One year ago today, Zack Kassian walked out of a substance abuse treatment facility in Southern California. He was immediately dispatched to just about the most unlikely locale you could imagine to catch last call on his hockey career.

It would be difficult to name a city in the NHL where Kassian was more despised than Edmonton.

When he felled Sam Gagner with a high stick to the face resulting in the Oiler losing four teeth and requiring six screws and a plate to put his mouth back in place, there wasn’t likely a player in the league that the Oilers players and their fans hated more.

After Gagner missed the first 13 games of the season and returned to the lineup in Vancouver, then-Canuck Kassian mocked him for wearing a shield. That put an exclamation mark on it.

It’s been a complete year now since Oilers’ GM Peter Chiarelli shocked the hockey world by making Edmonton the place for Kassian to have his last chance.

If you only watched one game all year when he took a double minor after the whistle in screw-loose penalties with the team down 1-0 in San Jose Friday, maybe you’d wonder. He was benched in what was probably his worst game as an Oiler.

But the guy is rightfully being celebrated for the role he has found on an Oilers team that went into the Christmas break in second place in the Pacific Division.

“To be honest, I was lucky it was Edmonton,” said Kassian as he contemplated heading into his second trip around the calendar that begins with Thursday’s game against the Los Angeles Kings.

“I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I was trying to get my life on track,” he looks back now.

“Hockey kind of took a back seat for once in my life. I’d told myself that hockey would take care of itself once I took care of myself. When Peter Chiarelli made the move to pick me up, I knew it was going to be a long haul to get back to the NHL and to earn Peter’s trust back and to earn everyone’s trust back. I knew it was nothing but uphill.

“I just took it a day at a time. If you look at it now, a year later, I think things are slowly trying to turn around. Peter, I think, has gained a little more trust in me. And I think that’s all I could really ask for.”

A year and a week or so ago, your correspondent travelled to Bakersfield and sat on the visitor’s bench for a half hour with Kassian where, making steady eye contact, he said all the right things.

This was it for his hockey career. He absolutely, completely, totally, 100 per cent understood that this was it for him. He identified his substance abuse problem as alcoholism. He identified himself as an alcoholic. He revealed he spent his time in the NHL’s program only about 90 minutes from Bakersfield at a facility in Malibu.

Kassian, who has such a checkered past that I suggested it might be more appropriate to be spending his AHL e-entry with the Charlotte Checkers, broke his nose and busted his foot in an automobile accident involving a 20-year-old girl driving and an 18-year-old girl as passenger. He was under the influence when the vehicle hit a tree in Montreal at 6:30 a.m.

Suspended without pay by the Montreal Canadiens, Kassian was placed in Stage Two of the NHL program and traded to Edmonton for goalie Ben Scrivens.

“Where I was before all this happened wasn’t in a good place,” Kassian said that day after a Condors practice.

“It was tough emotionally, mentally and even physically. It was draining. And I say that not looking for any sympathy for anyone. I put in a lot of work the last three months. I really think I’m leaving there as a different person. I’m leaving with a lot of knowledge about alcoholism and I’m ready to take the next step forward.

“In no sense am I cured or fixed. But I have a good foundation to build off going forward.”

Has he stopped drinking, period?

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.

“The one thing they stressed to us was one day at a time. It’s kind of overwhelming for a 24-year-old to even think 20 or 30 years from now. But the answer is yes.

“I really want to turn my life around and I really want to make this home,” he said of Edmonton and the Oilers organization that took the considerable gamble on him.

A year later he looked back at the way it all went down.

“Peter called me. We had a very short conversation. I told Peter, ‘There are no words I could say. I have to put it into action. It’s about me showing you.’ Peter was happy to hear that. And basically the conversation ended.

“I felt like that day, all the way to today, a year later, I’ve held up on what I told him. Looking back, I think I took the right approach. That’s all I could handle.”

Kassian knew the way Edmonton viewed him as a result of a variety of incidents but primarily what happened involving Gagner.

“I played in Vancouver for 3½ years. There was a lot between the Canucks and the Oilers and that was especially the case when it came to me with the incident involving Sam Gagner. I didn’t win too many friends over in Edmonton by that. But I knew deep down if I brought what I thought I could bring that eventually the tides would turn and they would like the player and the person that I am.

“I think that’s slowly starting to show. Edmonton is like my hometown in Windsor. It’s blue collar. It’s people who work hard. They just want to see effort. I grew up with that in Windsor. Edmonton has been great to me for the effort I’ve shown so far.”

When Kassian talks about being lucky his destination was Edmonton, he very much includes the man who is head coach.

“Todd McLellan and I talked about where he saw me and where he thought I’d fit in,” he said.

“I think that helped me out a lot. I think it was a matter of me knowing what he expected out of me, where he saw me and then it was up to me. I think he wanted to take the pressure of my being a high pick totally away from me,” said the 25-year-old player selected 13th in the first round of the 2009 NHL Entry Draft.

“Sometimes people expect you to hop out of junior and score 30. He stressed that with every player, that doesn’t have to happen and that players can play a long time in this league in a checking role.

“Some guys have those conversations with a coach and want to get traded. Not me. I really embraced it.

“I knew Todd was a great coach before I got here. I believed in him and trusted him. Now, I think, I’m really starting to find my way here in Edmonton.”

Kassian, statistically, only has two goals and seven assists and from a distance probably doesn’t look to be too successful. But Edmonton fans know their hockey and can see what he’s contributing.

“It’s tough when they’re not going in but at the same time I’ve always been a guy who got the bigger picture,” said Kassian.

“When the team is winning the chances are going to be there. It’s the old cliché that when the chances aren’t there you have to worry. But for me, if we’re winning and I’m playing solid two-way hockey, playing it hard and creating energy for my teammates, that comes first and all of the other stuff takes care of itself.”

He’s ended up with two guys on his line who are really solid people. Mark Letestu and Matt Hendricks, on the fourth line with Kassian, played huge roles in getting a win in St. Louis, where the Oilers had lost 10 of their previous 11 games, and particularly in Arizona, where Edmonton ended a 26-game winless streak. The game he played in Arizona might have been his best as an Oiler.

“They’re great hockey players but even better people,” said Kassian of Hendricks and Letestu.

“They’ve been in the league a while. They know what it takes to win. They’ve helped me a lot, just the way they conduct themselves every day and bring themselves to the rink. It’s great playing with two guys like that. We all get along and hopefully we can keep things going.”

In the case of Kassian, however, no mater how strong the support is from management, coaches and teammates, the most important things he has to do be himself.

“That’s the tricky one,” he said of being a recovering substance abuser.

“Some days are great. Some days are tough.

“But there are no ifs, and or buts. I’ve made my mind up. I definitely don’t want to go back to the way I was. My life in 14 months has been great.

“People are starting to respect me. I can look people in the eyes and be there for people.

“It’s one of those things where there are tough days sometimes and those days are when it’s great to have such a good support system. My teammates all have my back. I have family that’s always been there.

“I’ve come to see myself as lucky. There are people with cancer. There’s people who can’t do anything about their situation. What I’m dealing with is in my control. Whenever I hit one of those tough days, that’s what I lean back on, and I get through them.”

GM: PROGRESS POSITIVE

On this day, one year ago, Peter Chiarelli did the deal.

As the Christmas trade freeze lifted and Zack Kassian’s substance abuse suspension ended, Chiarelli decided to take the risk.

The last 12 months have been the reward.

“So far, so good,” said the Edmonton Oilers GM.

“He’s kept clean. He’s in terrific shape. He’s settled down. And at some point he’ll start scoring. He’s playing well. He’s skating. He’s providing the physical element.

“I know the team has embraced him. I think the city is cheering for him. I think they also can see what he can bring to the team.”

It’s one day at a time in Kassian’s world now.

“They’re little steps,” said Chiarelli, who knows enough about what’s involved not to declare Kassian a total triumph on a road with likely a lot of tests ahead.

He wouldn’t be doing him any favours to do that.

“We hope from a human side for a kid to get his life back on track, that he succeeds with it.

“Fortunately for us, we were able to get him at a time when he knew it was his last chance. Maybe he had a bit of an epiphany.”

Chiarelli kept coming back to the fact that without the substance problem and the baggage that Kassian was exactly the kind of player the Oilers were looking to find.

“The mandate here was to get bigger. It’s hard to find big players who can play in this division with San Jose, Anaheim and the L.A. — big, strong teams.

“Zack was kind of a lightening rod with issues with substances. You could see the talent. I kind of followed him from afar. And obviously I had to be a little leery of the pattern that he had shown.

“But throughout that Christmas period that we made the move Marc Bergevin was very up front,” he said of the Montreal GM who hadn’t even had Kassian in a Canadiens uniform yet when the truck crashed into the tree.

“Marc wanted to help the kid but he didn’t think he could make it happen in Montreal. And I knew he was right,” said Chirelli.

“We were able to talk to Zack. We were able to talk to his agent. We were able to talk to certain doctors who had dealt with him. We had to think about the practical side with the risk. But weighing everything, we decided to proceed with it.”