Bobby Robins: The Secret Life of a Hockey Fighter

An excerpt of Bobby Robins’ new book, “Sex, Drugs, Pucks and Souls—Secret Life of a Hockey Fighter.”

The son of a part-Filipino mother and white American father, Bobby Robins always knew he’d make it to the NHL. This is his incredible story.

In the Beginning

Bobby Robins knew what he wanted from the beginning.

“WRITE DOWN ONE THING YOU WISH YOU COULD CHANGE ABOUT yourself,” my second-grade teacher instructs. She hands a piece of paper to each student as she meanders through the rows of desks.

I know right away. I want to be white like everyone else. I want to look normal. I feel a pit growing inside my stomach, a warmth overtakes my face and neck. Thank God I’m unable to blush because of the pigmentation of my skin.

I’m too dark for them to know.

I’m seven years old.

This is early anxiety. I don’t know what it is yet. But I’ll come to know it well, its crippling claws.

I need to act fast and formulate a game plan. Or else I’ll be found out. Or else they’ll know I’m weak and scared. But I’ll never let them know that. I’ll be the best. I’ll always win. No matter what.

I wish I had different ears is what I write—even though I like my ears. I lie so they’ll never know my secrets.

I come home from school and look at myself in the mirror. Peer into my eyeballs. Perceive that there’s someone in there looking back at me. That there’s something more to me.

Soon the teacher makes us go around from desk to desk, saying what we want to be when we grow up.

I know instantly. I don’t want to be anything else.

I hear the other students tell their dreams—be a doctor, or an astronaut, or a marine biologist—and then it comes to me.

“I want to be a pro hockey player.”

Some of the class laughs.

But I know it’s my destiny.

After school, I go home and sit in the makeup chair in my mom’s bathroom. This bathroom is my sanctuary. I can hide out and look into the mirror. Be anyone I want to be.

I finally understand that I’m different—the only colored kid in my whole town. Peshtigo, Wisconsin—population three thousand— just me. I turn my head from side to side and look at the brown skin on the boyish curves of my face. The reason I feel different is because I am different.

There’s only one path for me now. I have to be the best. I’m going to make it all the way to the NHL.

I can feel it.

*         *         *

Bobby Robins’ Two Loves

Hockey all winter, baseball all summer.

MY MOM SIGNS ME UP FOR BASKETBALL, and they put me at point guard. I have a technique that’s unstoppable. I drive the basket as fast as I can and jump into the air. Flying toward my opponent. Forcing him to foul me. As I’m airborne, I gently flick the ball into the hoop. Most of the time the ball goes in, and I get to shoot a free throw. Sometimes it doesn’t, and I shoot two.

When I’m on the free throw line, I feel that festering fear that I have no armpit hair. The entire world is looking at me, and I know I’ll be found out. Lessons are forming early. I’m learning to perform at the highest levels under these circumstances—under this stress, under this upheaval.

The sleeveless jersey leaves me exposed. But I devise a plan.

Instead of shooting the ball in the traditional way, as my dad taught me—shooting like I’m in a phone booth, lifting my arms high into the air, releasing the ball, then flopping my hand like a dead fish—I shoot more like a girl. Keep my arms down at chest level. Release the ball from right under my chin. Then no one sees my smooth, hairless armpits.

No one says too much about my technique. I can bury those free throws and rack up the points.

Sports become a way for me to hide my shame. When I’m scoring points and making plays and winning games, no one asks any questions. They give me high-fives and pat me on the rear end and tell me I played great.

I play every sport imaginable. But my two loves are baseball and hockey. Hockey all winter, and baseball all summer. Then it happens.

A boy on my baseball team invites me over to his house. Tells me his dad has porno magazines. I know about porno already, and its existence. But I’ve never seen it before. I’m ready for this. I already feel that magnetic pull toward girls. One in particular, with her neon-yellow spandex. She makes me feel a certain way. I know I want more of that.

*         *         *

Climbing the Hockey Ladder

Playing a level up.

IT’S WINTER NOW. I START TO CLIMB THE HOCKEY LADDER. There’s something in the air—I can feel it. It’s clear that I have something special on the hockey rink that the other kids don’t. I can do things out there that no one’s ever seen before—up in our small border town between northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

I’m playing a level up, with kids a couple years older than me. It’s an outdoor rink in Marinette, and I wear a bright yellow helmet two sizes too big. A thick wool stocking cap underneath, to keep me warm on those northern Wisconsin nights.

I’m in line in the neutral zone at the face-off dot, waiting for my turn in the drill. I see some of the older kids pointing at me and laughing. I wonder if it’s because of my yellow helmet or my hand-me-down skates. They glide toward me and flick snow in my face with the blades of their hockey sticks.

“Hi, Brown Tootsie Roll,” a boy says.

“Brown Tootsie Roll!” they say together and laugh.

My eyes fall to my skates. I see the ice covered in a layer of snowflakes that has fallen from the sky above. I don’t look at the boys. I notice the cracks and bumps of the ice and sweep my stick back and forth, clearing away the snow.

Coach taps me on the shin pad.

“You ready, Bobby?” he says. “You’re up next.”

I skate the circles as fast as I can, pumping my legs underneath me. I catch the pass from Coach on my backhand, in stride. I stickhandle through the cones and shoot on the goalie, raising the puck over his glove, off the crossbar, and down into the net for a goal.

I get back in line, breathing heavy—wondering what a Brown Tootsie Roll is.

I keep getting better at hockey and I find myself in the big city of Green Bay the next season. Dad makes the one-hour commute to practice while I do homework in the passenger seat.

I’m surrounded by people that seem so foreign to me. I feel different from them. I’m just the boy from the small town up north who escaped. I’m still the only brown kid, even in the big city.

I find comfort with these wealthy kids and their families from Green Bay. I want to be like them. We traverse the Midwest, playing tournaments and chasing trophies. It’s on weekend road trips and hotel excursions that demons slowly begin to creep into my life, lurking in the shadows all around me.

These early teen years are a hard time for me. I don’t know why I feel the way I do, so lost and angry. I don’t even know who I am. Am I just a Brown Tootsie Roll? Why do no girls like me? The one I like says I’m cute—but cute like a puppy dog, and she’s not interested. She wants a man, not a boy. I feel like I’m always going to explode.

I just keep my focus on hockey—it’s my escape. It’s all I want to do. If I’m not on the ice practicing or traveling and playing games, I’m in the driveway on my rollerblades and ripping a plastic puck into the goal that my dad built out of two-by-fours and netting.

When it gets too dark to shoot pucks, I come inside to eat dinner. Then I’m right back at it. Stickhandling a golf ball around the living room. Toe-dragging under the chairs and coffee table.

Picturing myself in front of thousands of fans. Scoring the game winner in Game Seven.

I can see it, out there in the distance somewhere.

I just have to grow first. This doesn’t seem fair.

*         *         *

Military Academy

Something happens that changes the trajectory of Bobby Robins’ hockey career.

HIGH SCHOOL HOCKEY COMES, AND I HAVE TO MAKE A CHOICE. I’m not allowed to play for the varsity team in Green Bay because I live an hour away, outside the district. Do I come back to the Northwoods to play in Tiny Town, USA? Or keep this thing going, keep climbing the hockey ladder?

My parents and I go over the options and decide on military school, starting my sophomore year. But it’s not one of those kinds of military schools. This is my first taste of the elite life, Prep School. Everyone else is rich, but I know I’m not. I try my best to pretend that I am.

Culver Military Academy, on the shores of Lake Maxinkuckee. We’re on the ice every day and in the weight room and getting bigger, stronger, and faster. 

I play defense on the JV team. I’m a nobody really. But I’m a hard worker, known to be a little crazy. Kind of clunky out there but can move pretty good. I still have no armpit hair and a high-pitched voice that I mask by pretending that it’s lower than it is. I don’t think anyone knows. But there’s one guy on the Varsity A Team who knows. And he says, “Hi Bob” in an exaggerated low voice whenever he sees me. 

He knows. 

I’m fifteen years old. Something happens late in the season that changes the trajectory of my hockey career. We’re short on forwards because of some injuries and Coach calls me to the other side of the bench to play wing. He must see the terror in my eyes. I don’t know what to do.

“Just go as hard and as fast as you can,” he says. “Get in there on the forecheck and hit someone!”

His instructions are clear enough. The steel of my blades hits the ice as I jump over the boards. I black out and do things on the surface of that ice that no one’s ever seen before. I crush two players into the boards and they lie there in heaps and we get a scoring chance—the entire momentum of the game shifts.

When I get back to the bench, my teammates and Coach look at me like, “What just happened?”

I’m thinking the same thing.

It’s clear that I can do something out of the ordinary. I learn that I can put myself into a state of mind and body—I can become the hunter… and God help the hunted. All my prey can do is pray. I smash opponents in that game. From that point on, I never played defense again. I just smash.

I’m a forward. A rugged winger. A hard-nosed gritty dangerous forechecking menace.

I smash and flail and fling my body—a heat-seeking missile. I black out. And I like it. Forechecking for me is a higher state. It’s not really me there. I’m in there watching but out there on the ice, it’s not me. It’s a monster.

All those years of feeling so small and bullied in Wisconsin come out and erupt into collisions with opponents. I drive my shoulder through their body. And there’s nothing they can do about it.

The school year ends on a high note for me. There’s a buzz about my forechecking ability. I can tell that people are afraid of me. And I like that. It gives me a sense of worth.

I love the feeling of hunting down my opponent and homing in on the perfect angle, as I skate across the ice like a spear and drive my shoulder right through his heart

*         *         *

Varsity Blues

“Blackout” Bobby Robins

AS A SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD JUNIOR, I’M ON THE VARSITY B TEAM with Coach Norton. One step away from the top team at school. Coach Norton brings out the best in me. He’s an encourager and a nurturer. Throughout my junior year, I stick to the game plan and go as hard and as fast as I possibly can—let Blackout Bobby do what Blackout Bobby does best. But I’m not just effective as a forechecker and bodychecker. I’m becoming a good hockey player too, making the right reads and making the right plays out there.

We’re playing against one of the stud teams from Michigan. I’m flying all over the ice and score a couple of goals. I annihilate guys out there and piss people off. I love the feeling of competing and laying it all on the line. I think about the girls watching me in the stands. I wonder what they think.

During the handshake, a few guys give me dirty looks and drop their extended hands at the last second, opting not to shake mine. I just keep smiling, cocky, and think about the amazing game I played and our big win and those girls in the stands, gushing.

Toward the end of the line, I meet eyes with one of the players, a D-man who I’d been chasing around all night and hunting. I see his lips move and tongue curl up to the roof of his mouth, his teeth exposed, and a venom comes out and pierces me.

“[N****r].”

Everything goes black.

Then everything goes blood-red.

I punch him in the face and a skirmish erupts in the middle of the ice with both teams converging. I continue my barrage and throw punches at him, wanting to kill him, wanting to devour his soul.

This is a new kind of blackout.

The players push and punch, and the referees and coaches from both teams come on the ice to break up the fights.

Coach Norton zips over to me and pulls me out of the pile. “Bobby, Bobby!” he screams. “Stop! Stop!”

He drags me off the ice and into his office. All I can see is death and blood.

“What do you think you’re doing, Bobby?” he yells. I just start crying.

“He called me a [n****r].”

I lower my head into my jersey and shoulder pads, wishing I could escape right into my equipment like a traumatized turtle and hide forever. My soul hurts so bad. This is worse than Brown Tootsie Roll.

“He called me a [n****r].” I can barely get the sentence out.

I end up having my breakthrough season. I lead the team in scoring. I’m a feared competitor. I win the award for Varsity B Team MVP.

The oldest rookie to ever make an NHL Opening Day Roster at age 32, Bobby Robins got the chance to live his dream

*         *         *

Chasing the Dream

Hockey makes life simple. Put the puck in the net. Finish your checks. Work hard. Hoist trophies.

IT’S AROUND THESE LATE TEEN YEARS IN HIGH SCHOOL that the game transforms into something different altogether. Things become more serious. The stakes are higher than those innocent days of weekend tournaments and mini-sticks and ball hockey in hotel hallways. Now there’s competition and players nipping at heels.

I see this develop during my time at Culver, and I decide that I’ll always be the guy who’s nipping, gnawing, and clawing. I’ll be the guy who never gives up. That’s who I’ll be.

I learn fast that if I’m pissing people off by the way I play, I’m doing something good. That I’m playing the right way, with heart and grit and jam, and not caring what anyone else thinks. I don’t care that I skate differently than the rest of the guys. I don’t care that I can’t stickhandle like them. I know I can go fast as [hell] and hit guys harder than anyone I’ve ever seen. This is enough for me.

One day after practice, some of the boys are talking, and someone asks me if I think I’ll play in the NHL. I should feel embarrassed about this uncomfortable situation I’m in, but this time I don’t. I say yes, that I think I’ll play in the NHL. They laugh. I don’t blame them either. I just say yes, and I know it. I know if I just keep going as hard as I can, it’s going to happen….

*         *         *

Junior Hockey Adventure

This is Junior hockey. We’re allowed to fight now. Drop your gloves and hunt for souls.

“FIRST SHIFT, GO FIGHT SOMEONE,” A WISE HOCKEY SAGE PROPHECIES to me. “This will get you noticed, then focus on playing good hockey for the rest of the tryout.” 

Real fighting, bare knuckles, bone on bone—shows you who you really are. No room for anything but truth and certainty when throwing bones at an opponent and getting bones thrown back at you. The only things present are lightning-fast twitching reactions of muscles and tendons. They begin as electrical impulses of sparks from somewhere deep inside you. Their only reason for existing is to keep you alive. 

This is Junior hockey. We’re allowed to fight now. Drop your gloves and hunt for souls. 

It’s crunch time. Either I make a Junior team, or who knows what’ll happen. Maybe I get a job at the cheese factory or find somewhere to go to school. Maybe I just rot away and give up on my dreams altogether. An endless stream of uncertainty and unknowns. 

OK, here I am.

Open tryout with the Springfield Junior Blues of the North American Hockey League, Tier 2 Junior A. I have to make the team, period. 

I’ve never been in a fight before, on or off the ice. Mostly because I’m scared—scared to lose.

Get the whole UNCENSORED story—order your copy of Bobby Robins’ “Sex, Drugs, Pucks and Souls” on Amazon today!

Also available at BobbyRobins.com