perform this little circus trick. Finally, I snap. I act only on instinct, where there is no fear, and I grab the beast by the back of the neck and slam him to the ground. I get on top of him and grab him by the snout and put my face right up against his cold sandpaper nose and let out a low-pitched demonic growl from the depths of my soul. My growl grows and I clench my grip on his toothy snout. Beo starts whimpering. He lies on his back and puts his curled front paws up into the air. He cries until I get off him and let him up. I release my grip on his neck and nose. He stops crying and gets to his feet. He puts his head down and comes over to me where I’m still sitting on the ground, and he begins to softly lick my hands. He never nips at my ears again. He never places my head in his mouth. From that moment on, the wolf is my loyal friend and subservient. A precedent is set and some ground rules are established. He knows it and I know it. “You’re lucky he didn’t bite your face off,” Fitzy laughs. “He must like you.” For the rest of the season Beo sleeps at the foot of my bed, keeping my feet warm during those Binghamton winter nights in upstate New York. Months pass and I feel the monotony of the hockey season. Playing four games a week and sitting there on the bench on the fourth-line, playing four minutes a night. I’m frustrated. Almost broken. Feel like I’m not doing anything out there. Maybe Coach doesn’t like me. Maybe I’m not cut out for this. I need some inspiration—I’m feeling drained and hollow. The vibe is thick and putrid, coming at me from all angles, from the coach, from the fans, from everyone—telling me that I’m supposed to fight. Maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here on the bench all game if I actually fought for real. I know I’m supposed to be a fighter. I’ve always known it. It’s in my DNA. I know the exact moment when I’m supposed to fight, but I can’t do it. I pump myself up before every game and tell myself all kinds of affirmations: I can make it to the NHL, I will make it to the NHL, I’m going to fight today, I can fight today, I will fight today. But I don’t. The fear wins. My moment of clarity comes early in the season, and I accept the fact that I’m a coward. It’s who I am. I’ll never make it. We’re playing against the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins again in their sold-out barn in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania. They have a legendary enforcer on their team called Dennis “The Bone Doctor” Bonvie. This guy’s no joke, a throwback from a time forgotten, when real meat roamed the rinks and fought for keeps. I’m so scared of The Bone Doctor—everyone is. Rule #1 – Don’t make eye contact with The Bone Doctor. The game’s getting chippy and I just got a greasy assist on a big goal from our fourth-line. Next shift I’m buzzing around with confidence and slamming into opponents out there. I must have gotten too reckless because The Bone Doctor is yelling at me from the bench. “Big point for you eh, kid? You better settle down out here.” I skate back to the bench and act like I didn’t hear it or that it didn’t faze me, but I know that The Bone Doctor is the one who said it. If there’s one guy’s radar you don’t want to be on, it’s The Bone Doctor. This is the year that the legendary Robbie Schremp arrives on the pro hockey scene, up from Juniors in the OHL. His name precedes him and it’s no secret that he’s the most skilled and talented player on the ice. I can’t help but stare at him when he’s out there. I hop over the bench onto the ice and skate across the neutral zone to backcheck. Young Robbie Schremp is along the boards and skating up the right side of the ice. The Pens have possession of the puck and their right defenseman throws a suicide-pass up the boards and into Robbie’s skates, the puck careening like a grenade. I’m streaking across the neutral zone toward the puck like a fucking psychopath. Robbie is looking down at his skates, oblivious to the creature hunting him. I have the opportunity to absolutely demolish Robbie Schremp with a shoulder right through his chest, right through his heart. But I turn away from the hit. Instead of smashing my shoulder right through his soul, I hold up and play the puck and form a scrum in the neutral zone along the boards. I can’t believe I didn’t hit him. This is what I live for. This is how I became a legend at Lowell. Throwing bodychecks like this and crunching dudes into different dimensions. But I know why. Right before I lay the devastating hit, I see out of the corner of my eye that The Bone Doctor is on ice too, and once I destroy Robbie Schremp, The Bone Doctor will grab me by the collar and kick my ass for certain. All these thoughts and decisions happen instantaneously, and show me who I really am. I’m the only one who knows. Robbie had his head down and didn’t see the hit coming. The coaches will applaud me for making the smart read and not taking a charging penalty. But The Bone Doctor knows. Of course he does. Just us two. I let the fear reign supreme over me again, my master. How long can this go on? ------ Thanks for reading! I'm a Creative Writing English Major and just so happened to be a hockey fighter too and fought my way to the NHL in the most insane story in all of sports, actually written by the athlete himself. SEX DRUGS PUCKS AND SOULS: Secret Life of a Hockey Fighter. It's my soul, mind, guts, and nuts on full display. Guaranteed to blow your mind or your money back. Check out BobbyRobins.com for more info and to order 1st Edition Hardcovers and paperbacks. All the best.

Title: SEX DRUGS PUCKS AND SOULS: Secret Life of a Hockey Fighter -begins with and over sexualized boy with a big dream to play in the NHL -ends with an over sexualized man finding redemption and healing across the four categories in the title, and a literal climax. Bro, your story over a decade ago on your blog with your tuxedo photo about your abuse that happened planted a seed in my mind that I could tell my story too about that and the sexual turmoil and sexual identity confusion that would follow me for most of my life as I fought my way to the NHL with the Boston Bruins and became the oldest rookie to ever make an NHL Opening Day Roster at 32 years old. Career ended with a concussion and you're not allowed to talk about the C word these days in hockey it seems. But I'm talking about it. I'm looking for a real journalist to cover my story. The headmaster of the School of Greatness will recognize greatness, this I know for sure. This savage memoir is Greatness (and I say that with all humility knowing that my writing ability is a God-given talent), and I've captured something special with this one. Let's have a podcast, you audience will hear a story like they've never heard. Respect. Bobby