Finding his love for game
Wolski, who came to Canada from his native Poland via Germany at the age of four, grew up in a humble Etobicoke apartment complex, learning the sport on a frozen-over tennis court while wearing too-big, hand-me-down skates stuffed with socks or tissue. Once a beginner in the West Mall house league, Wolski blossomed into a star centreman for the OHL’s Brampton Battalion and was the 21st overall pick in the 2004 NHL entry draft. He wouldn’t have reached such heights, he has said more than once, without copious support from his father and mother, Wes and Zofia, and his older brother, Kordian.
But as much as Wolski accomplished plenty in 451career games as an NHLer — including a 50-point season as a 20-year-old rookie with the Colorado Avalanche and a 65point season a few years later — his time in the world’s best league was hardly a cakewalk. Dogged by inconsistency and injury, he was traded three times in a three-season span, and the going was rarely easy.
“The last couple of years in the NHL, I really wasn’t sure how much I was enjoying it anymore,” Wolski said. “I went into depression for a little bit, for a year and a bit. It was tough. I kind of didn’t like the game anymore.”
It probably didn’t help that, as he struggled to find his form as a member of the New York Rangers, he occasionally heard the loaded barbs of a coach who didn’t appear to sympathize with Wolski’s plight.
“Can’t get him out of the tub,” John Tortorella complained to reporters back in 2011, apparently speaking of Wolski’s frequent presence in the training-room whirlpool.
Wolski said if his battles with recurring groin problems were difficult enough, his experience with depression brought him to a career crossroads.
“I just think it got to a place where I was either going to quit hockey or seek some help,” he said. “When I was in New York, I had to see a therapist. I think people don’t realize how many guys really struggle with that in the NHL, and in sports in general. It was definitely a tough time. With the injuries and whatnot, it takes a toll on you.”
His time in therapy, he said, helped him find ways to navigate some of life’s most challenging hurdles.
“You just learn different tools to cope in certain ways, and when things get hard you realize what you’re made of,” he said.
Wolski said he only came to a renewed appreciation for his chosen profession when he landed in Russia to begin his KHL journey, after managing just nine points in 27 games of sporadic opportunity with the Washington Capitals in 2012-13.
“The first couple of months were tough. But you get used to it. I think I matured a lot over there. I began to love the game again,” he said.
His revived enthusiasm showed. Wolski ranked among the KHL’s top 10 goal scorers in his debut season with Nizhny Novgorod Torpedo. He won a championship in Magnitogorsk in his third season. Along the way he also clarified his feelings about his vocation.
“Going over there really kind of allowed me to have a fresh look at it. It opened my eyes,” Wolski said. “I started to think, ‘This is a privilege. And this can be taken away.’ ”
There was no ruder reminder of that hard truth than the events of Oct. 13, 2016. As word spread of his mishap, friends and family in North America watched the video in horror. Jari Byrski, the legendary GTAbased skills trainer who has long counted Wolski among a client list that includes NHLers Steven Stamkos, Brent Burns and Jason Spezza, said he was shocked to watch the local emergency crew promptly drag Wolski off the ice without using a spinal board or a neck brace.
“Wojtek told me they drove him to the hospital over the train tracks, while the (paramedic) was holding him down with her knee, because he was moving left and right (in the ambulance),” Byrski said. “(The damage) was so close to his nerve. He could have been paralyzed (on the trip to the hospital).”
After lying in a hospital bed for most of a week after he was injured, Wolski said it was more than two weeks before he could go for a modest walk without feeling nauseous. And while at first he told his coaches that he’d be back for the playoffs — a recovery timeline that would have been four months — complications arose. Months later, one of the two vertebrae damaged in the collision was healing well. The other was not.
“At that point, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to play again,” Wolski said.
Eventually the surgery, along with a rehab plan overseen by Toronto trainer Matt Nichol and chiropractic practitioner Mike Prebeg, brought renewed hope of more seasons to come, most pressingly the KHL’s 2017-18 campaign, which begins in late August an ocean away. Wolski, who has been back skating for about eight weeks, said he doesn’t even think about the injury anymore. Byrski said that in their most recent skills sessions — before Wolski left for Kunlun Red Star’s European training camp this week — Wolski, skating alongside Stamkos and Burns and Spezza, appeared “fearless” and “ready to attack.”
Wolski said one of his goals is to play long enough so that the two children he shares with wife Jesse — son Weston, two, and daughter Lennon, 14 weeks — might one day have a memory of seeing him play. Nine months removed from fearing the worst, he’s looking at the brighter sides of the game of his life.
“As I’m getting older, I’m 31, you start seeing the end of the tunnel . . . You realize you’ve got to play as well as you can, as hard as you can, as long as you can,” Wolski said. “Coming back from this injury, this is my last chance. You never know when it’ll be taken away. So you’ve got to make the most of it.”