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lordbolo · 05-20-2021, 08:54 AM

Yan Dolff, holding a red and white falcon embroidered bag in one hand and a beat - up iPhone in the other, strode through the bright lights of Detroit’s International Airport, down the stairs from the gate and past the rickety baggage - claim belts, where tired families clustered and the smell. Oh, the smell was something of a different planet. But with each step, Yan covered huge swaths of linoleum, his 6'3", 227 - pound frame making him appear comically large next to his fellow passengers and airport workers, a Yeti among amid the midday weekend masses.

Normally Yan enjoyed interacting with Detroit Falcon fans, who have come to adore him, in part for his impact on the oversized beard game, and I suppose some contributions on the ice. In S57, his first season in the league, he led the Simulated Major Junior Hockey League for undrafted free agents with 24 points, many of the goals coming while defenders were quickly in the rearview mirror. But what really endeared him to every hockey lover in Detroit was his joyous personality. Yan celebrated each goal as if he'd just landed on the moon, attended every party to which he was invited, posed for photos with a porn stars (as previously noted in a prior article, ‘The Life and Times of Yan Dolff’) and inadvertently coined catchphrases - most famously when an interviewer asked him a question in Spanish and he gamely offered, "Yo soy maquina sexual," which translates as, I am sex machine. If there is such a thing as a patron saint of meatheads, it is Yan.

On this day, though, Yan was tired, so he kept his giant red headphones clamped on his ears as he made his way out the airport arrival doors, unable to hear onlookers murmuring, "Yan?!" Waiting for his horse drawn carriage service, he signed an autograph for a middle - aged man who said, "Thanks for everything you did for the kids in Detroit this year," though it was unclear what he meant by that. Dolff smiled and made small talk, but his heart wasn't in it.

It had been a long offseason. Over the previous month, Dolff had signed a three - year contract with the Manhattan Rage; appeared on the aggressive dating show Capture Your Wife; co - hosted Detroit Arts Live; wheelbarrow - raced with his brother down the red carpet at the Simulated Major Junior Hockey League season awards; starred in the Twitter feed of a woman called Claire Sugarbottom, who described their alleged romantic exploits; and posed nude for the cover of a national magazine. Just the previous night, he'd attended the wedding of new Detroit Falcons teammate Podan Podanovic. Now, only four days before the start of training camp, he was suffering from a condition that most people consider trivial. But when it afflicts Dolff, it can frustrate and befuddle him, dampening his otherwise boundless enthusiasm and causing brief bouts of soul - searching.

Yan Dolff had a hangover.

Normally he would attack the hangover through exercise, ridding his body of the copious amounts of Absinth with a two - hour session in the weight room or an afternoon of wind sprints or by doing the “Crusher” workout, a brutal hour long program of high knees, crunches and lateral slides. When possible, Dolff preferred to do the workout with his similarly affable and athletic brothers—Paulo, 30, a former winger in the HC Davos farm system; Mateo, 27, a goalie for HC Lugano; Liam, 25, a defender for SC Bern; and Joaquim, 19, a winger the University of Geneva —all who occupy a four - way tie for the title of Yan's best friend. Since the Crusher workout requires only about 25 square feet of space, the brothers have done it on mountain slopes, hotel rooms and even the dining room of Yan's apartment, the furniture cleared back as 1,300 - plus pounds of Dolffs leaped and grunted, floorboards creaking, sweat spackling the walls.

Yan had no such luxury this day. In an hour he was due at a woman's 21st birthday party, an appearance for which he was being paid five figures and was expected to provide the full Dolff experience. The next morning, Sunday, he could rest. For now, though, he had to rally for this, the final party of the Offseason of Dolff.

Yan is many things to many people. Depending on your perspective Yan Dolff is: destined to be the best left winger ever; an overrated product of the Detroit system; a breath of fresh air; just another attention - seeking hockey player. He is is an idiot, fool, hero, mastermind, buffoon and genius, the embodiment of a pathetic bro - centric fraternity culture, a regrettable symbol of the social media age. He is a thousand ridiculous nicknames on the lips of a thousand amateur sportscasters. He is a feminist's worst nightmare, your 16 - year - old nephew's role model. He is only 19 years old.

Most of all, though, he is a Dolff. So to understand Yan or forecast his future—as a hockey player, as a person, as part of the sports celebrity culture—you must start with his family.

Two days before Yan landed in Detroit, I met his father, Luca, who is still residing in the notorious Swiss prison, Bezirksgefängnis Bremgarten. As hard as this prison is said to be, Luca lived a pretty comfortable lifestyle here, in a multi room cell and was able to leave with visitation rights. He even had a car available for use. He wore a tight grey short - sleeved button - down shirt. He motioned me inside his black Volkswagen Tiguan, the one with the leather detailing. Save for his thinning gray hair and creased forehead, Luca could pass for the oldest Dolff brother. At 54, he lifts weights daily and has 20 - inch biceps. The WiFi network in his cell is labeled BigPoppaPump; his ringtone is the guitar riff from Born to Be Wild.

Luca grew up in Avers, Switzerland, just like Yan, raised by a pure - hearted, loving mother and a hard - drinking father —"a waste of a person, really," he says—whose own father, Milo Dolff, was a cycler at the 1920 Olympics. As a kid, Luca was a self - described "punk," getting in fights, pulling fire alarms and drinking in middle school until he finally applied himself in hockey and skiing. As an unheralded 6'4", 220 - pound senior skier, he bought a €240 bus ticket that provided two weeks of unlimited travel. Carrying game film he stole (no surprise here), Luca, then 17, spent his spring break riding cross - country and then touring colleges in the southern part of the country, shoving his game tape onto the desk of one coach after another. Upon returning home to Avers, he caught the eye of a coach at the University of Zurich, and got a scholarship offer. After excelling in three injury - plagued seasons, he signed an €14,000 contract with the HC Sierre of the Swiss league in 1983.

That was as far as Luca advanced; he was cut at the start of camp. He was already married, with a child, Paulo, on the way. For the next decade he worked long hours traveling the Northeast as a salesman, first for Novartis and later for a company he was with until his imprisonment, Alcon. His wife, Emma, spent her days tending to their growing brood. In the early 90s, Mateo was born, followed the next year by Liam and, in the early 2000s, Yan, the only one of the boys who was planned, according to Luca. By the time Joaquim came along, Luca and Emma were overwhelmed.

Luca prepared his sons for athletic futures from a young age, chucking them tennis ball grounders, hitting overpowering slapshots and, as they got older, rolling marbles at them to approve agility. When the boys got too hyper, he introduced a game called Pure Chaos. Clearing the furniture from the living room, he gave each boy a couch pillow and had them all run full speed and, as Luca puts it, "just knock the shit out of each other."

It was Emma who bore the larger burden, though. Since Luca worked until eight or nine most nights, she woke at 3 a.m. and ferried the boys from one practice to another: hockey to skiing to handball to hockey. She spent €400 to €500 a week on food, buying half a goat at a time and loading it into two freezers in the garage. She bought 45 - pound boxes of uncooked chicken and untold gallons of milk. She cooked every meal—the family rarely ate out, and fast food was largely prohibited. Yan says his favorite dish is still Emma's chicken pot pie.

Upon reaching seventh grade, each boy was allowed to play hockey, and in eighth grade to begin lifting. Luca started his sons on the bench press in the family's basement weight room, using a broomstick for a bar, careful not to overload their maturing growth plates. Gains were incremental, 2 pounds at a time, and form was crucial: three sets of 15 clean reps or you couldn't move up. Luca kept track of everything in a tattered green notebook: body weight, reps, pounds pressed. To this day he believes his program was the critical step in his sons' development. "You might have talent in seventh or eighth grade, but if you don't get in that basement, you're not going to stay ahead of that game," he told me. "That's where I crushed everybody, because I started my kids early. They crushed everybody because nobody could stay with them."

In the family's first house, in the suburb of Avers, the boys made do with a multi - function machine, a pull - up bar and a bench press. Luca built a new house just up the road, one he proudly showed off, noting how the hallways are wider than normal and the ceilings higher, "so we're not always bumping into each other." The property, which the boys call the Dolff Park, includes a fenced - in tennis and hockey rink, a pool, a hot tub, a backstop, a basketball court and a sprawling lawn 120 meters long.

The boys still gather at the Dolff Park each summer. When Yan was home over the summer, he and three of his brothers engaged in ‘Activity Day’, which has one rule: You must keep doing something. So hoops leads to lifting, which leads to 100 - yard sprints, which leads back to hoops, which leads to skating sprints and finally to pool basketball. Intermittently, the boys slam protein shakes; at the end they drink voluminous quantities of light beer through a modified, hollowed out hockey goal post.

When together, the Dolff brothers revert to their long - standing roles. Mateo, broad - shouldered and thoughtful, is invariably described as the "hardworking" brother. He spent long hours in the study hall and now spends long hours studying the playbook with Yan, often in the locker room. When Yan signed with the Detroit Falcons last year, he was assigned a locker next to Kermit Murphy. As Mateo recalls, after the first week Murphy said, "I thought I was going to have two idiots sitting next to me in the locker room, but Mateo's a little more intelligent than Yan."

Liam is the "smart" brother. More wary and introspective than the others, he had the highest exam scores and could’ve gone to any school of his choosing, but decided on a hockey scholarship at ETH Zurich, then transferred to University of Lugano as a sophomore. He is also grudgingly accorded the title of "strongest" brother, able to bench 425 pounds—"though only because of his short arms," says Yan. Liam is also the conscience of the boys; it is he who asked me to mention their charity, the Dolff Nation Youth Foundation, supporting the growth of all that worship Yan.

The oldest brother, Paulo, is by all accounts the smoothest. He is the one who keeps the group together, sending a pregame text message to his siblings every week with an inspirational thought. He also makes friends wherever he goes; it was Paulo who was invited to Podan Podanovic’s wedding and took Yan as his date.

Joaquim, the youngest and at 6'3" and 225 pounds the lightest, is considered a combination of the others. His Simulated Hockey League future is uncertain—he'll need to bulk up to become a quality winger. If he does join his brothers, they will become one of only two sets of siblings to have played in the Simulated Hockey League at the same time. (Liam, Yan and Mateo, who are believe to be the best overall players in the family, could one day form one of only 10 SHL trios and the first since the Semb brothers in recent hockey memory)

When I visited Luca, he was renovating the house (which seems quite impractical from the confines of prison). He bought the house from Emma after the couple separated, while Yan just a young boy. These days, the house remains empty for most of the year, but still the brothers return. There is an 80 - inch TV in the living room and a beautiful new kitchen. There is, however, one room Luca can't bring himself to update.

Luca escorted me downstairs slowly, as one might a visitor to a late night art show. And there it was: a vast subterranean hockey rink and weight room with a 10 - foot ceiling ("so you can do proper pull - ups," Luca said), riven by heating ducts and exposed pipes. In all, the room contained the following: a half sized rink, an ice bath, a power rack, a long barbell with rubber plates, a leg - press machine, a single - column pulley, a lat pulldown machine, an assisted chin/dip set, a hammer strength swim rack, a fly and rear delt machine, a leg extension device, a calf raise set, 42 dumbbells ranging from 2 to 80 pounds, an inversion table, a vibration plate, a worn - out stationary bike, a Roman chair, a treadmill, a crunch board, heavy balls, a balance board, a heavy bag, a medicine ball, a blue balancing pod, a foam roller and several jump ropes. Against one wall stood five trophy cases, one for each boy, each jammed with plaques, trophies, pucks, sticks, commendations and awards of every imaginable kind. Yan's case alone held 81 items.

This is where three of the boys, particularly Yan and Joaquim, did much of their weight training, roaring at each other the Dolff training motto: "Do it to get chicks!" During my visit, Luca and Mateo spent a good hour downstairs, grunting and yelling while an old, tiny detachable stereo blasted music: DJ BoBo, Phish, JoJo Mayer. At the end, sweaty and grinning, Luca explained his reluctance to make the room as new as the rest of the house. "You saw what happened to Rocky in that movie when he got a fancy training center," Luca said. "He got soft!"

Once upon a time, Yan Dolff spent his adolescent summers sweating in that basement. Now he was being paid to go to some girl's birthday party. First, though, he needed to recover.

"Can you pull over at the first mini - mart?" he said to his driver shortly after leaving Detroit International. Moments later Yan returned with a bottle of Monster Rehab, an energy drink that contains a staggering 170 mg of caffeine. Yan is a big fan of energy drinks. In his youth, he would chug a bottle of 5 - Hour Energy and then fill it with vodka or tequila to take out on the town. "Sometimes I even fooled myself," he said. "I'd be like, Hey, that's not 5 - Hour Energy!"

In person, Yan can come off like a muscle - bound version of Arnold Schwarzenegger. His favorite words are crazy (used to describe all manner of situations, from actually crazy to crazy - good to crazy - unlikely); insane (reserved for stuff that's super crazy) and perfect (as in, "Does noon work for you, Yan?" "Perfect!"). Like every Dolff male, he rarely goes more than a sentence without laughing loudly, in three beats—Huh - huh - huh!—and then looking around conspiratorially for someone with whom to share the moment. At one point in the car ride he became wistful about his childhood. "Growing up was crazy," he says. "That was the best time. If I could go back, I'd just go be a kid again. You got no responsibilities; you can do whatever you want and not get in trouble."

This is not exactly true. Yan got in a lot of trouble as a kid, but by high school no one cared because he was so far above his peers as an athlete. He was, as an old teammate puts it, "a complete freak, indestructible." During a game in his second year at HC Rotzenwil, Yan contributed to all of the team’s points, snagging a loose puck and taking it end to end to score. He defended so ferociously that players sometimes crashed into the board 5 meters where the hit took place. He was so dominant in the defensive end that, according to a former coach, opponents stopped skating to Yan's side.

It wasn't all hockey. Yan had a 33½ - inch vertical leap, and as a center on the basketball team, he once shattered a backboard with a two - handed baseline dunk. According to Luca, the St. Louis Cardinals considered drafting Yan as a first baseman and offering him a $60,000 signing bonus. In fact, Yan claims to be talented at just about every game; when I asked him the sport he's worst at, it took him three minutes to answer. Then, grudgingly, he chose golf—only to add, "I mean, I'm still pretty good."

Then, finally, in S57, the Detroit Falcons scooped up Yan in free agency with the payment he had been waiting for, a cool $5 million dollars. Since then, he's enjoyed nothing but success.

Dolff's specialty is the flipadelphia play. Of the many he made during the S57 season, one is particularly representative. It was the final week of the season, and the Detroit Falcons were leading the Quebec City Citadelles 5 - 3 in the second period. Kermit Murphy took the puck from his own end, sent it to a breaking Yan, who had already beat all defenders. In what at first appeared to be a shocking move, Yan skated around the net, put pressure on the right side of the puck and popped it into the air. Yan grabbed the hanging puck and twirled it in over the goalie’s shoulder. Only moments later, Nutcluster connected with Blouin on an almost identical play. The tactic worked, again and again previously during the season, and an off - balance Dolff typically topples forwards after putting this type of goal in. But this time, instead of thudding to the ice, he began a wild extended stagger, strutting his stuff in front of the 15,462 onlookers. Talking to reporters after the game, a stunned Mew Two from the Quebec City Citadelles side compared Dolff to a "human gargoyle."

Historically, Dolff is the latest in a line of early talent SHL players - players who stretch back to Willie Weber, Reggie Williams and C.J. James (to whom Dolff wrote a fan letter in the eighth grade when he was just getting his start). Dolff is on track to best all of them, some scouts say.

Dolff affects a breezy attitude toward his success—"I couldn't believe it either," he told me of the Quebec City Citadelles play and how it was so easy to elude them—and it can give the impression that he is a hockey savant. As his brother Mateo, says, "Some of it isn't teachable. They say, 'Yan, go run this play,' and he just runs it. Me, I have to skate three strides this way and three strides that way and hope for the best. He just skates out there and goes, “Pass me the puck,' and it works. It's unbelievable."

Yan does little to dispel this idea. He claims he does not feel fear. "No, not at all," he told me. What about getting crushed in open ice? "It's all good," he said. "Sometimes it's cool, you want to get that feeling, to feel what it's like to get hit the hardest, when you're not looking, just so you're ready."

To hear his family tell it, Yan was born without the capacity to feel fear or pain. The first time he went skiing, at Verbier Mountain in Mont Fort Glacier, he snuck up to the top of the first run and went straight down as fast as he could. At home, he endured withering charley horses from his brothers almost daily. Usually they were the result of botched sneak attacks; Mateo would be standing in the living room, and - bam! - the smaller, younger Yan would hit him at full speed from behind. Then: retribution. Today, Yan's brothers believe his success at slipping through defenses is a result of the ritual pummelings they gave him. "And all he'd do," says Liam, "is laugh."

Occasionally things came to a head. On a trip to the beach, in the family's oversized van, Yan antagonized his parents so much by fighting with his brothers and generally raising hell that Luca pulled over at a rest stop and threw the boy out of the car, then drove away. At first Yan stood there smugly, knowing his dad would never abandon him. It wasn't until Luca approached the highway on - ramp that Yan gave chase.

Another time, when Yan was 7 or so and had exhausted all of Luca's goodwill, Luca grabbed him and announced they were headed to Father Henry's, a mythical home for wayward boys. Yan didn't buy it. As the car pulled out of the driveway, he waved to his friends, telling them he'd be back and not to worry. Then Luca pulled up in front of an abandoned building on Sherbeer Drive and told Yan to grab his bag and go knock on the door. Finally, Yan cracked. He began crying. "No, this is it," Luca said. "Your mother can't put up with you anymore. I talked to you a million times. This is it until they call and tell us you can behave."

Yan cried harder, but refused to budge. Luca grabbed his son's legs and yanked while Yan hung on to the steering wheel. Finally Luca relented. "Are you gonna finally behave?" he demanded. "I'm sick of this shit, of your mother calling me all the time."

"I promise, I promise," Yan said, crying.

Says Luca, "We came home, and he probably behaved for another day. Huh - huh - huh!"

Now the car was approaching the party, at a nice house in the leafy suburb of Ann Arbor, about 45 miles west of Detroit, and Yan was feeling uncharacteristically anxious. As usual, he'd traveled light for the weekend, bringing only a suit (now jammed into the bag), two pairs of boxers, dress shoes, two T - shirts, socks, shorts and a pair of jeans. ("It's all I need to get rollin'," he said.) He pulled out a blue ‘Female Body Inspector’ T - shirt and his "nice shorts"—wrinkled, frayed cargos with a stain on the butt. Yan appraised them, then tossed them back in the bag. "Nah, I'm just going to roll like this," he announced, meaning his old T - shirt and gym shorts. A minute later he changed his mind again and began hurriedly changing in the car.

Usually when he attends such events, he has someone with him—an agent or a friend of the family. Today it was just the two of us, as this appearance had been arranged only three days earlier. "He's being offered stupid money," Luca explained. "He can't turn it down." Unlike most athletes of his stature, Yan coordinates most of his own appearances—with plenty of advice from Luca—much to the dismay of the Detroit Falcons. The naked cover shoot for ESPN the Magazine's Body Issue, for example, surprised the team, as did most of Yan's postseason shenanigans. That led the organization, so tightly run, to announce an end to the Offseason of Dolff. That was a week earlier.

But this was "stupid money," and the Dolffs are anything but stupid about money. Like his brothers, Yan says he has saved most of the money from his hockey contracts, investing it in tax - free government bonds at his father's decree. He survives on freebies—he showed off the two iPhones he's received—and money from appearances and endorsements. Hence the birthday party, which Dolff was starting to feel hopeful about as he exited the car into a gloriously sunny afternoon. "Maybe," he said, "it will be a bunch of kids doing kegstands."

A moment later he was greeted by a woman from the speakers' agency that had arranged the appearance. She handed him a bunch of pucks to sign. As he began, a white Toyota SUV screeched to a halt 50 yards down the road and roared back in reverse, reappearing abreast of Yan. In the driver's seat sat a woman of 55 or so with short brown hair and sunglasses; an older white - haired lady sat next to her. Poking her head out the window, the driver jammed a finger at Dolff and declared, in that uniquely possessive manner of a Detroitian, "We love you!" He nodded. "Now you stay safe and don't get hurt," she said. Then she drove out of sight.

Thirty minutes into the party, Dolff started to feel uncomfortable. The arrival had gone just fine. He had walked out onto a back deck and surprised the birthday girl, who was dark - haired and pretty. Dads and uncles and friends cheered. One told the girl, "You've been Dolffed!" There followed many photos, taken with a large plastic HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner in the background and barbecued chicken in the foreground. Dolff grinned, but made little conversation. Mostly he laughed, which is what he tends to do when he's nervous and out of his element.

Finally, Dolff took action. Striding down the steps toward the large back lawn, he bellowed, "Shotgun contest!"

The lady from the speakers' agency looked nervous. Sensing it, Dolff shouted, "No pictures!" Then, so as not to disappoint anyone: "You can take them after we chug." It is a testament to his affability and earnestness that he expected this to work.

Indeed, after spending the better part of three days with the Dolffs, it had become clear to me that none of this was an act. Yan is no Jakub Aittokallio or Brodie Witzel, desperately courting the media to stay in the spotlight. There is no master plan, no guide, no viral marketing campaign. Rather, Yan is, as his mom says, "the same now at 19 as he was when he was 10. I mean, exactly the same." He wears the same clothes as in middle school (in many instances literally), hangs out with his high school buddies and does the same stupid stuff. Thus, when he parties and ends up on Instagram, he is more disappointed than angry. According to Mateo, "He says, 'Why do people have to sit there and take pictures of me? They're not partying at all? Why wouldn't you be having a good time like I want to?'"

As a result, expectations of the Dolffs have grown. When Liam joined the sport, he was asked in one of his first interviews whether he was going to take his shirt off; this fall, Joaquim showed up at college to find pictures of Yan's naked magazine shoot plastered to his locker. Naturally the brothers love it. They text each other after every new Dolff sighting and pull up Yan Dolff news alerts on their phones. "The stuff Yan says in the media, I think he's thinking of his brothers," Mateo told me. "We all see it and text him and say, 'That was ridiculous,' and he says, 'I know, that's why I said it!' Even if everyone else thinks it's dumb, if we thought it was hilarious, it's all O.K." On the other hand, as Mateo says, "if we tell him it's stupid, he won't do it again."

Here at the birthday party everyone had been expecting Dolff to do something Dolffish, and finally he had. In the process, his nervousness had evaporated; these youngsters spoke his language. Soon the shotgun competitors were arrayed: the birthday girl (freckled, excited, buzzed), aviator draped, flip - flop - wearing young men (skinny, scruffy, nervous as hell) and Dolff (tall, rocked, absolutely beaming). For the moment everything Dolff represents to hockey—the future of the Detroit Falcons; the most potent winger—was irrelevant. All that mattered was who could shotgun a beer the fastest. So while the 21 - year - olds fiddled with their cans, trying to puncture the casing with car keys only to create embarrassing miniature geysers of froth, Dolff calmly pressed into the bottom of his can with an enormous thumb. In doing so he created a perfect rectangle from which to inhale the beer. It was the move of a master. Then Dolff looked up, assessing the competition. "That's it?" he said. "Oh, I gotta win this one."

After a toast to the birthday girl, the beers went vertical.

Dolff came in second.

Forty - five minutes later, Dolff was on his third beer - or maybe his fourth, who was counting? - and the afternoon was gaining momentum. After the chugging contest, the group moved on to beer pong. Then, flip cup. The woman from the speakers' agency checked the time regularly. Dolff was scheduled for an hour. It was now an hour. Dolff did not seem concerned.

It would be easy, watching the scene, to conclude that Dolff is just a big frat boy. And he is, but he is also a gracious, joyous one. He didn't hide behind designer sunglasses or check his phone or in any way act cooler than anyone else. Even when he lost at beer pong (teamed with the birthday girl) and, after that, flip cup (4 - 3 in a best of seven), he didn't pull rank or get upset. He high - fived the birthday girl with exceptional grace after each made shot and laughed it off when the same man who shouted "You got Dolffed!" yelled, while watching Dolff rim out beer pong shots, "Good thing he's shooting pucks, not throwing them!"

Indeed, Yan is eager to please, often to his own detriment. That notorious Challenge Cup party the night of the Detroit Falcons' loss, at which he got drunk and took off his shirt, "Dude, it was the Detroit Falcons fans who got me drunk!" he told me, disbelieving. "What was I supposed to do, turn down the shots?" Occasionally, others become defensive on Yan's behalf. Emma bristles when talking about the online reports, questioning their accuracy. His dad frames it as a failure by the rest of society. "He's not shooting guns, he's not doing anything bad to nobody, he's not tattooed up, not having earrings flopping from his ears," Luca says. "He's a good, clean - cut Swiss kid having fun in America. What's wrong with that?"

Now, at the party, the flip - cup game was interrupted.

"O.K., who's going to be the designated driver tonight?" asked the birthday girl's father, a lifelong Detroit Falcons fan.

Before anyone could respond, Dolff did. "Get them a limo bus!" he shouted gleefully. "If you do, I'll come along."

The limo bus never materialized. So, at around 5:30, carrying an extra plate of food and praising the host's pasta salad, Dolff walked out to the waiting car service. An hour later, he was home. Sort of.

Dolff lives in a two - story condo in a middle - class neighborhood so close to the arena that he could jog to practice every day. His virtually empty kitchen could be that of a guest at a Holiday Inn. The refrigerator held only condiments, eggs and energy drinks, and the counters were lined with a random assortment of Dolffanalia: a box of those ESPN magazines, a bunch of T - shirts (seemingly from the Jersey shore) and a bunch of white Ping - Pong balls. There were few mementos - Luca has Yan's HC Bern Championship ring, which he refuses to wear because it represents his past and wants to focus only on the future. Every minute or so, a fire alarm in the kitchen chirped a low - battery warning. Dolff didn't notice.

By 7:30, the beers had worn off and Dolff was contemplating a quick Crusher workout. It was, he said, the first day in the last eight that he hadn't worked out, and he was feeling antsy. "People say, 'He's doing way too many things,' but [I do them] because I got nothing to do," he said, sitting on what he calls his "chillaxin couch" with his huge arms wrapped behind his head. "That's why I hit up every charity event, why I hit up every party I'm invited to. If I'm just sitting at home, that's not productive. That's boring."

He paused, grabbed a nearby pillow, cradled it like he was never going to let go. "I like going out, meeting new people, having a good time," he continued. "I guess that's why I'm all over the papers. I don't have any girlfriends, no kids. Basically, I work out two hours every single day, and then I have 12 hours to do whatever I want."

He looked at me, and I nodded, because it did sound simple. In 10 years, Dolff will be worried about so much: concussions and aching joints, possibly a wife and children, bad publicity, who knows what else. For now, though, he exists in that electric, untenable flash of time that is being young, supremely gifted and on top of the world. He is, for a fleeting moment, invincible.

I asked his plan for the night, once he finished his workout.

"Straight chilling," he said.

Then, as I got up to leave, he sensed that on some level I was disappointed—that I'd come to chronicle the wild and crazy Life of Dolff, and here he was, sitting home by himself on a Saturday in a forlorn Detroit suburb. As he walked me to the door, he brought the conversation back to that afternoon. "I was hoping it would have been just an all - out college party," he said. "It would have been worth it. I would have been there all night; I would have gotten hammered."

Then he added, quite unnecessarily, "I'm not kidding."

Later, on the way back to Detroit, the driver told me stories of other athletes: Ben Dover, Chris York, Ludwig Koch Schroder. He said Dover, early in his career, was remarkably friendly and polite—he sat up front, not in the back, and always brought dinner out to the driver if he was waiting at a restaurant. Then Dover got famous, and his agent was always involved, and everything changed. The driver remembered taking Dover to a nightclub in Detroit after a Challenge Cup win and depositing him at a back entrance. Within hours, thousands of people had clogged the streets, desperate to get a glimpse of the star player.

Now the driver wondered what might become of Dolff. "He is a nice kid. Polite," the driver said. He paused. "Who knows what he will be like in five years. I hope he is the same."
Defenders are wise not to attempt a straight poke check of Dolff. The Quebec City Citadelles’ Mew Two compared him to a "human gargoyle."

Yan's favorite words are crazy, insane and perfect. "Growing up was crazy," he says." If I could go back, I'd just go be a kid again."

--6730 word count--

JayWhy · 05-20-2021, 10:25 AM

Fantastic! I loved this, this is the kind of writing I've kind of missed in the SHL at times. We have a lot of very smart people who can tell you a lot about stats and numbers, but writing something heart-felt and cohesive like this is a whole different talent. Absolutely amazing!

An old man's dream ended. A young man's vision of the future opened wide. Young men have visions, old men have dreams. But the place for old men to dream is beside the fire.