At one point I got a call from Marty Brodeur, who is now working for Team Canada, and he asked me about possibly playing in some tournaments for them in Finland, Russia and Switzerland and then maybe having a chance to play for them in the Olympics in 2018. I was really excited about that because I've never played in the Olympics before, and that could have been a great experience.
That was my plan until the Ducks called and gave me a chance to come back to Anaheim. Ducks Director of Player Development Todd Marchant, who was my teammate for years in Anaheim, actually called me first and asked me to think about it. It was August 17 and our kids were starting school on the 28th in Denver, so we were just about to leave our summer home near Montreal to drive to Colorado.
I thought about it all night and didn't get much sleep. Being a professional athlete is a great life, but it can be difficult on families when you go to a new team. In addition to finding a place to live, your kids have to find some new friends, get used to a new school, connect with new teammates and everything else that comes to moving to an unfamiliar place. So when the opportunity with the Ducks came to us, I sat down and talked with all of them - my wife Marie Claude, my 11-year-old son Samuel, my 8-year-old daughter Emily and my 5-year-old son Cedric - to see what they thought about the possibility.
They were all excited about it, and Samuel especially didn't even hesitate for a second. As soon as I asked him he said, "Oh yeah, absolutely. The Ducks have a good team and I have a lot of my old friends out there." He got lucky in that he was able to get back on the same hockey team in Orange County he used to play on, and he has a lot of his buddies in school and in the neighborhood that he gets to reunite with. The same goes for Emily, who was really excited about seeing all of her friends out here again.