Airdrie native Straschnitzki eager to see his teammates, hopes to hit the ice again
On the long road back to the ice, Airdrie’s Ryan Straschnitzki has made it through the first step.
After undergoing a nearly sevenhour surgery on a broken back Saturday and told he’d be paralyzed from the chest down, the Humboldt Broncos defenceman overcame his first challenge in hospital Monday.
“They tried to sit him up for his first battle. He got through that,” said Straschnitzki’s father Tom, who added his son was screaming in pain. “But he had to do it and he did it.”
Straschnitzki is one of 14 people who were injured when the Broncos team bus was hit by a semitrailer en route to a playoff game. The crash killed 15, including 10 players, the bus driver, two coaches, a volunteer statistician and a broadcaster.
Tom said his son is slowly coming to terms with the magnitude of the incident. He’s been asking for a wheelchair so he can see some of his fellow teammates in hospital, from whom he’s been isolated since the crash.
“(The doctors) said not yet, maybe in a couple days or tomorrow. That’s his goal, tomorrow,” said Tom, adding three others on the team have the same injury as Ryan. “Most of them are still in coma and it’s still touch and go here for a lot.”
Straschnitzki has received immense support after his dad revealed he’s already dreaming of one day suiting up for Canada’s para hockey team.
“He said that this morning again: ‘Dad, when can we start training ?’” said Tom. “Obviously some people (would) want to quit and I said, ‘Buddy, we’re Strazes. We don’t quit. We go through it.’”
But Straschnitzki won’t have to go through this challenge alone. Hockey Canada says it looks forward to helping him learn the sport of sledge hockey when the time comes.
“We’d be excited to see him pursue that dream and help him along with the introduction and hopefully as he pursues it further from there,” said Marshall Starkman, manager of Hockey Canada’s para hockey program. “At the end of the day, it’s a really rewarding experience and you can achieve many tremendous things through participation.”
Each province has para hockey programming that allows people to experiment with the game at a grassroots level, according to Starkman. But he said the sport can be difficult to learn at first and requires tremendous perseverance.
“Our guys all have a very similar story in terms of the first time they got into a sled; they found it to be very challenging and very disheartening because it’s so challenging from a balance standpoint — finding your balance and then being able to move around,” he said. “Whether they were born with a disability, whether they acquired a disability though an injury or an illness, every single guy on our team has a background and a really unique and inspiring story for sure.”
Tom said his son’s strength has always been one of his most admirable characteristics and one that will carry him through the difficult recovery process.
“He’s been cut many times like every ... NHLer and of course he always felt unwanted, which every player feels,” he said. “And I said, ‘Well pal, that door closes; we’re smashing through the other one.’ And that’s exactly what I told him yesterday. I said, ‘Now we got a new challenge and we’re smashing through that as a family and with all the support.’”
A fundraiser has been set up to support Straschnitzki’s recovery financially as baseball hats embroidered with his No. 10 and the hashtag #StrazStrong are being sold. On Friday, supporters will gather at the Chinook Winds Park in Airdrie to honour Straschnitzki and remember his fallen teammates.
A GoFundMe account started to support the families affected by the crash had already raised more than $6 million as of Monday afternoon.
Tom said the support has been overwhelming.
“(Ryan), like me, he feels kind of guilty. I went, ‘Pal, you can’t feel guilty’ and he goes, ‘Well how do we thank all these people?’” said his dad. “I went, ‘Pal, that’s one question I cannot answer.’ You just pay it forward.”