“It’s Tie. Who did you talk to? What did they say?”

In the course of my strange, rousing encounter with Tie Domi (which began with a phone call last November and continued for four months), I would receive numerous similar calls, throughout the day or into the night, each one seeking the same things: information and reassurance.

He’d ask me if I liked the “schnitzel joke” he extemporized on Win, Lose and Tie, his and James Duthie’s lively intermission segment on TSN’s Wednesday broadcasts, if I had talked to a certain hateful so-and-so (any number of his detractors), or if, when the phone rang, I thought it was “a booty call.” And every time I would hear the same commixture of defiance, menace (“I will lose it if you start quoting unnamed sources”), and plaintive hope that someone, somewhere, will speak well of him.

The recently retired Leafs enforcer is, ultimately, both combative and needy, a paradox that is not unusual in anyone who has ever had to fight for a living. “Will you talk about, you know, how I look?” he asked me several times, until I told him he looked all right. Which is true: he is leaner and taller than I had been led to believe (although, at five foot 10, he is small in the world of giant goons), and is firmly possessed of that ineffable quality, charisma.

Domi’s allure is like a blast of Axe body spray. He is an expert flirt, but that is not his greatest talent. Given to leaning back, then forward, suddenly, in conversation, he is spectacularly adept at making one lose one’s composure. Anyone who watched Domi play understands it was the element of surprise that served him best: when he’d attack, he would smile; when nailed for a fight, or simply furious, he might, for example, condescendingly toss an autographed stick at the opposing team. When someone once threw a banana at the “ape,” he ate it, and when a Flyers fan heckled him in the penalty box, Domi sprayed him with his water bottle until the man lunged at the Plexiglas divider with such force that it finally gave way, sending him down into the box, where he looked remarkably like a gerbil in a cobra’s terrarium.

“In the back of everybody’s mind, I’m just a tough guy,” Domi says. And no wonder. With a career total of 3,515 penalty minutes, the former star of such goon Web sites as NHL Bad Boys once began a friendly interview with the Toronto Sun’s Bill Lankhof by stating, “I don’t give people too many opportunities. I’m a pretty honest, respectful guy. If you screw me, then usually I don’t give you the chance to screw me again.”