Jamal Mayers is a Maple Leaf, back in a city where it all began, as a boy who could not afford to play hockey

TORONTO -On the ice, he is a banger, a super-pest who kills penalties and, when things get nasty, is not afraid to fight.

Jamal Mayers's game is loud and brash. It is old-time, hard-nosed hockey, the sort of stuff Don Cherry likes to crow about on Coach's Corner on Saturday nights.

But off the ice, Mayers speaks softly. And a listener needs to lean in close to hear what he has to say. Mayers hockey story does not begin on a Prairie farm, a backyard rink his old man made or a small town in Northern Ontario.

It starts here: in a big city with a cold heart. It starts with a father who was not in the picture, and a mother who had to work two jobs to pay the bills. It starts with an older brother who quit playing the game he loved so his younger sibling could chase down a dream. "I didn't play hockey when I was 10 years old," Mayers said, after an intense Toronto Maple Leafs training camp session at the Air Canada Centre yesterday morning. "We couldn't afford hockey. The year after that, my brother, Allan, gave it up so I could play.

"I owe a lot to him."

Leafs general manager Cliff Fletcher traded a third-round draft pick to St. Louis to acquire Mayers at the NHL draft in June. Mayers is a Toronto native. But the Toronto he moved back to was different than the one he knew before. Mayers and his wife, Natalie, and their two young daughters, have rented a house -- an entire house -- and not just a tiny apartment. The little boy whose older brother had to give up hockey, is earning US$1.4-million a year. Mayers is rich. He knows it. But he has never allowed himself to forget his humble beginnings.

"It's funny," he says, glancing around a Leafs dressing room that, without the skates and the sweaty hockey gear, could be a stand-in for a luxury spa. "To be here today, it seems like such a long way away ? "

Mayers was a fourth-round draft pick of the Blues in 1993. Before the trade, St. Louis was the only NHL franchise he had ever played for. He even married a girl from St. Louis. At the rink, his gritty style won over Blues fans. There was even talk last season that he would make the perfect captain for a Blues club in the midst of rebuilding.

So, while Toronto may have been where he was from, St. Louis was home.

Mayers and former teammate, Bryce Salvador, founded the Blues' Jam 'n Sal's Community Stars program. Local elementary school children were recognized for performing "an uncommon act of kindness or good deed."

A community star could be a student who organized a community-service event, or someone who helped a classmate in need. Each star received four tickets to a Blues game and they also got to meet Mayers in person.

Mayers says his community-activist streak, and the idea of recognizing simple acts of kindness, is a by-product of his own upbringing.

"It comes from the general feeling of being fortunate and seeing so many examples of how so many other people aren't," Mayers said. "It also has a lot to do with how I grew up."

Mayers mother, Doreen, eventually pared down from two jobs to one and became a law clerk. She is the now the vice-president of a bank. "She's done well for herself," Mayers said.