LaFontaine’s Career Now Swinging in the Balance

The curtain of darkness descended in Pat LaFontaine’s brain without warning, and it would not budge.

He would be doing something as simple as making waffles for his daughters’ breakfast when fatigue engulfed him, leaving him spent. Normally cheerful and extroverted, a born leader and the captain of the Buffalo Sabres, he hid at home for days at a time, unable to face friends or teammates.

LaFontaine, one of the best American-born players ever to skate in the NHL, didn’t know the head injury he suffered Oct. 17 would be his most formidable foe. Only now is his life resuming its old rhythms, and he still faces the possibility he will be forced to retire at 32.

“A neuropsychologist at the Mayo Clinic said, ‘Did it feel like someone came along and ripped all the motivation and personality out of you?’ I said, ‘Yes! Where is it? What happened?’ ” LaFontaine said. “He said that’s what can happen. It’s almost like parts of you shut down.

“I remember being scared because for the first month after that I was very emotional. I was very depressed at times. I just wasn’t myself. My wife was a little bit scared because the littlest things would set me off.”

He was blind-sided during a game on an unpenalized hit by Pittsburgh defenseman Francois Leroux, taking the blow on the left side of his head and hitting the right side as he fell to the ice. The impact left him dazed but not alarmed. He had suffered four previous concussions and several instances when, as players say, he had his bell rung and was temporarily dazed.

He didn’t know his brain, too often battered, could no longer send out the electrical impulses or spur production of the chemicals that kept his body and mind functioning smoothly.

He came back a few days later, only to find his hand-eye coordination had gone haywire, his memory was fragmenting and his emotions were riding a roller coaster. A swift, agile skater with great vision and superb passing skills--he has twice scored 50 goals and 100 points and scored 91 points last season after returning from major knee surgery--he was slow, uncertain, unable to convert scoring chances he usually finished with ease.

Puzzled by his lethargy but unable to shake it, he apologized to his teammates after a game against the Philadelphia Flyers on Nov. 7. That was the last game he has played. He remembers making a speech that was “somewhat emotional. From that point on it was almost like I got run over by a tidal wave.”

Sabre defenseman Garry Galley remembers it with disturbing clarity. “He came in here and broke down,” Galley said. “Everybody realized there was a problem. . . . He had hit the wall and didn’t know what was wrong, only that something was wrong. I remember thinking, ‘This is a guy in trouble.’ ”

Six months later, LaFontaine’s troubles aren’t over. His energy and enthusiasm have returned and he has practiced with his teammates for several weeks, but he has had debilitating headaches after too much exertion. Mindful of the dangers but eager to join the Sabres for the playoffs, he will visit the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., this week in hopes of getting clearance to play again.

“I’m at a crossroads, in limbo. For someone who’s always been ahead of himself, a high-achieving person, it’s difficult to take the approach of just let it come,” he said. “I’m not at a place where I know yet what’s going to happen.”

His heart says yes, try to come back this season--or if the doctors forbid it, try again next season. His headaches say not now, and maybe not ever.

“I don’t want to come back and go through this again. That’s the biggest question, would I go through it again,” he said. “The odds aren’t in my favor because I’ve gotten hit so many times, and more in the last five or six years.

“You’re in limbo in a sense. The doctors will tell you frankly no one can predict the severity of the next impact. Obviously, it’s not too good if you do it enough times.”

Nonetheless, he hasn’t given up. He began in the NHL after playing for the United States in the 1984 Olympics and he’d like to repeat that in Nagano next February. He savored his World Cup victory with Team USA last September, but another Olympics--and perhaps a season or two after that to give the young Sabres veteran leadership--would bring him full circle.

“I feel very fortunate to have a wonderful wife and three children and to be able to play this game for as long as I have, but I feel like something has been taken away from me and you want to go out on your terms,” he said. “Some people think hockey is risky, but I’ve played since I was 5. I know this game and I love it.”

Said Buffalo Coach Ted Nolan: “Right now it’s not so much whether he plays or not, but the fact is that he’s back feeling the way he is, considering the way he was. If he could play, it would be a huge, huge bonus for us. If he can’t, it’s still a huge bonus to get him back to where he is right now. . . .

“He has a glistening to his eyes. He has that sparkle to him. He’s the first guy I’ve ever seen, that when you talk to him, his eyes sparkle. That was missing when he came back, but he’s starting to get it back now.”

He recalls being numb after the hit but determined to keep going. An MRI exam showed nothing abnormal, but he wasn’t himself. “My first game back, I remember playing with pressure in my head and a migraine, and I remember my second game back taking so much out of me just to play the game,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘Boy, that was really weird, but maybe it will be different next time.’ Then it was kind of like, ‘Wow, what’s going on,’ and you’re trying to hang in there, and it was getting worse.

“You’re almost in denial to what was happening. Then things got worse and it seemed like everything slowed down.”

Although he was obviously foundering, no one linked his slump to the concussion. “You’re not looking for it,” Galley said. “He got hit and knocked out and then he came back . . . but more people keyed on the point of how much he was struggling, not on why.

“You could see he was not himself. He was so quiet. In retrospect, you say, ‘You know, he wasn’t himself. He was so quiet and he’s so extroverted, so open.’ His eyes were always very glassy.”

Nolan pulled LaFontaine out of the lineup the night of his speech to the team. “I just thank God it was found at that point because you never know what one more hit might have done,” Nolan said. “He missed three months, and that’s under medical attention. If he had played and gotten injured again, that sends shivers down your back.”

Tests showed damage to his right frontal lobe, which he was told is responsible for personality and moods.

“The doctor said, ‘It’s like you’re used to having a 32-byte computer and now it’s 16 and the wires have to be reconnected. You’ll see as time goes on, things will come back and become clear,’ ” LaFontaine said. “I didn’t think until a couple of weeks ago I would have a chance to play hockey again. Then I started feeling better and said, ‘You know, I might be able to play this game again and contribute and do something that I love to do.’ Just that feeling, being on the ice, was so great. Then the other side of me says, ‘That would be nice,’ but that’s not making things easier. The biggest thing is to find out how much risk. Am I a higher risk-type player or would it take the same type of impact to put me where I was?”

He has spoken to New York Islander defenseman Dennis Vaske--who missed most of last season because of a severe concussion and sat again this season after another blow--and studied the case of former Chicago Blackhawk Michel Goulet, whose motor skills were impaired after a concussion. Goulet, like King forward Dave Taylor, was forced to retire because of his injury.

LaFontaine has worked with the Sabres’ training staff to devise a helmet and mouth guard that would reduce the risk of injury.

“Someone mentioned a line from the movie ‘Mr. Holland’s Opus’ that says, ‘Life is what happens to us when we’re making other plans,’ and that’s so true. You’re always getting ahead of yourself. You think, ‘I’ll play until I’m 35, and when I’m 35 I’ll do this or that.’ This has really changed my perspective on things. In the big scheme of things, you aren’t in control.

“When you lose something and you have an opportunity to have that back, you have to try to get it back. I’m thankful for that. I remember there was a time when I didn’t think I’d ever feel this good.”