When you see the 72-year-old guy with the helmet in one corner of the rink, and the puke bucket in the other, you understand.

When you see the faded signs on the rusted mills and the soot-stained smokestacks, you understand.

When you meet the father, a mechanic, and the mother, a waitress, you understand.

	Berard laced them up for the Rangers last season.

Bryan Berard turned down a guaranteed $6.5 million insurance payment to lace up his skates in an NHL rink for a fraction of that. A man who grew up expecting to win All-Star honors and Stanley Cups now wants simply to have his name on a playoff stat sheet. The decision cost Berard his life savings, and maybe much more if he's not careful. But when you visit the place Berard grew up -- a Rhode Island town where nothing shines brighter than the edge of a skate blade -- you understand.

Boys from Woonsocket either play hockey at prestigious Mount St. Charles Academy or hope to find a service industry job somewhere after they graduate. Bryan Berard was one of the lucky ones. "The Mount" produced NHLers Brian Lawton, Mathieu Schneider, Keith Carney, Garth Snow, Brian Boucher and Jeff Jillson. Under Bill Belisle -- the winningest prep hockey coach of all time -- the Mounties have won 25 straight state titles. Bryan Berard was perhaps the school's most talented player ever.

And he knew it. Berard had the tattoos and the long hair and the too-cool-for-you rep out on River Street. His picture hung in a local bar next to those of Bruin greats like Bobby Orr and Johnny Bucyk. But in the Mount St. Charles locker room, he was just another player. If he didn't backcheck after every single drill, he was sitting. If he so much as left a piece of tape lying on the locker room floor, he spent the next month dressing in the stands. Coach Belisle has been winning state titles since the time Berard was potty training, so he wasn't going to take any, uh, offal from a cocky hockey player. That puke bucket is for everyone.

Berard didn't need all the discipline at first. He was talented enough. He won the Calder Trophy with the Islanders after a summer of fries and beer. He made the Olympic team on potential rather than credentials. But everything changed in the spring of 2000, when an errant Marian Hossa stick cut open Berard's iris and destroyed his eyeball. Berard nearly lost his eye altogether. His vision would never improve beyond 20/400 even with a corrective lens. He was legally blind in one eye. His hockey life appeared to be over.

By the following summer, Berard's voice was soft, and his personality had no lingering trace of entitlement. "My eyes have been opened," Berard said in all seriousness. He was planning a comeback. "I have a tough road ahead of me," he said. "I will just have to wait."

That blue-collar upbringing had finally kicked in. Berard got the encouragement of his father, who spent his days covered in motor oil to support six kids. He got calls from his former coach, who once fractured his skull in practice and had to teach himself how to skate all over again -- with a helmet on -- just to get his whistle back. And he had the constant reminder of all the townspeople around him -- descendants of French-Canadian farm workers who migrated to Rhode Island to work in a textile industry with its days numbered. People who stayed around after the mills shut down and lined up for jobs at CVS headquarters -- a symbolic Band-Aid for a leaking economy.

No wonder Berard gladly gave up his insurance settlement to play last season with one good eye. No wonder he showed up at his old school earlier this month to help Coach Belisle celebrate 25 straight championships. No wonder he chose Boston over Colorado as his next stop. In so many ways, Bryan Berard came home. "It's his roots that make him who he is," says Belisle's son and assistant, David. "It's the town. It's Coach Belisle. It's his friends, all northern Rhode Island guys. He seems to always come back to his roots. He has a love for the game like no other athlete we've ever coached."

Now you understand.

Staff writer Eric Adelson has followed Bryan Berard's comeback for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at eric.adelson@espnmag.com.