Rypien death leads NHL to new turf: Depression
by Scott Maniquet, National Post
Aug 16, 2011
I had this friend once: she was beautiful, whip-smart, creative, tortured. One night the tortured part won out, and alone in the dark, she swallowed a pile of pills. Before it was too late, though, she made a call, and the person at the other end was home, and got to the phone just before the machine picked up, and half an hour later she was at St. Paul’s Hospital in downtown Vancouver. They gave her charcoal, pumped out the poison, she lived. She’s a great mom now, happy and still beautiful, with a girl and a boy. She was lucky.
Not everyone gets lucky, and not everyone gets out of the dark. Rick Rypien didn’t; the former NHL player was found dead Monday in his home in tiny Coleman, Alta. A Vancouver radio station reported he took his own life, though that remains unconfirmed. He was 27.
Winnipeg Jets assistant GM Craig Heisinger told reporters in Winnipeg that Mr. Rypien had suffered from depression for about a decade; he had taken, or been assigned, two leaves of absence from the Vancouver Canucks over the past three years. When he returned in March of this year to the Winnipeg Jets organization, he sounded like a man who had passed through the gloom, and was ready for the rest of his life.
“I’ve got a clean mind, and, I’m healthy, I’m happier with myself than I’ve ever been,” he told reporters in Winnipeg on March 8, 2011. “I think it’s going to be how I behave and how I act over time, but I’m just taking it one day at a time, and I’m more excited about hockey than I’ve ever been in my whole life.”
That was five months ago, and those who knew Rick Rypien appears to have seen nothing wrong in the intervening time. Mr. Heisinger, former teammates — all have told various media outlets that he seemed happy. If he did commit suicide, nobody seems to have seen it coming.
And so with a young man dead — the second in the NHL this summer, after the alcohol and painkillers overdose of New York Rangers enforcer Derek Boogaard in May — all that’s left is the sadness, and the meaning, if there is one.
There are some who will turn this debate to the role of fighting in hockey, since while he could skate and work, Mr. Rypien was a hockey player whose greatest defined skill was to throw and receive punches, in the grand old tradition. He wasn’t a heavyweight, though. His father Wes was an amateur boxer, and Mr. Rypien, at 5-11, 190, was a technician.
He may have been yet another tortured hockey pugilist, but we don’t know. Canucks coach Alain Vigneault once said, “he loves to fight,” while Mr. Heisinger said Tuesday that “he did love being the style of player he was.” We know that if Mr. Heisinger is right about a decade of depression, it roughly coincides with Mr. Rypien’s career of playing organized hockey; he played his first full season with the Regina Pats of the Western Hockey League in 2002-03.
But even then, we don’t know enough about why he might have been depressed, about whether fighting was a trigger for that depression. We just know that he suffered from a disease that is still not understood in society, or in sports. Studies have shown that depression is severely underreported in professional sport; even if this case, in which the Canucks attempted to procure various avenues of treatment without putting pressure on the young man, Vancouver general manager Mike Gillis admits they didn’t have an established course to follow. “There is,” he said, “no blueprint.”
That day of his return back in March, Rick Rypien said his main goal was just to be happy with himself, to be comfortable with himself. Behind a rough beard that hid his sharp jawline, he said “Now I’m more aware than ever that it’s OK to ask for help, and people will help you.” He said he really believed that his treatment was “only going to benefit my on-ice performance now, and kind of make me whole, and the more I go on I think the more I can talk about it, and hopefully one day I can help other hockey players that might be experiencing difficulties with whatever they’re dealing with on the off-ice.”
Rick Rypien wanted to make a difference. He fought his depression. He asked for help. He said all the right things. He was not alone. Boxer Frank Bruno suffered from depression, and was institutionalized at one point; in 2009 Robert Enke, one of Germany’s finest soccer goalkeepers, stepped in front of a moving train, after six years of depression following the death of his infant daughter. The lesson of Rick Rypien may simply turn out to be a simple one: that athletes are people. They hurt. As with the evolving understanding of concussions, the brain is the last place that pain has been acceptable in sports. Maybe this will help change that. Small consolation, but sometimes that’s all you get.
by Scott Maniquet, National Post
Aug 16, 2011
I had this friend once: she was beautiful, whip-smart, creative, tortured. One night the tortured part won out, and alone in the dark, she swallowed a pile of pills. Before it was too late, though, she made a call, and the person at the other end was home, and got to the phone just before the machine picked up, and half an hour later she was at St. Paul’s Hospital in downtown Vancouver. They gave her charcoal, pumped out the poison, she lived. She’s a great mom now, happy and still beautiful, with a girl and a boy. She was lucky.
Not everyone gets lucky, and not everyone gets out of the dark. Rick Rypien didn’t; the former NHL player was found dead Monday in his home in tiny Coleman, Alta. A Vancouver radio station reported he took his own life, though that remains unconfirmed. He was 27.
Winnipeg Jets assistant GM Craig Heisinger told reporters in Winnipeg that Mr. Rypien had suffered from depression for about a decade; he had taken, or been assigned, two leaves of absence from the Vancouver Canucks over the past three years. When he returned in March of this year to the Winnipeg Jets organization, he sounded like a man who had passed through the gloom, and was ready for the rest of his life.
“I’ve got a clean mind, and, I’m healthy, I’m happier with myself than I’ve ever been,” he told reporters in Winnipeg on March 8, 2011. “I think it’s going to be how I behave and how I act over time, but I’m just taking it one day at a time, and I’m more excited about hockey than I’ve ever been in my whole life.”
That was five months ago, and those who knew Rick Rypien appears to have seen nothing wrong in the intervening time. Mr. Heisinger, former teammates — all have told various media outlets that he seemed happy. If he did commit suicide, nobody seems to have seen it coming.
And so with a young man dead — the second in the NHL this summer, after the alcohol and painkillers overdose of New York Rangers enforcer Derek Boogaard in May — all that’s left is the sadness, and the meaning, if there is one.
There are some who will turn this debate to the role of fighting in hockey, since while he could skate and work, Mr. Rypien was a hockey player whose greatest defined skill was to throw and receive punches, in the grand old tradition. He wasn’t a heavyweight, though. His father Wes was an amateur boxer, and Mr. Rypien, at 5-11, 190, was a technician.
He may have been yet another tortured hockey pugilist, but we don’t know. Canucks coach Alain Vigneault once said, “he loves to fight,” while Mr. Heisinger said Tuesday that “he did love being the style of player he was.” We know that if Mr. Heisinger is right about a decade of depression, it roughly coincides with Mr. Rypien’s career of playing organized hockey; he played his first full season with the Regina Pats of the Western Hockey League in 2002-03.
But even then, we don’t know enough about why he might have been depressed, about whether fighting was a trigger for that depression. We just know that he suffered from a disease that is still not understood in society, or in sports. Studies have shown that depression is severely underreported in professional sport; even if this case, in which the Canucks attempted to procure various avenues of treatment without putting pressure on the young man, Vancouver general manager Mike Gillis admits they didn’t have an established course to follow. “There is,” he said, “no blueprint.”
That day of his return back in March, Rick Rypien said his main goal was just to be happy with himself, to be comfortable with himself. Behind a rough beard that hid his sharp jawline, he said “Now I’m more aware than ever that it’s OK to ask for help, and people will help you.” He said he really believed that his treatment was “only going to benefit my on-ice performance now, and kind of make me whole, and the more I go on I think the more I can talk about it, and hopefully one day I can help other hockey players that might be experiencing difficulties with whatever they’re dealing with on the off-ice.”
Rick Rypien wanted to make a difference. He fought his depression. He asked for help. He said all the right things. He was not alone. Boxer Frank Bruno suffered from depression, and was institutionalized at one point; in 2009 Robert Enke, one of Germany’s finest soccer goalkeepers, stepped in front of a moving train, after six years of depression following the death of his infant daughter. The lesson of Rick Rypien may simply turn out to be a simple one: that athletes are people. They hurt. As with the evolving understanding of concussions, the brain is the last place that pain has been acceptable in sports. Maybe this will help change that. Small consolation, but sometimes that’s all you get.
