NATIONAL POST Playing with pain PUBLICATION:
NATIONAL POST DATE: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2000 BYLINE:

Adam Graves has been honoured for his charity work and class. But the NHL good guy is struggling after losing his father and son RYE, N.Y. -
A year ago, before loss took up residence in Adam Graves' life, he and his daughter and his father went Christmas shopping for one of his favourite charities, the Toys for Tots program in New York. Daughter Madison, then 5, thought the shopping expedition was for her benefit and excitedly pawed at the toys until her father gently explained they were for children whose families couldn't afford to buy them.

As much as a five-year -old can understand issues of poverty and need and charity, she embraced the idea. Recently, Madison, who has already suggested it would be better if her dad's team, the New York Rangers, played more afternoon games, asked her father when they were going shopping for the other kids again. It is a simple story told with obvious pleasure by Graves, a National Hockey League player whose life counters the stereotype of the selfish millionaire athlete.

He learned early from his father about charity and passes this knowledge to his daughter. He's also learned recently about loss, of a father and a son. And suddenly the man so quick to lend a helping hand finds himself the one in need. He has struggled to find his game face and, at 32, has dropped from the Rangers' top line to its checking line.

It brings to mind an album released by Lou Reed in the early 1990s, after the deaths of two close friends to cancer, called Magic and Loss. For two years when Tie Domi was a Ranger, he lived with Graves. He once said that Graves was the only hockey player he would let anywhere near any of the women in his family. Graves ended up marrying Domi's cousin, Violet. "We're like brothers," says Domi. "I don't think the nicest guy in hockey could accurately describe him. He's never in a bad mood."

The two talk frequently. And so Domi, who has known the magic for many years, knows also the terrible toll of Graves' loss. About 10 months ago, Violet prematurely gave birth to twin boys, Jaxon and Logan. Twenty-three days later Jaxon died. Two weeks after, Graves honoured commitments to help out at one of the many charities he supports in New York and Ontario. He did so because it was what his dad would have done, because it's what he'd been taught was right. "When you make a commitment, you go. My dad always said that," says Graves.

Shortly after Jaxon's death, Graves father, Henry, a retired police officer, was diagnosed with cancer. He died in June. "He kind of got hit with a double-barrel," Domi says. Two years ago, the OHL's Windsor Spitfires retired Graves's sweater. Peter Karmanos and Jim Rutherford, owner and GM of the NHL Carolina Hurricanes who once ran the junior hockey team in Windsor, flew in for the event even though Graves had not played for either of them in years. Graves' former billets were there. And his parents. Graves must have signed 200 autographs, posed for 100 pictures, bending down to speak to each child who came his way. "If you were looking to have a son, you'd want to have Adam," says Rangers coach Ron Low.

Every community in which Graves has lived has been enriched by his presence, says Low, who was the assistant coach in Edmonton when Graves arrived and helped Edmonton win its last Stanley Cup in 1989-90. "Not once has he ever thought anything more of himself than he does of the general population all the time. He's a pretty amazing guy."

As players take their cues on how to behave from teammates like Graves, he too has learned from watching others. He recalls going to charity events with Randy Gregg when both were with the Oilers, watching Mark Messier and others outside the game. But above all, there was Henry Graves, his father, a Toronto-area police officer who, along with his mother, took in hundreds of foster children.

Father and son would talk every day on the phone, says Domi. After Graves' father retired, he was often on hand with his son at charity events. He helped at the Big Brothers one-day hockey school Graves organized, he was at the fishing derby and the dinner for Kosovo refugees. "If there's a person I want to be like and want to emulate, it is and always will be my dad," Graves says. What for many would have been acts of duty, Graves has turned into part of the family routine. It has led to humanitarian awards, including last year's National Hockey League's Foundation Award for community work and The Sporting News' "Good Guy" Award.

"It's a small window of opportunity [to help people]. I think you have to take advantage of that. "This goes way beyond the game." Uncomfortable with being praised for his off-ice work, Graves regularly points to the volunteers at organizations who put in hours every month without a nod of recognition while he gets all the praise when he shows up for a few hours. "You get more credit than you actually deserve," he says. "No one person is more important than the next."

On the ice, despite being in the best physical shape in years, he has only 11 points and five goals so far in this season of resurgence by the Rangers. The former 50-goal scorer has been bounced from the top line with Messier and Valeri Kamensky.

"My game has been kind of up and down," he says. He has been reluctant to talk to teammates about his own sorrow although they clearly see it eating at him. As he stands to go, he pauses and admits that he imagined that when the summer passed and hockey returned that maybe things would get a little easier. But they haven't. "It takes a long time. It's hard, " he says, the smile flickering for just a second. And then he's off, back to his wife and his children. And maybe Madison will want to go shopping for the other kids. Or maybe just discuss the Rangers' upcoming schedule. Either way, you can't help but hope it helps to lighten the burden.