EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – Brantt Myhres doesn’t sleep at his office in the Los Angeles Kings practice facility in El Segundo, Calf. But it’s a place where he feels at ease – since he spends so much time there

“There’s food just down the hall,” Myhres said about the creature comforts of the plush locale.

Myhres actually stays nearby at the Marriott in Manhattan Beach when he’s not with the team. But this is simply where he rests his head to sleep. He’s almost always on call with the Kings. If a player needs someone to talk to Myhres is there. All the time. His phone is always on.

“All hours,” he said.

When he’s in El Segundo, he slips seamlessly from his windowless office next to the team’s washer/dryers through the locker room and other parts where only players and coaches go.

The 41-year-old Myhres compares his access to that of an injured player. He’s not quite a part of the team, but he’s also around enough to feel like a member of the group. This is the best way Myhres can gain the trust of the players – if he feels like he’s one of them. Myhres, a recovering addict and former NHL enforcer, played a total 154 NHL games between the San Jose Sharks, Boston Bruins, Nashville Predators, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers. Overall he’s been suspended five times for substance abuse – the last one in 2006 giving him a lifetime hockey-playing ban in North America.

It’s now his job as the Kings’ newly created Player Assistance position to make sure the team’s current players don’t go down the same path. Players are encouraged to talk to Myhres about any topic – drugs, alcohol, contracts and the like – with knowing that whatever they say stays between them and Myhres. According to Myhres this role is the first of its kind in the NHL.

He’s around the team close to 20 days per-month. The rest of the time, he’s in Edmonton with his young daughter. No matter where Myhres is, the players have an open line of communication to him.

“He’s developed a personal relationship with the guys. I know for myself, I’ve talked a lot with him about a lot of things,” Kings forward Milan Lucic said. “We all enjoy having him around. He’s a guy that’s been through everything. He’s doing what he can to help others so they don’t go down the same road he went down and you have to give a guy credit that’s trying to make a difference in other people. I think he’s helped this team out by having his presence around. He brings a positive attitude to the rink every day and that’s something you get to have as well.”

In 2008, Myhres was in rehab and started to type on his laptop. He began to think of how he could help hockey players – to prevent what happened to him from happening to others. It was in here where Myhres started to formulate a specific plan.

Myhres constantly found himself being drawn to drugs and alcohol. He would enter treatment, leave and then have nobody around the team to talk with. He felt alone and scared, and he found the stress difficult to deal with.

“When I was playing in the NHL, when I got out, I was going back to an organization that had nobody in recovery and nobody – people could sympathize with that, but there wasn’t a guy who went through it who was in recovery I could hang out with,” Myhres said. “So I sort of felt like the black sheep. And the stigma was still there too. I had to be the big, tough guy on the team but yet I had a weakness and I didn’t want to show that weakness.”

Myhres said cocaine was his drug of choice, and it wrecked him at the most inopportune points of his life. After being in and out of rehab for several years, in 2005-06 Myhres had been sober for two years and was ready to resume his NHL career with the Calgary Flames.

In a preseason game against the Edmonton Oilers, Myhres fought Georges Laraque and got crushed in the eye.

“The orbital was smashed so bad that my eye was sinking back so they had to go back and build up the eye again underneath a plate and basically the doctor told me right after the surgery, because I was a left handed fighter and most guys I fought were right, that the chances of me getting hit again were really good and if I got hit there the plate would break,” Myhres said.

View photos Caption:24 Oct 1999: Brantt Myhres #33 of the San Jose Sharks looks over his shoulder during the game against the Los Angeles Kings at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The Kings defeated the Sharks 4-3. Mandatory Credit: Kellie Landis /Allsport More

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