A lot can happen in the world of professional hockey over the course of 12 months.
Careers begin and end with varying degrees of flourish to them, new champions are crowned at the start of the summer and the world of the NHL is always gathering steam while constantly moving forward and pushing ahead.
Yesterday’s made-for-Hollywood success story can become tomorrow’s cautionary tale given the violence on the ice. The strength and speed of the most dangerous game played on the frozen sheet has brought concussions to the forefront of the discussion. The long term health of NHL players long after their careers are over has become a legitimate concern.
Take the dramatic case of Bobby Robins, for example.
One year ago the 33-year-old was on his way to capping off an underdog success story that only needed a 1980’s cinema-style montage to become Rocky Balboa on ice. He was right in the middle of winning a spot on the opening night NHL roster for the Bruins, and in doing so realized the singular goal he’d obsessed about over for the previous five years.
Robins had spent nine years in the minor leagues skating anywhere that would have him, and paying his dues while drawing paychecks from teams as far-flung as the Belfast Giants in Northern Ireland and the ECHL’s Elmira Jackals or Bakersfield Condors. The NHL goal really became something of a tunnel vision fixation once Robins spent back-to-back years playing in Belfast and then in Austria. Robins was going to give the North American pro game one last shot, and he was hell-bent on doing anything to realize his NHL dream.
So, the 6-foot-1, 220-pounder did it the hard way.
Boston Bruins
He racked up 94 career fights in the AHL over his nine pro hockey seasons, and became a cult hero in three seasons with the Providence Bruins, where his punishing body checks, momentum-shifting fights and thoughtful manner perfectly encapsulated what’s unique about the enforcers that are now quickly getting fazed out of the game.
After three seasons racking up 687 penalty minutes and rating good enough to be in the P-Bruins’ playoff lineups, he got his chance in the show with the Black and Gold once Shawn Thornton moved on to Florida. Robins outworked and outmuscled the competition in last year’s training camp, and manned the right wing on a fourth line with Daniel Paille and Craig Cunningham in the B’s 2014 season opener vs. Philly.
It was a beautiful kid’s dream realized for Robins after doing all the right things on and off the ice, and a valuable lesson that things are indeed possible when desired badly enough.
“I had set that goal five years ago, and I really honed in on it. It became my only thing,” said Robins. “That was it for me. I just kept repeating all day ‘I can make it to the NHL. I will make it to the NHL.’ To make it and achieve that goal was an interesting thing. I’m grateful for attaining it, and I’ll never forget it.
“But when I had that goal in mind I figured it meant having an NHL career for ‘X’ number of years. I always thought I’d play until I was 40. Instead it was a quick experience, I reached my goal and then it was done. It’s taken a lot of time for me to accept that it’s what happened to me, and that there’s some kind of reason for why it happened to me.”
The cruel hand of fate unfortunately stepped into Robins’ NHL dream as its wont to do and quickly transformed his personal success story into a dark, forbidding nightmare. On opening night, the Bruins enforcer dropped the gloves with Flyers defenseman Luke Schenn after delivering a crunching hit to Zac Rinaldo. Schenn caught Robins with a stiff right hand that stunned the tough kid from Wisconsin. Everything went wonky afterward.
Robins finished the game and jumped on the team flight to Detroit and was in the lineup that next night against the Red Wings. He knew something was wrong, and was in the dilemma of admitting an injury while wanting to project toughness, durability and excellence. Robins wanted badly to carve out an NHL job for himself, and getting dinged in his first fight wasn’t going to work. It’s easy to see why a tough, determined guy like Robins would simply try to power through the worsening concussion symptoms, but desperation turned things from bad dream into nightmare fuel.
“I got clipped in the head above my eye and something changed in that moment. I knew I was dinged, got on the flight to Detroit and woke up concussed the next morning,” said Robins. “It was a weird state of confusion in a hazy dream state. I was doing all these techniques that players and fighters use to get through concussions: taking mass doses of caffeine and stimulants and nootropic brain-enhancing supplements.
“It was a messed up time. I just kept fighting through and kept trying to play through it, but it just kept getting progressively worse and worse. Every impact I took to my head it got worse and worse. I took two big blows in that game against Detroit, and then after that it was all a blurry state of...kind of this bad bream of not knowing what was going on. There was a great sense of fear and confusion, and then a lot of self-medication. It eventually got worse and worse, and then a week later I finally accepted something was wrong when it wasn’t getting better. Until then I was working under the delusion that it was going to just clear up. It just never happened.”
The ex-enforcer said it was the first major concussion experience of his nine-year career, but it’s always difficult to determine whether it’s one big hit, or the cumulative effect of many blows to the head over a long, rugged career that really do the damage.
Robins played one more game for the Bruins after the loss to Detroit. He fought in that loss to the Washington Capitals as well. He was then sent down to Providence when it was clear things weren’t working out for a struggling Boston team. He played two more games in Providence the following week, and then Robins never played another game, AHL or NHL, all of last season. He was caught in the perpetual haze of post-concussion syndrome, and couldn’t wave away the fog after suffering multiple concussions to his injured brain.
Robins said he became a different person, and it wasn’t somebody he much recognized. In fact, Robins’ words at the darkest moments really hit home given the spate of suicides, and premature deaths, in the NHL enforcer community over the last five years. The Todd Ewen suicide last week marked the fifth premature death for an NHL enforcer over the last five years, and even one incident is way, way too many.
“It was definitely a scary time. It got dark...it got very dark. It was really some dark stuff. To be completely open about it, it almost got the best of me. I was right in that spot where I was thinking the worst thoughts I could think. It was just so crazy that I had become that person thinking those thoughts, and I was in a place I called ‘The Pit.’ I literally couldn’t get out of it. I would call home to my wife [Sam], and it was like I was a completely different person. I was like a walking disaster,” admitted Robins, who estimated he’s been in about 150 fights in his pro hockey career. “I definitely wasn’t thinking long term. I was just thinking literally ‘I need to take a bunch of these pills, and I need to get through this practice.’ Then I would go out for practice, do the drill and then not know where I was. All of the sudden the puck was on my stick, and I would just instinctively shoot the puck at the net and get back in line.
“But the whole time I was just saying ‘I just need to get through this practice, and I’ll feel better tomorrow.’ It was definitely a state of denial, but it was also a state of confusion. It was really, really scary. I spent my whole career fighting through injuries: sore knuckles, torn shoulders, torn knees…whatever it was. I would just keep fighting through it. The previous year I tore my MCL on my first shift in an exhibition game in Baltimore, and I was out there the very next shift running around and hitting guys. I remember the doctors and trainers couldn’t believe I’d played that shift after looking at the damage on the MRI. I am a tough dude, you know? I’d play through anything in my career, and physically I was able to do that. When it happened physically to my brain, I had that same mentality. It was a legitimate warrior’s mentality...a ‘I’m ready to die’ mentality as crazy as that sounds now looking back on it. But that’s the reality of the fight game, and I was willing to do anything. That stubbornness combined with the confusion and denial, and combined with trying to self-medicate, it was a big mixture of a confused, scary state. I felt like I was in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas all the time, and it got progressively worse with each hit I took. Looking back in hindsight now, I obviously wish I had said something right after that first impact [in the Schenn fight].”
So what got him through it, and kept him from being a cautionary tale?
First and foremost, Robins focused on his young family with wife Sam and baby daughter Liberty, and was aided by his gradual recovery from the concussion symptoms.
“When I finally started to come out of it and get better every day, it was realizing what could happen just from a couple of blows to the head,” said Robins.
The fog eventually and mercifully lifted, and the smiling, affable, energetic Robins came back to the forefront with his desire to create: whether it’s an inspirational blog post at his website www.bobbyrobins.com, or the book he’s working on about his great underdog hockey story (“I was a million different versions of myself, some good and some bad, and it all culminated in making to the NHL. Then a real dark time happened for eight months. It’s pretty much this crazy story where I emerged with so many life lessons, and a newfound strength and newfound spirit”), or the podcast he’s going to kick off over the next weeks and months.
“[My life] is a really cool story that needs to be told, and I think sometimes I take it for granted because I lived it. It just feels normal,” said Robins. “But recently I’ve been looking at it from an outside perspective, and realizing that it’s a crazy story. My wife keeps telling me, ‘You’re the Disney story, Bobby!’ You need to tell people this.
“So I realized that I need to tell my story for me, and for all of the people, fans and family that supported me throughout my career. They need to know what it was like on the ground level for all those years through the thick and the thin. For some reason I was given a talent where I can express those feelings, those moments and those thoughts I was going through at the time. So that’s what I’m going to do. The transition for me right now is moving from athlete to writer, or athlete to artist…whatever you want to call it. I’m right in the thick of it right now.”
The Bobby Robins story will also undoubtedly help some of those brothers in the pro hockey fraternity experiencing the same dark times he survived last year. There are clearly those out there in the hockey world in need of a helping hand, and Robins wants to extend it whenever possible.
“Hopefully some of the young guys coming through the ranks can hear my story, and go on a different path,” said Robins. “You need to realize there is a bigger picture than just getting out there for that next game, and getting through that next practice. This is real life stuff. It’s not a game. It’s health stuff.
“Whatever happened to me happened for a reason, and I have to talk about it and share my story. If I can save sombody’s life, literally, with all of the deaths that are happening in the NHL, if I can do anything to help somebody on their journey, on their path, then I’m grateful to do it. Maybe what happened to me needed to happen, so I could share this lesson with other people.”
The one thing he won’t be doing anytime again is playing pro hockey. Robins retired at the end of last season after missing the bulk of the year with the debilitating post-concussion syndrome symptoms. He did plenty of research about the reckless path ahead of him if he continued trying to chase his NHL dream, and knew that it wasn’t worth it for him or his family. Robins achieved his goal of making it to the NHL, got an education at UMass-Lowell thanks to his hockey abilities and was able to reap the reward for all of the work that he poured into his career.
So it was time to move on while he was still way ahead in the life column.
“It was a hard decision, but at the same time it was an easy decision,” said Robins of retiring. “I just knew there was no way I could do it anymore. Physically, mentally and spiritually I couldn’t do it. Just looking at my wife and my daughter, it wasn’t worth it to take any more traumas to my brain. Period. There was no other option for me. That was the easy decision, but the hard [thing] was everything else that came from that. The regret, and the wave of negative emotions from the feeling that I had [my career] taken away from me…I didn’t go out on my terms. But [retirement] was a decision I knew I had to make, and that I’d have to life with.
“I had a helluva career, and I made it. I played three games in the NHL. I would have liked to play 300 games, but that’s just not my story. That’s not what happened to me. I’m trying to get past the transition phase, and figure out the real life stuff right now. I’ve heard a lot of guys talking about retirement: some guys say it’s a really hard time, and other guys really transition well. For me it’s kind of been in between with some good days and some bad days. But the most important thing is I’ve got my family, and I’ve got my little girl [2-year-old Liberty]. For me it’s about being grateful every single day for my health, and being grateful that my brain was feeling better and better every single day. Having all of my family and friends around me to support my decision, and the great reception I got on social media from fans and everything [really helped].”
Now, Robins moves on with the next chapter of his life as a creative force, an inspirational figure and somebody that has much more to give than a fourth-line energy shift. Here’s hoping he gets his message out there, and turns last year’s giant negative experience into a positive for him, his family and the hockey community at large.