Jordin Tootoo's brother's final note took him all the way to the NHL

In 2002, one year before becoming the first Inuk to play in the NHL, enforcer Jordin Tootoo lost his brother Terence Tootoo to suicide. His brother, three years older, left him only a handwritten note—words that Jordin carried with him all the way to the biggest hockey stage in the world.

The summer of 2002, Terence Tootoo had been training with hit little brother Jordin, who was staying with a billet family in Brandon while playing for the Wheat Kings. A few days before the tight-knit brothers were to go their separate ways and not see each other again until the following summer, they went out drinking—hard.

Jordin Tootoo remembers his brother

In his book All the Way: My Life on Ice, Jordin recalls the last night he spent with his big brother. When the night was over, Terence wanted to drive home.
“We all jumped in his vehicle, all pissed up with not a worry in the world. We’d done it a hundred times. No big deal. We lived out in the country, fifteen minutes outside of Brandon, with our billets, Neil and Jeanine. But my girlfriend, Meghan, lived five blocks from the bar where we were. I said, ‘Let’s just stay at Meghan’s house—spend the night here and go train in the morning.’”

Pulled over by police

But Terence insisted on driving back, and the brothers planned to meet at the rink the next morning for practice. On the way home, Terence was pulled over by police. They recognized him and, instead of taking him to jail, decided to drive him home and impound the car to spare him any legal trouble and the problems it would cause him with getting into the US. They dropped him off at the billet family’s house at three o’clock in the morning.

Went into the woods

What happened after that, no one knows for sure. But Jordin offers insight into what he believes his brother was thinking:
“Everyone thought that Terence was this great guy, and that’s how he wanted to be perceived. Everyone makes mistakes, but for him, with all that pressure coming at him from different angles, I just don’t think he had the will inside him to fight it anymore. Instead, it was like, F—, this is it. I’m done. I don’t want to deal with all of these people thinking I’m not this perfect, perfect guy.”
According to the police, Terence took a shotgun from the garage, undressed, left the house, and walked into the woods.
“There was a fence there. He jumped the fence and fired off one shot into the air. Then he put the second shell in, pulled the trigger, and it only clicked. It misfired. But he was so determined. Then he put the third shell in. That was it,” Jordin writes.

Terence Tootoo suicide note

The next day, Jordin waited at the rink, but Terence never showed up. After the workout, Jordin went home, thinking his brother was still sleeping it off. Instead, he found his brother’s clothes and a handwritten note that read:
“Jor, go all the way. Take care of the family. You are the man. Terence.”
Eventually, Terence was found deceased.

723 NHL games

Jordin has reflected on that note many times since.
“I have analyzed that letter over and over ever since. He knew I had the skill to go all the way and take care of the family. And in Brandon, any time we were out in public, everyone was all over me—so his last line was, ‘You are the man.’ I felt bad, but I didn’t mean to be the man—it just kind of happened.”
Jordin Tootoo carried his brother’s words with him and did not only become the first Inuk in the NHL. He became a feared, respected and loved NHL enforcer. He played 723 NHL games for the Nashville Predators, Detroit Red Wings, New Jersey Devils, and Chicago Blackhawks, tallying 161 points and 1,010 penalty minutes. A true hockey hero!