An article on Kevin Colley
www.newsday.com/sports/hockey/islanders/ny-spisles254641260feb25,0,7986320.story?coll=ny-islanders-print
It's a very painful reality for Colley: Career's over
BY ALAN HAHN
STAFF WRITER
February 25, 2006
Teeth gritted and eyes on fire, Islanders forward Kevin Colley on Friday revealed the raw pain that accompanied the news that his playing career is over as a result of the broken neck he suffered Jan. 31 against Washington.
"It is hard," he said as he made his first visit to Islanders practice since the injury. "It's not easy to come here. I want to be out there on the ice ... I had the best job in the world and it was taken away from me. No one should ever take this job for granted."
For Colley, 27, a resilient career in which he endured 10 different minor-league teams until he got his shot with the Islanders this season is over just when it appeared to be starting.
"It's awful," said forward Eric Godard, one of Colley's closest friends on the team and his roommate last season in Bridgeport. "I can't imagine what it would be like."
For Colley, it now becomes a day-by-day existence as he considers life without hockey, which has been in his life since birth.
His father, Tom, played minor-league hockey, mostly for the New Haven Nighthawks, and Kevin had it in his blood. He worked his way through five ECHL teams and five other AHL teams, including Hartford and Bridgeport, before the Islanders signed him to an NHL contract in 2004.
He appeared in 16 games this season and did not record a point, but he did have 52 penalty minutes.
Colley's injury occurred on a play in which he looked to spark his team with a big hit on Capitals defenseman Jamie Heward. But Heward side-stepped the hit and Colley lunged headfirst into the boards. He suffered a fracture of the C-5 vertebra. Despite the intense impact of the collision with the wall, Colley managed to avoid a severe spinal injury.
"The doctors cannot believe I am not in a wheelchair," Colley said, his eyes suddenly absent of that earlier fire. "I don't know how I'd deal with that."
Colley said he has yet to see a replay and said, "I don't know if I'm ready to see it."
Though Colley was conscious and had feeling and movement in his extremities, the decision by the team's medical staff to allow him to leave the ice on his own feet has been questioned privately among Colley's teammates and even within the organization. When asked about it Friday, Colley, who wore a large plastic neck brace, sternly replied, "I don't have any comment on that right now."
Islanders general manager Mike Milbury praised Colley as a player who "gave everything he had every time he stepped on the ice" and called the situation "sad ... there's no other word for it."
Milbury also said he plans to talk with Colley "about his life after hockey."
Said Colley, "I do think about it [being without hockey], and that's when I have my bad days. I have to let the dust settle and go from there."