Odjick still fighting, but this time for his life
VANCOUVER — Gino Odjick enters the cafeteria at Vancouver General Hospital with the aid of a walker.
He’s toting an oxygen tank and he shows the signs of two weeks of chemotherapy. At this moment, it’s hard to reconcile Odjick today with the enforcer who took on all comers and became one of the most popular players in Vancouver Canucks’ history.
But then he speaks. Then you know the fighter remains.
“I’m in good spirits and I’m going to do the best I can to fight this,” says Odjick. “Just because it’s diagnosed one way doesn’t mean it’s going to go that way.”
In mid-April, shortly after the ceremony that inducted his good friend Pat Quinn into the Canucks’ Ring of Honour, Odjick became short of breath.
Two days later he was diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis, a rare heart disorder in which a protein, produced in bone marrow, forms deposits in the heart.
The form he has is considered terminal.
A heart transplant won’t work. Neither will a bonemarrow transplant. There are experimental treatments in Europe but the best hope is doctors can buy Odjick some time.
“You don’t think when you’re 43 years old they’re going to tell you you’ve got one year to live,” he says. “It was the last thing on my mind. There’s been a lot of soul searching.”
Odjick, of course, has lived a thousand lives during his 43 years. Born on an Algonquin reserve just outside of Maniwaki, Que., the Canucks made him a fifth-round draft pick in the 1990 draft.
Over 605 NHL games with Vancouver, the New York Islanders, Philadelphia and Montreal, Odjick was a much better fighter than a player but he could fill a third- or fourth-line role and in 199394, his most productive season, he scored 16 goals.
Odjick has eight children who range in age from 11 to 27 — one son is named Bure after his former teammate — and most of them live back East.
“I’m going to go back East in a bit,” he says. “I’ve got to spend some time with my kids. Then we’ll go f rom there.”
“Hopefully, he fights for himself now,” says Quinn.
And he will fight on. No matter how this ends, he will fight on.