A 19-year-old hockey player from Nova Scotia is cutting his career short due to too many on-ice injuries.
In an Instagram post this week, Charlottetown Islanders defenceman Lane Hinkley said he was told his hockey career was over last Friday morning.
“Too many hits, too many punches, too many concussions that I didn’t properly heal from,” the young hockey player wrote, adding that he is at risk for chronic traumatic encephalopathy — a progressive brain disease linked to repeated traumatic brain injuries — and early dementia.
Hinkley, originally from Cape Breton, said that according to his doctor, his MRI shows that there is a 25-by-17-millimetre lesion on his brain, “as well as other scars that they couldn’t determine the size of.”
“Hockey is a tough sport.”
“Even though this is the end,” he added, “it’s not how I would like to be remembered by my peers and anyone who watched me play.”
Hinkley said he is grateful to his teammates, who he described as a “big family” who were his “favourite part of coming to the rink every day.”
He said whenever he played in Sydney, N.S., “it was like a homecoming” and thanked his supporters.
“I will never forget my first game in Centre 200, looking up in the crowd and seeing a little boy with a Hinkley jersey on,” he wrote. “A big 77 on the back, a big smile on his face. That is one of my proudest moments, and I’ll never forget it.”
Hinkley said that despite his health problems, he wouldn’t change a thing.
“I will never regret a single hit or punch that I ever threw. I will never apologize for the way I played,” he wrote. “I didn’t score many goals towards the end, but I was a tough motherf–er and nobody can take that away from me. I wear these scars on my hands proudly.”
In a post to the Canadian Hockey League website, Islanders head coach Jim Hulton described Hinkley as an “honest player who competed hard every day.”
“He provided good leadership for his teammates and his focus was always on the betterment of the team,” he said. “While we are saddened to learn that Lane can no longer risk playing, we are fully confident that he will be successful in any venture that he enters into.”
Global News has reached out to the Charlottetown Islanders for further comment.
Hinkley is listed as a six-foot-two, 215-pound defenseman who was drafted and played parts of two seasons with the Acadie-Bathurst Titan of the QMJHL. He was then dealt to the Drummondville Voltigeurs and midway through last season to the Islanders.
“Being from a small Cape Breton town, I felt blessed to even skate on the ice of a QMJHL rink. It feels surreal that I was able to play 143 games, and eventually end up as assistant captain with the Islanders,” Hinkley wrote.
“Before I ever played a single one of those games, my cousin Marco told me to appreciate every second of it, because before you know it, it’s gone.
“He was right. I am grateful for all of it.”
The issue of hockey player safety has been getting more attention in recent months. In August, the QMJHL introduced a number of additional sanctions on its fighting ban for the 2023-34 season with the aim of making the game safer for players.
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