Report: Gino Odjick hospitalized; lingering concussion issues
By Cam Charron
10 years ago
Gino Odjick is going through some difficult times. Last week, he attended his father’s funeral. This weekend, he was admitted to hospital for problems related to concussions he sustained during his hockey playing career.
That all fell under the headline GINO ODJICK NEEDS HELP. Being Sun Media you can expect some clickbait with regard to titles, but the full story from Montreal journalist Marc Foy is pretty serious.
Just after the story came out, a Twitter search led me to a YouTube video of Odjick on RDS’ l’Antichambre, either the day before or after his father’s death. RDS quickly pulled the video. My french is a little spotty when it isn’t spoken clearly, but it’s obvious that the ex-Canuck fighter is speaking incoherently here. That appearance was mentioned in Foy’s full story, obtained via Don Falconer. The full copy of the story in French can be found here. Don did a Google Translate of the full post to English (found here) but those aren’t perfect. Here are some of the relevant bits below (again, translation mine):
Odjick was brought in a very agitated state to the psychiatric ward at the Pierre-Janet hospital Centre, in Gatineau……Odjick always supposed that none of his concussions were the result of the numerous fights he took part in as his role as an enforcer. There’s reason to doubt this claim.Also, In an interview he gave me during the frame of the revelations surrounding Chris Nilan two years ago, he confessed to being afflicted with post-traumatic sequences.“When you get hit in the head a lot, it’s hard for the brain,” he had said.…Odjick didn’t seem in too bad a state when I went to see him at the hospital yesterday evening.“I’m here for my concussions,” he said.“Since I retired in 2002, I’ve spent 32 months at the hospital.”…People that know him know that he has cognitive difficulties.Those that don’t know him saw him during his failed appearance on L’Antichambre last week.A website reported that he was on drugs. It’s the image that projects generally on somebody in Odjick’s state. He had difficulties with delivery, displaying incoherent, troubling behaviour.
From the rest of the story, it seems that Odjick is in denial about his problems, and gave the reporter false information that he’d been allowed to check out of the hospital, but Dr. Vincent Lacroix denied Odjick’s claim right before the start of Monday’s Habs-Devils game.
So this is some bad news. Odjick looked great at Pavel Bure’s jersey retirement ceremony just a month ago, happy and personable, so this news could come as a bit of a shock to fans. Best of luck to Gino and we wish him the best and good health. I don’t think any of us have watched a Canuck in our lifetimes that gave more to the team than Gino did.
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