“As a teenager, I lost my leg to bone cancer. Now, I’m captain of Canada’s sledge hockey team”

I grew up in a passionate hockey family of mostly junior-level players. Every winter, my dad spent hours making an outdoor rink in our backyard in Forest, Ontario. I was in hockey skates before my third birthday. At age three, I joined a Timbits team and never looked back. I’ve been playing competitively ever since.

For as long as I can remember, I would come home from school and spend the entire evening on my back rink. Then, when it got dark, I’d go inside and watch hockey on TV. Growing up in the early aughts, I looked up to players like Doug Gilmour and Sidney Crosby, and I dreamed of playing in the NHL or for Team Canada at the Olympics. Maybe I was naive, but even from a young age I thought it was in the cards for me: I had the work ethic, discipline and hunger to become the best hockey player I could be.

I was performing well, and by age 11 or 12, people began to notice. I dominated minor hockey and knew I had a strong chance of joining the OHL. When I was 15, I joined the Huron Perth Lakers AAA team, where I met some of my lifelong best friends. I didn’t know it yet, but their support would help me get through the lowest period of my life.

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In the weeks leading up to our first game, I had been experiencing some unusual pain in my shins, which I assumed was shin splints. That didn’t stop me from giving it my all. During our first game of the season, in September 2009, we were leading in the first period, and my adrenalin was pumping. Moving into the second period, I had tunnel vision on the puck. The next thing I knew, there was a play in front of the net. A defenceman took a sudden turn, and we collided.

Immediately, the collision, coupled with the growing discomfort in my shins, sent pain shooting through my entire leg. I tried crawling back to the bench, but my leg had given out completely. I was in agony. My trainer got me off the ice, and I was rushed to the hospital.

The doctors told me I had a clean break in my tibia and fibula. I took comfort in the fact that this was a common injury among hockey players. I would either have to spend six months in a full-leg cast or have a titanium rod inserted into my tibia. With the latter option, I could start walking again after a few weeks. It was an obvious choice–I chose the surgery so I could get back on the ice as soon as possible.

After a month or so, I was learning to walk again. After two months, I began to train lightly on the ice. Around that time, I started to develop a painless mass on my left knee, which the doctors attributed to excess blood following my surgery. By Christmas, I was bedridden, and I had no idea why; the doctors couldn’t figure it out either. I felt too weak to move, let alone play hockey. The mass on my knee had grown to the size of a tennis ball, but I was mostly concerned about missing out on practice time.

After two weeks in bed, I regained my energy and started practising with my team again, playing no-contact. All I needed was a final X-ray and sign-off from the doctor, then I could start playing games with my team again. I was ecstatic to be recovering and ready to perform better than ever, but that final X-ray didn’t go as planned. About a month passed, and in January of 2010, the doctors noticed that two inches of bone were missing where I had broken my leg. A specialist told me there were two possibilities: either it was a mass of dead blood that had started to eat away at my bone, or it was cancer.

My mind started to spiral. I was young—only 15 at the time—and healthy, and I had no real history of cancer in my family. Would I ever be able to play hockey again? Would I even survive? The next day, we returned to the hospital so the doctors could perform a biopsy. When I woke up from the procedure, my parents delivered the news that changed my life: the mass was cancerous, and the doctors had diagnosed spindle cell sarcoma, a form of bone cancer. They attributed my shin pain and broken leg to the cancer; it had been developing for months.

I was devastated, but the full range of my emotions didn’t kick in until I arrived at the London Children’s Hospital and saw kids as young as two years old fighting for their lives. My second reality check happened two weeks after my diagnosis. Another doctor sat me down and told me bluntly that they would need to amputate my left leg to save my life. That was when the tears started to flow. My dream of playing in the NHL or the Olympics was over.

The hospital was an isolating place. One of the only things that helped me get through that time was the support of my teammates, coaches and family. When I started chemotherapy, my entire team showed up at the hospital. Having them there made me feel like my life wasn’t over. The other thing that got me through was watching the 2010 Vancouver Paralympics, which were taking place during my time in hospital. Suddenly, watching those athletes on TV, I had a new vision for my future.

Three weeks after being admitted, I finished chemotherapy and returned home. The first thing I did was try on my hockey gear to make sure it still fit after I’d gained weight during chemo. Though I had no idea how, I was determined to start playing again with my prosthetic leg. After some research, I joined the Canadian Standing Amputee Team, a hockey team of men and women who had lost their arms, hands or legs below the knee. I had lost my leg above the knee, so I had a far harder time with mobility. Despite my determination to learn, I quickly realized that I couldn’t keep up at that level.

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With encouragement from previous coaches, I started looking into sledge hockey. They explained that players, many of whom have lost their legs above the knee like me, sit strapped into a metal frame on skate blade. Around September 2011, I got in a sled for the first time. I felt immediately frustrated because of how difficult it was to learn. In sledge hockey, you skate, pass and shoot with your upper body, so you have to be ambidextrous, which is a pretty unnatural skill set. Despite my frustration, I’ve always loved a challenge; I was going to learn and become incredible. I was hooked from that point on.

My old habits from childhood started to kick in, and I would spend entire evenings sitting in my sled and practising in the garage. I taught myself by failing over and over again and learning from my mistakes. Once I had a handle on the sport, I joined a league nearby, the London Blizzards. When I first started, I was brutally bad, but my teammates were so understanding and encouraging.

Within six months, I started to get better and outgrow my team’s skill level. Around that time, one of the national players, Kieran Block, reached out to me on Facebook and suggested we practise with some of the Team Canada players at an arena in Burlington. In the sledge hockey world, word of mouth travels quickly when a former high-level hockey player acquires a disability and is transitioning into the sport. I felt immensely grateful for the opportunity. I was so nervous to meet and play with the team that I got a speeding ticket on the way to the practice.

Although they were much better than me, all the players I met were kind and welcoming. It was motivating to know that there was room to progress in sledge hockey, and my goals of pursuing hockey as a career returned—they just looked a little different this time around. The following fall, I was invited to the Team Canada selection camp. The coach saw my potential, and at only 17 years old, I became the youngest player on the team. The feeling of making the cut was indescribable. I knew my role was to learn as much as I could and make the most of any game time I got.

Leading up to my first Paralympics, Sochi 2014, the team kicked their training into high gear. I was improving, and my role on the team was expanding. I started playing in some more critical games as well as penalty and power play minutes. The Paralympics were surreal, and the games were even larger than I had expected. I was still so young; I celebrated my 19th birthday there. We all played our best games, and I helped the team take home bronze with a 4–1 overall record. As much as I wish we’d won gold or silver, it feels much better to win your last game and take home bronze than to lose your last game and take home silver.

Ever since those games in Sochi, I’ve improved and moved up the ranks at a steady rate, and my passion for the game has only grown stronger. In 2017, we won the world championships and rode that high into the 2018 Sochi Paralympic Games, where we won silver. In 2019, beyond my wildest dreams, I was named captain of Canada’s national para hockey team. That same year, I was Canada’s top scorer at the world championships, and again in 2021. In 2022, during the pandemic, we played in the Beijing Paralympic Games, bringing home silver.

Whenever I receive a medal, I’m shocked at how heavy it is compared with the ones from my minor-league days. My favourite part is sharing the medal with kids who have the same dream to pursue hockey as a career. Whenever I can, I speak to young people at schools or in arenas and hold events where kids can get on the ice and practise in my sled.

The team and I have been training nonstop to prepare for our upcoming games. Our biggest competition this year is hosting the world championships in Calgary from May 4 to 12, and we’re aiming for no less than gold. I am incredibly thankful for the opportunity to pursue my dream, and I hope to continue breaking milestones with Team Canada. Currently, the goal is to compete in the 2026 and 2030 Paralympics. If it were up to me, I would play until I was carried out of the rink.