They are his father's words, parental lessons passed down to a teenage son to guide him through his adolescent years and on into adulthood. The words are fresh and crisp and very much on the son's mind, even now, 15 years after the old man's death.

"I'll never forget that night," Tie Domi says. "I had a goal and an assist and two fights against the Islanders and I wasn't even undressed yet and [New York Rangers coach] Roger Neilson calls me into the room.

"I thought holy s---, what the hell does he want me for? I thought I was getting sent down to the minors."

Hold on here. Tie Domi, the Toronto Maple Leafs tough guy and the one-time heavyweight champion of the hockey world, is perilously close to being knocked out by a memory. His rusty nail of a voice rasps with emotion and his brawlers' hands ball up into little fists and pull back from the table of an Etobicoke, Ont., diner while he finishes his story.

"[Neilson] said to me: 'Your father passed away at nine o'clock tonight.' He'd seen part of the game -- he was playing cards with his friends. I think he was probably pretty proud me of that night."

John Domi was 62 years old. His youngest son, whose NHL career was just beginning on the night he died, has been thinking a lot about his father this week as he skates toward an NHL milestone few ever would have guessed he could achieve.

"One thousand games in the NHL definitely wasn't in the realm of what you would expect for Tie Domi when he first came to Peterborough," says Dick Todd, Domi's old junior coach and the current bench boss with the Peterborough Petes.

Domi will play his 1,000th game tonight in Buffalo, where the Leafs meet the Sabres, and he will be honoured tomorrow, when Toronto hosts the Ottawa Senators. That Domi has lasted this long is a tribute to a toughness, a tireless work ethic and a far-reaching ambition he inherited from his father.

"He was fearless," Domi says. "He escaped from Albania with nothing and he came here, and he worked to get everything he had to give his family a good life."

John Domi was a teenager when he fled communist Albania for Canada following the Second World War. He was shot above the right eye as he made his escape into Greece, and he carried a bullet fragment -- in his skull -- for the rest of his life to remind him of why he left.

The new Canadian scratched and saved so he could open a family restaurant in Belle River, Ont., a blue collar town not far from Windsor. And whatever profits Domi made at the start were invested to secure safe passage to Canada for the family members he and his wife, Meryem, had left behind.

All the hard work meant John Domi did not have time to play hockey dad to his son, Tie. But then much like his father, Tie Domi knew how to take care of himself.

"I was a born fighter," he says, and the scars that etch his eyebrows and border his lips -- and the 3,473 career penalty minutes he has piled up over 15 seasons -- are his proof.

Domi fought his way to Peterborough as a seventh-round draft pick, though Todd had serious doubts about him during a disastrous rookie season. Part of the Petes' training involved five-mile runs, conditioning rituals Domi wanted no part of. "His excuse was: 'My legs are too short,' " says Todd with a laugh. Domi finished last every time. Even worse, the tough guy missed his parents.

"I didn't really know what hockey was about besides my toughness," Domi says. "But it didn't take me long to learn that you can either go one way or the other."

His crossroads came at the Ontario Food Terminal in Toronto's west end, a massive fruit and vegetable warehouse where Domi slaved for a cousin during that first summer back from Peterborough.

"I was getting up at five in the morning and slugging watermelons, and after a summer of that I decided I wanted to be a hockey player," he says.

So the kid with the short legs went back to junior and became a track star, regularly placing among the top five in Todd's training runs. Domi also worked hard to improve his game. Instead of looking to start a fight every shift he began looking to make a pass and deliver solid hits. Todd noticed, and he rewarded Domi with a spot on Mike Ricci's wing and Domi repaid him with 22 goals and 292 penalty minutes in 1987-88.

His fresh attitude coincided with the birth of a hockey fan. Every Thursday, without fail, John Domi would drive to Peterborough to watch Tie play. "He went from not coming to any games to being Howie Meeker," Domi says with a laugh.

Only Howie was not a fan of fighting.

"He didn't like it at all," Domi said. "He would ask me why I was fighting all the time. He didn't really understand what I was doing because he didn't understand sports all that well, but at the same time he understood that I had to do whatever I had to do to make it."

And John Domi always understood hard work.

His son was fast on his skates, but it was Domi's fists that convinced Toronto to take him in the second round of the 1988 draft. He bounced from the Leafs to New York to Winnipeg -- taking on all comers as he went -- before landing back in Toronto in 1995.

Domi doesn't fight much anymore -- he had a career-high 365 penalty minutes in 1997-98, but has only topped 200 twice since then -- and when he does drop his gloves, there is no guarantee he will win. He has never scored much. The 15 goals he had in the '02-03 season were a personal best. And his 100th career goal, against Montreal last October, came almost 15 years after his first.

But fans appear to have an endless well of affection for Domi, who has been with the Leafs longer than everyone but captain Mats Sundin. Wild cheers echoed through the Air Canada Centre last weekend when Domi so much as flinched during the team's skills competition. The tough guy figures the adulation stems from the job he once did -- and still does when required -- and from a simple philosophy that has helped him stick around all these years.

"When I first played I thought every game was gonna be my last before getting sent down to the minors," Domi says. "So I worked my ass off."

It's an ethic Domi embraces away from the ice. Contrary to the "Tie Dummy" stamp Detroit Red Wings heavyweight Bob Probert stuck him with in the 1990s, he isn't stupid. Domi started buying up real estate in the Toronto area when he was 22 years old. His most recent business venture is as a partner in Universal Energy, an Ontario-based consumer gas and electricity start-up. Company founder Mark Silver met Domi six years ago at a mutual friend's birthday. Silver, whose Leaf watching days ended in the Dave Keon era, had no idea who the tough guy was. But he liked him straight off, and 18 months ago he invited Domi to join his team.

"He seems to be able to open any door that we would want to have open as far as our commercial sales," Silver says. "It is incredible how many people he knows -- the people at Home Depot, at the Red Cross, at Mount Sinai Hospital -- he knows everybody and he makes it his business to know everybody."

Universal Energy has close to 100,000 customers and Silver projects sales will exceed $200-million within the next year.

He is also Domi-the-do-gooder on the charity circuit, a loop where new business connections are made while a father's ideals -- to not take anything for granted -- are honoured.

But tomorrow night, fans will not be rooting for Tie the Tycoon. It is Tie the Tough Guy they revere, even as he skates on the fourth line for a Leafs team with fading playoff hopes.

Domi will take to centre ice with his wife, Leanne, their two daughters, 12-year old Carlin and seven-year old Avery and their 10-year-old son, Max. Domi's mother Meryem will also be there, to see her son play for the first time ever.

Domi has asked Tom Cochrane to sing the national anthem. Cochrane's big hit from the late '80s, Big League, is about a father whose boy is killed in a car crash on the road to hockey stardom. The 36-year-old says he can't hear it without thinking about his own dad, and having the Canadian rocker croon O Canada is Domi's way of saying thanks to the one person he wishes could be there most.

"I really regret that my kids never got to meet my father," Domi says. "They ask me about him, and it really gives me some energy when they ask. And the older they get the more they ask."