Some of the doctors Wojtek Wolski spoke to advised him to leave well enough alone, avoid tempting fate and give up hockey for good. Months earlier, during the third period of an Oct. 13, 2016 game in the Kontinental Hockey League, the Polish-born, Toronto-raised forward dove for a loose puck, had an opponent fall on top of him, and crashed head-first into the sideboards, breaking his neck in two spots.
The recovery was brutal, the rehabilitation excruciating and his body wasn’t responding the way he needed to get back into the Magnitogorsk Metallurg lineup and resume his career.
“I’m not going to try to sugar-coat it, there were days when I thought it just wasn’t going to happen and maybe it was the end,” says Wolski. “I was blessed that I could walk and lead a normal life. There was a lot of that going through my mind.”
At the same time, other doctors gave the former Colorado Avalanche first-round pick hope by telling him that they believed it was safe for him to keep playing, that in time his strength and speed and endurance would return. Wolski listened, and persisted, and worked, and now, nearly 13 months out from the accident that nearly forced him from the ice for good, the 31-year-old is very much back in the game, sitting 13th in the KHL with 25 points in 25 games for Kunlun Red Star in Shanghai, and in the mix for a spot on the Canadian Olympic team.
He’ll continue to press his case for Pyeongchang this week at the Karjala Cup, which Canada opens Wednesday against Switzerland. The six-team tournament is an important signpost for Hockey Canada, which is seeking to hone in on the group that will play for a third straight gold medal.
“The Olympics is definitely something I thought wouldn’t happen as long as the NHL players were going,” says Wolski. “Then when they did state that they weren’t going, it was a thing that really kept me focused during my rehab and my physiotherapy. It was always in my mind, keeping me motivated to try and get back and get ready and try to be as prepared as possible to compete for a spot on the team.”
Understandably, Wolski takes nothing for granted these days on the ice, or off it.
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A junior star with the Ontario Hockey League’s Brampton Battalion before the Avalanche selected him 21st overall in 2004, his NHL career began auspiciously with 22 goals and 28 assists as a rookie in 2006-07. But his production plateaued from there, he was traded from Colorado to Phoenix to the Rangers to Florida, and then spent a season in Washington before heading overseas.
In the KHL he found himself as a player, spending two seasons with the Nizhny Novgorod Torpedo before helping Magnitogorsk with the Gagarin Cup in 2015-16. Then came the freak accident last October against Barys Astana which left him worried about far more than hockey.
Fractures to the fourth and seventh cervical vertebrae left him in a neck brace for 2½ months and eventually surgery was needed to fully correct the injury. Four months after the accident, he was back on the ice recreationally with his son Weston and by April he started feeling like a corner had been turned, with progress picking up from there.
“Physically, it was hard at the beginning because there are things that I remembered being able to do, a certain play, and you couldn’t do them or do them at the speed of the game,” says Wolski. “That took a lot of time to work towards, to build muscle, to get back in the gym and to work on shooting, passing, skating and get it all back over the last four, five, six months.”
Beyond the physical challenges, there were also mental ones to overcome for Wolski as he rebuilt trust that his body would not only be able to perform, but also to sustain the punishment of competition.
“Once I started being able to practice every day, then go through two practices a day, then take hits – that was the biggest thing,” he says. “Once I started getting hit hard and you had a really competitive game where you played big minutes and were really physical and the next day you felt OK, those were things where it was like, OK, I’m starting to feel like normal. The first couple of months when I would get hit, it would be two, three, four days where I was really sore and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to continually go through that.
“At this point I’m feeling better and better, hoping to keep it going and to keep improving.”
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In June, Wolski signed a two-year contract with Kunlun Red Star, taking a bit less money than Magnitogorsk eventually offered to settle into a better family situation. His wife Jesse, nearly three-year-old son Weston and eight-month old daughter Lennon are with him in Shanghai, making the next part of his hockey adventure far more enjoyable.
“It’s really incredible being able to see China and that part of the world is something special, everything about Shanghai is pretty incredible,” he says. “Being able to wake up and play with my kids instead of Face-Timing them every day is a big plus. So it’s a lot of fun.”
Representing Canada in Pyeongchang is the next goal, one that wasn’t within reach at the beginning of last season and nearly pushed out of reach by an injury that could have taken far more than hockey.
“It’s been pretty exciting the last couple of years, winning the Gagarin Cup,” says Wolski. “Of course the goal growing up is always the NHL and I had that opportunity. Once that passed, I’ve just been trying to play as well as I can, enjoy the game. The chance to be play in the Olympics is something incredible. What happened last year really made me realize that it could be taken away at any point in time and we’re really lucky. I’m just trying to have fun and enjoy my career as much as I can for as long as I can.”
