Outside the box: The life and times of Ottawa`s Jim Kyte

Transcription

4/14/2016
Outside the box: The life and times of Ottawa’s Jim Kyte | Ottawa Citizen
Outside the box: The life and times of
Ottawa's Jim Kyte
ANDREW
D U F F Y,
O T T AW A
CITIZEN
(HTTP://OTTAWACITIZEN.COM/AUTHOR/ADUFFY2014)
More from Andrew Duûy, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: February 13, 2016 | Last Updated: February 15, 2016 9:55 AM EDT
Jim Kyte was a fearsome NHL tough guy, but his biggest fight
was reinventing himself after injuries ended his career, writes
Andrew Duffy.
1st Period: Growing up deaf
As a boy, Jim Kyte lived in fear of Belleville.
That city was home to the province’s residential school for the deaf — once known as the
Ontario Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb — and Kyte wanted nothing to
do with it.
“I always worried I’d be sent oú to Belleville if I didn’t do well in school,” he remembers.
Kyte’s mother, Gayle, had always suspected Jim was hearing impaired since, as a toddler,
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/localnews/outsidetheboxthelifeandtimesofottawasjimkyte
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he would rarely respond when she called. The diagnosis was confirmed when Kyte was
three years old.
It turned out that all five of the Kyte brothers were deaf: They suúered from auditory nerve
degeneration, a problem commonly associated with aging.
In the Kyte family, however, a faulty gene triggered the damage. Curiously, the family’s only
girl, Aynslee, was unaúected.
Jim’s father, Dr. John Kyte, was hearing impaired, but he
had always assumed his hearing loss was due to a
boyhood illness, and he had no idea his children would
inherit the condition. John had been a track and field star
at St. Francis Xavier University, where he also won
acclaim in basketball, rugby and boxing. He later
graduated from McGill University’s dentistry program
thanks to his ability to lip read and take notes at the same
time.
His success would inform the Kyte’s decision to raise and
educate their children among the hearing.
In Ottawa, Dr. Kyte owned and operated a dental oøce on
Albert Street. At home in Alta Vista, he constantly
preached to his deaf sons that any obstacle could be
surmounted by a positive attitude and hard work. Jim Kyte receives an award at Vanier
Arena.
C O U R T E S Y
KYTE
FA M I LY
OF
THE
“It may be a handicap, but it’s not a disability,” he would tell them.
That’s not the way everyone viewed it. Gayle Kyte, a former high school teacher, had to do
battle with the Catholic school board to keep her children in regular classrooms.
Although profoundly deaf — he has a 100decibel hearing loss — Jim proved such a good
student that he was enrolled in French immersion at St. Patrick’s Junior High School. He
could only understand his teachers by collating what he heard with what he read on their
lips.
Still, he excelled. “Jimmy was extremely bright,” says Gayle.
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Jim Kyte was selected in the first round of the OHL draft by the Cornwall Royals.
KYTE
C O U R T E S Y
OF
THE
FA M I LY
Being the mother of five highspirited deaf boys had its challenges. The boys used to have
screaming matches to see who could best penetrate their individual sound barriers. They
watched TV with the volume turned up full blast. They liked to sing at the top of their lungs.
And they liked to brawl: Dr. Kyte had to cap three of his son’s teeth.
“My dad would come home, take his hearing aids out, and read the paper,” says Jim. “My
mom and sister didn’t have that luxury.”
Organized sports lowered the household din; they also oúered the boys a way for to fit in.
“We wanted to do what every other kid did,” Jim says.
At the time, hearing aids were cumbersome things: A receiver was strapped to the chest,
and wires ran up to large earpieces. Jim learned to absorb a bodycheck while protecting his
receiver, but the hardasrock earpieces often led to ear bleeds.
“That was just part of the game for the Kyte boys,” he says.
All of the Kytes played competitive hockey, along with other high level sports. For Jim, it
was hockey all winter and lacrosse in the summer. But he didn’t consider sports a career
option — he thought about dentistry or medicine — until one day in Grade 11 when a friend
told him that he’d been selected first overall in the Central Junior Hockey League draft.
He didn’t believe it. They went to the school library and found the draft results in that day’s
newspaper: Sure enough, Kyte was a Hawkesbury Hawk.
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One year later, in 1981, he was a first round draft pick of the Ontario Hockey League’s
Cornwall Royals. The scout who picked him, the legendary Gordie Wood, was famously
secretive about his evaluation methods and would not sit with other scouts. He didn’t know
the scuttlebutt on Kyte.
It meant that when Kyte made his way to the Cornwall draft table to shake hands, Wood
and Royals Coach Bob Kilger were both surprised to see that their blue chip prospect had
two hearing aids. Kilger turned to Wood, and quipped: “I know this is the year of the
handicapped, but don’t you think we’re taking this a little bit too far?”
The awkward joke didn’t faze Kyte: In fact, he was thrilled. “It meant Gordie judged me
without any preconceived notions,” he says. “He judged me just like any other hockey
player as to what I could or could not do on the ice.”
2nd Period: On the ice
Jim Kyte had heard stories about the Philadelphia Flyers’ Dave Brown
(http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=610) long before he ever squared oú
with him.
Brown was about the same size as Kyte — 6’5’’, 225pounds — and had earned a reputation
as a fearsome brawler in the American Hockey League, where he racked up 418 penalty
minutes in one season.
Kyte was in his second year as an NHL defenceman and had earned his own reputation as a
formidable heavyweight after being drafted in the first round, 12th overall, by the Winnipeg
Jets.
But he really didn’t like to fight. He considered himself a policeman, not an enforcer. In fact,
he once told Sports Illustrated that being known only as a fighter would be worse than
being known as the NHL’s only deaf player. (He remains the only legally deaf player to hold
an NHL job.) He wanted to earn his spurs as a stayathome defenceman, a smart and
dependable blue liner.
Still, he understood that anyone with his size was expected to defend smaller, skilled
teammates from the likes of Dave Brown.
Brown stared daggers at him in the warmup, and Kyte knew it was only a matter of time
before they clashed.
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Jim Kyte is fighting NY Islanders leftwinger Dale Henry on April 25, 1989. Winnipeg Sun files
Their first encounter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcH8VDjHNrI) that night was a
classic slugfest; their second made Kyte mad. At the end of that bout, as Kyte lay on the ice
with a linesman on top of him, he thought Brown tried to stomp on his outstretched hand.
“I thought, ‘He’s not trying to hurt me. He’s trying to maim me,” says Kyte.
That night, he checked the schedule: He would face Brown again in Winnipeg in six weeks.
Kyte dreamed every night about the rematch, and would wake in a sweat with his fists
clenched. He studied film of the fighter and rehearsed his approach to their next bout. “He
(Brown) was always in my thoughts,” says Kyte. On game day, his stomach was a stew of
anxiety and fear.
Eager to end the suspense, Kyte confronted his “demon” on the first shift: He
crosschecked Brown hard in front of the Jets’ net, and slashed him on the back of the legs,
but when the whistle blew, Brown just skated to the faceoú circle like nothing had
happened. At the circle, they locked eyes and Kyte demanded to know the score: “Are we
going to go tonight, or what?”
“Not tonight,” Brown said apologetically, “my mom’s in the stands.”
Brown’s parents had driven from their home in Saskatoon to see their son play in the NHL
for the first time.
Kyte felt like a piano had been lifted from his back. “My demon has a mother,” he told
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himself. He could relate: Kyte’s own mother didn’t like to watch him fight, either. Gayle Kyte
would always put her head down when a fight started and worry about her son.
She missed some epic brawls with Gord Kluzak
(http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=2758) , Jeú Beukeboom
(http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=375) , Tim Hunter
(http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=2422) , Marty McSorley
(http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=3644) and Joey Kocur
(http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=2767) , who who once cracked open
Kyte’s helmet and knocked him out cold. There was no concussion protocol then: Kyte
played the next night in St. Louis, despite having a headache that would last six weeks.
Kocur missed two weeks with a hand injury.
Often, during a fight, Kyte’s hearing aids would get dislodged and fall to the ice. Before
each game, he had to brief the linesmen to make sure they scooped them up and brought
them to the penalty box.
Playing in the NHL while deaf had other challenges. Since Kyte could not readily
communicate with his teammates on the ice, he found ways to compensate. He became a
student of his team’s systems and knew precisely where everyone was supposed to be in
any situation. Since he couldn’t hear teammates shout a warning, he constantly counted
players in the oúensive zone to ensure no one snuck behind him. In the defensive zone, he
asked his goalies to signal when it was icing, and to point in the direction he should turn. He
used the polished Plexiglass like a rearview mirror to identify potential outlet passes.
In the dressing room between periods, he had to take out his hearing aids and blow dry
them so that they wouldn’t short out from sweat. Later, he learned to sheath them in
plastic wrap.
Kyte’s hardnosed playing style eventually began to take its toll on his body. He broke a
vertebra in his back and played six weeks with the injury before finally having it diagnosed
at the Mayo Clinic. He returned to Winnipeg in a body brace and missed the playoús that
year.
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Calgary Flames #23, Sheldon Kennedy was injured when he collided with San Jose Sharks #2, Jim Kyte and goalie
Arturs Irbe near the end of the third period in 1996.
L A R R Y
MACDOUGAL
/
L A R RY
MACDOUGAL
He was traded to Pittsburgh and later to Calgary, where he broke his ankle in a fight with
Chicago’s Mike Peluso (http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=4224) . The
next season, he signed with his hometown Ottawa Senators. He played four games with the
club during its inaugural season, but spent most of the year in the minors getting used to
his surgically repaired ankle and its two steel pins.
Kyte thought about retirement until oúered the chance to captain the Las Vegas Thunder, a
new team in the International Hockey League. He performed well enough there to earn two
more years in the NHL with the San Jose Sharks. It’s one of his proudest achievements: “I
proved to myself that I could still be there and contribute.”
In October 1997, Kyte’s professional hockey career came to screeching halt in a
blindside crash. The accident would upend his life and make him confront the sharp end of
his father’s old bromide: “Life is 10 per cent what happens to you — and 90 per cent how
you react.”
3rd Period: After hockey
Jim Kyte did not see what hit him. He was driving home from Kansas City’s Kemper Arena,
where he had just finished practice with the IHL Blades — the 33yearold was hoping to
make it back to the NHL when it expanded the following year — when a black Lexus raced
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through a stop sign at the bottom of a highway ramp and slammed into the driver’s side of
his red Honda Civic.
Witnesses said Kyte’s car slid across the street, hit the curb, and rolled twice. The force of
the collision knocked him out. Doctors later theorized that his head struck the passenger
seat headrest, which was bent sideways.
Kyte regained consciousness as firefighters cut him out of the vehicle. He called his wife,
Nancy, to let her know he was OK. The couple had married in 1993, eight years after
meeting at the Ottawa Athletic Club. Jim liked that Nancy knew nothing about hockey: She
was a skier and an economist. They had three small children at home.
Kyte is pictured with his sons ( left ) Wyatt 6, his twin brother Hayden 6 (right) and in the middle is Owen 5.
JOHN
MAJOR
/
THE
O T T AW A
CITIZEN
“I’ve got a little bit of a headache,” Kyte told a Kansas City Star reporter later that day. “I’m
just glad to be alive.”
He woke the next morning with a gruesome headache that would plague him for the next
year. “It was really the first time I’d ever had severe postconcussion symptoms,” he says. “I
never experienced anything like it.”
The injury made his life miserable. Every waking moment, his headache oscillated between
a dull pain and a roaring migraine. He tired easily and was often dizzy. He fell down at night
walking to the bathroom, and slammed into door frames because of his impaired depth
perception.
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His memory was also aúected. One day, he twice went to the corner store in search of
batteries and twice came back with bread and milk. “What am I here for?” he asked aloud
on his third return trip. “I don’t know,” the cashier told him, “but it’s not bread and milk.”
The Kansas City Blades used a loophole to terminate his contract two months after the
accident, and the Kytes moved back to Ottawa. That summer, still suúering, Kyte went to
see a concussion specialist, Chicago neurologist Dr. James Kelly.
“I’ll never clear you to play hockey again,” Dr. Kelly told him. “You are permanently post
concussed.”
In pain, his hockey career at an end, Kyte grew more angry, depressed and worried. His
wife, Nancy, bore the brunt of his unhappiness. “I wasn’t pleasant to be around because I
was in such discomfort,” he says. “But she stuck with me.”
He put hockey firmly behind — he didn’t keep any memorabilia on display — and focused
on being a stayathome dad to his three boys: twins Hayden and Wyatt, and their younger
brother, Owen. (The boys all have normal hearing.)
Kyte kept a journal and found therapeutic value in the writing since he sometimes mixed up
words in conversation. Writing gave him more time to get things right. He began to write
commentaries for a fledgling website, The Sport Faculty, and his work was so
accomplished that the Citizen took notice and awarded him a weekly column. He called it
Point Man, and it ran for the next four years.
The job raised his profile and confidence, and he signed on with the National Speakers
Bureau.
At one of his speeches, Algonquin College business school dean Kent MacDonald was in
the audience, and he invited Kyte to help put together a sports management program for
the school. Kyte led a blueribbon advisory panel that made recommendations about how
to move forward. Six weeks after the panel reported, Kyte called to find out the status of
the program, and MacDonald explained that the plan was on hold: The oøcial charged with
developing it had abruptly left. http://ottawacitizen.com/news/localnews/outsidetheboxthelifeandtimesofottawasjimkyte
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Jim Kyte is now Dean of Algonquin’s School of Hospitality and Tourism.
J U L I E
OLIVER
/
O T T AW A
CITIZEN
“But if you’re serious about it,” MacDonald added, “I need a business plan in two weeks.”
Kyte had owned a restaurant in Winnipeg, and had operated successful hockey schools for
deaf children. He felt at home in the business world. Determined to capitalize on the
opportunity at Algonquin, Kyte worked like a demon to finish the business plan and
stickhandle it through school’s approvals process. Impressed, MacDonald oúered him the job of program coordinator. It was March 2002.
Kyte put together a staú, built the curriculum, recruited students, and began a new career
as a college professor six months later. In 2007, he was named a department chair in the School of Business, and in 2014, he
became the dean of Algonquin’s School of Hospitality and Tourism. Along the way, Kyte
earned a Master’s in Business Administration from Royal Roads University; he’s now
thinking about pursuing a doctorate.
His 640 NHL games, he says, provided robust preparation for a career in academe. “You
have to have focus, perseverance and work extremely hard within a team dynamic: Those
are the things I’ve transferred here,” he says. “I believe the game, the presentation, the
negotiation, the exam, all of it is won or lost well before the contest starts. You need to do
your homework, prepare.” Kent MacDonald, now president of St. Francis Xavier University, says Kyte is a natural
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leader who demands the best from himself and those around him. “Jim’s transition from
the NHL to academe should inspire all athletes,” he says.
Jim Kyte with his mom Gayle.
P A T
M C G R T H
/
THE
O T T AW A
CITIZEN
Laurie Boschman (http://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/pdisplay.php?pid=486) , who played
with Kyte in both Ottawa and Winnipeg, marvels at his former teammate’s life after hockey.
“I think Jim is one of those true success stories,” says Boschman, the NHL chapel co
ordinator for Hockey Ministries International, a faithbased organization.
Some NHL players have struggled to make the transition to life without their teams, and
life without their old onice identities. Retired enforcers have suúered the most. At least
seven have died young, often after battles with drugs, alcohol and depression — common
pitfalls of postconcussion syndrome. The latest research suggests the eúects of concussions are cumulative: that each
additional concussion makes an individual more susceptible to the same injury, slower to
recover, and more likely to suúer from degenerative brain disease.
Jim Kyte fought 131 times during his 979 games as a professional hockey player, according
to the website, dropyourgloves.com (http://dropyourgloves.com/Fights/FightCard.aspx?
Player=2392) . Kyte doesn’t know whether his car accident was made worse by the head
trauma he suúered in the NHL, but he is watching the progress of the concussion lawsuit
filed against the NHL by 200 former players. He remains torn by the prospect of joining it. http://ottawacitizen.com/news/localnews/outsidetheboxthelifeandtimesofottawasjimkyte
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Senators alumni member Jim Kyte walks the red carpet and greets fans during the Ottawa Senators’ 20th
anniversary pregame ceremonies.
J A N A
C H Y T I L O VA / F R E E S T Y L E
PHOTO
/
GET TY
IMAGES
“I’m torn because I’d do it all over again,” he says of his hockey career. “What we were able
to experience — playing a sport you love for a living — is priceless. But I’m not having the
issues that maybe some other guys are having yet…People have diúerent tolerances, and
maybe I’m one of the lucky ones.”
Jim Kyte on hockey: Q. With the heightened awareness of concussions, should kids play hockey today?
A. Absolutely. Hockey is the best sport in the world and you can play it from the time you
are able to walk and into your senior years. I feel it is incredibly important for all kids to play
a sport — particularly a team sport. Interdependency is the norm in today’s society so to
succeed in life one needs to know how to play on a team.
Q. Who was the toughest player you faced in the NHL
A. The toughest player I every played against wasn’t’ a fighter: It was John Tonelli. He never
fought but he was big and strong as an ox. He was like a Tasmanian Devil in the corners. I
could break five sticks on him and it wouldn’t faze him.
Q. How do regard today’s NHL?
A. No question the game is faster and the players are more skillful, but I think it’s all special
teams and too sterile.
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Q. What’s not to like about that?
A. Aside from bodychecking fast becoming a lost art, if you stayed in front of the net when I
played, you had to pay a heavy price to stand there. Today, the defenceman can hardly
touch you, but the guys who stand in front have no problem hitting the goalie. I’m old
school. I hate it when I see goalies getting hit on purpose without fear of retribution.
Q. What would you change about the game?
A. I would eliminate the instigator rule so there is more accountability. The NHL is
professional entertainment so I‘d try to get rid of the neutral zone trap to open up the
game. In my opinion, you don’t need a fourth line today because all the TV timeouts give
the top three lines time to rest. I’d only allow 16 skaters to be dressed so it becomes a
strategic choice for the coach: Do I want a faceoú guy, a penalty kill specialist or a tough
guy in the lineup?
Q. Would you always dress the tough guy?
A. It would depend on the situation. I’m not a fan of gratuitous fighting, and it’s getting
moved out of the game. I don’t like having a nuclear weapon on each bench if they can’t
play a regular shift. With only 16 skaters they need to be hockey players first, tough guys
second.
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Outside the box: The life and times of Ottawa`s Jim Kyte

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