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It had been just shy of three years since we last heard from Shea Weber, and in the time that had passed between him stepping off the ice in Tampa after losing the Stanley Cup Final and him speaking to the media a few weeks ago after being inducted to the Hockey Hall of Fame on his first try, everything had changed.
That Cup final in 2021 as captain of the Montreal Canadiens was the only one Weber ever played in, and their elimination in five games hurt more than it typically does for an NHL veteran chasing that one championship. For Weber, he knew his career was essentially over, adding a massive heap of emotional pain to the physical pain he had been enduring and medicating and treating for over a year at that point.
And then, just like that, he was gone. Not only from the game, but from the public eye for close to three years, only to reappear as a newly minted member of the Hockey Hall of Fame on June 25.
We knew Weber was managing incredible pain just to step out on the ice. We had heard how, for months, he would arrive at the Canadiens’ practice facility hours before his teammates to put in his time with the physical therapists just so he could practice, let alone play a game.
But the fact is, none of his teammates knew the extent of just how bad it was. Management didn’t know. Coaches didn’t know. The only people who knew were the Canadiens’ training staff, and Weber himself. It was a pretty tight vault.
And thus, when we saw Weber on a June 27 video conference to talk about his induction into the Hall — 11 days shy of three years after Weber was last speaking on a video conference with media following Game 5 of the 2021 final — it was an opportunity.
Yes, this was a great honor, one that is entirely deserving for Weber as one of the top all-around defensemen of his generation. But this was also a chance to talk about what he had been going through. Because the pain Weber was playing through didn’t stop that night in Tampa three years ago.
It continued. And it continues to this day.
Weber got the call from the Hall while getting ready to play a round of golf. He screened the call at first because he didn’t recognize the number. Weber didn’t even know the Hall of Fame was announcing its new inductees that day, despite him being eligible for the first time, which is very on-brand for Shea Weber.
And when he called his father and tried to give him the good news, he broke down.
“I was choked up, I was crying, I couldn’t talk,” Weber said. “It’s funny because my dad’s such a stoic guy, he’s like, ‘What’s your problem? Get it together, what are you doing?’ Then I finally spit it out.”
Weber’s a pretty stoic guy himself, so this revelation was quite a departure for him. But he was just getting warmed up.
The sequence of events is important to remember here. During the opening game of the 2017-18 season, Weber took a Jack Eichel slap shot off the top of his left foot. It broke his foot near his ankle, a very sensitive spot. He continued playing regardless because, as he said at the time, he had played through foot fractures before. Playing on the foot resulted in significant tendon damage in his ankle, and it ultimately needed a very rare and delicate surgery.
Then, at the end of that season, Weber went in for what he thought would be a routine arthroscopic clean out on his right knee, but once he was under, the surgeon discovered far more extensive damage and went about repairing it right away. What was originally believed to be a three-week recovery period became five to six months.
That knee surgery happened on June 18, 2018. The surgery on Weber’s foot/ankle was on March 13, 2018. A little over six years later, that knee and that ankle are still sources of significant pain for Weber.
“It’s definitely an issue,” Weber said. “Obviously, it’s all dependant on what I do. I still work out and train, but I need to tone stuff down and leave my knee and ankle alone. Even the slightest thing and it’ll be bothering me.
“We did the charity slo-pitch ball tournament last year, you play a game of slo-pitch, and that’s not even anything, and I couldn’t walk for two weeks. It’s a tough situation, especially in the winter when it’s cold, it’s a lot of pain.”
Between that foot and knee surgery in 2018 and Game 5 of the 2021 final, Weber played 203 regular season and playoff games for the Canadiens. And from the halfway point of that period, he had to do serious pain management just to get on the ice.
“Yeah, it wasn’t good. But it wasn’t just in the (2021) playoffs, it was probably a year and a half before that,” Weber said. “I know the schedules weren’t perfect with the condensed schedules because of COVID and everything, and I think that’s why I … I wanted to give it one more shot. But that whole year, I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t walk. It was so painful. Competing at an NHL level compared to your everyday life, it’s just another level. And then you get to the playoffs … I don’t want to get into how much medication I was taking because of the pain. But it was just a compilation, one thing hurts, you take (the medication) so much you can’t feel anything, then something else goes. Your shoulder. I ripped my groin. Everything just kept compiling up. By the end, I was just like, ‘Holy smokes.’
“And I think it was even worse the two weeks after (the final), maybe it was all the medication I was on kind of wore off, or the adrenaline from the playoffs, I was just like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I felt like I was run over by a bus multiple times. It was tough. But at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about, too. It’s what you play for and you’re willing to give anything to get there. And obviously, we just came up short.”
The two pillars of that Canadiens run in 2021 were Weber and goaltender Carey Price. That run essentially ended both of their careers. And that end was devastating.
For Price, it contributed to him descending deeper into a drinking problem, a descent that ultimately led him to get help, and he remains happily sober today.
For Weber, the descent from being an NHL player to very suddenly not being one anymore was just as hard of a crash.
“Mentally, I was not in a very good spot, knowing that I was done playing, for the full year. I tried to come back. I tried to call my agent and tell him I would try to come back, and he was like, there’s no chance unless you don’t want to walk. So, mentally, I was in a very tough spot,” Weber said. “I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to talk to my family, I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I just wanted to hide out. I wanted to go in the bush, I wanted to be by myself … I was not in a good spot, physically or mentally. Obviously I’d come to see the guys on the road and that would kind of give me the joy back like I was still there, but there was no … like I said, I would rather just take my machine, go out in the bush and just be by myself. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I didn’t want to be with anyone. It was hard.
“You do something for your whole life, your goal was to make the NHL, your goal was to win the Stanley Cup, and then all of a sudden, it’s just stopped. Cut off. And it’s like, now what do you do? I was just mentally … it was tough.”
Hearing Weber speak so frankly about how the end impacted him, how he’s still feeling the physical effects of that desire to lift the Cup, how he can’t play a casual game of softball without weeks of hobbling around afterwards made the last vision of Weber we saw in 2021 so relevant. It was him and Price, sitting at a table somewhere in Amalie Arena in Tampa staring at a camera, answering questions from reporters talking to them through a speaker.
Both those men’s careers essentially ended that night against their will. Both those men still feel the effects of that playoff run. Both those men will likely wind up in the Hall of Fame, with Price eligible next year and a strong candidate to one day join Weber.
But both those men continue to pay an enormous price for that chase for glory, which makes you wonder if it is all worth it.
We reached Carey Price on a Saturday afternoon. He was shopping for white golf shirts with his son, Lincoln, because it was getting hot in his home of Kelowna, B.C., and all he had was black golf shirts. These are happy retirement problems.
And Price sounds like a man who is happily retired, with no regrets. And he is elated his former captain made it into the Hall on his first try.
“The big man, he definitely deserves to be in there because he was a stalwart on the back end and was always a presence on the ice,” Price said. “Anybody who’s ever played either against him or with him, we’d all have the same opinion. I think that’s the easiest way to put it, he was a big presence on the ice and, especially, in the locker room.”
As Price entered the store with his son that day, he ran into a former player he had played against, and the conversation between the two of them quickly turned to a typical topic whenever two former NHL players meet up.
“One of the first things he said was, ‘How’s the body?’” Price said. “It’s kind of a universal thing, because when you sign up for it as a kid you’re like, well, I’m playing this for fun. But then when you sign up to play pro, to play later in your life, you kind of know you’re going to be paying for it later.
“I had this conversation with my late father-in-law, it must have been about 10 years ago or so, and I told him, I know there’s a price to pay for what I’m doing. And at the end of the day, same conversation I had with this fella, would you do it again? Heck yeah, I’d do it again. It’s just what we want to do.”
But knowing what he knows now, 10 years later, with his knee still not healthy enough to do any rigorous physical activity and the mental health hurdles he had to clear, would he have said the same thing to his late father-in-law? Was he aware back then of the extent of it?
“Yeah, I had a good feeling,” Price said. “You wake up the morning after a hockey game and, even as a mid-20-year-old, you’re already kind of feeling like you’ve been through a car crash. You know long term that’s going to take a toll. So yeah, you know, but you’re also kind of thinking that I only have one life to live, and this is what I want to do with my life.
“At the end of the day, as you get towards the end of your career you start thinking, OK, well, at that point I’ve paid a price for this, and then you have to start looking (at life) after hockey, and then you start thinking I want to be able to walk and play with my kids and not be getting knee replacement surgery at 40. I think you go through stages in your career.”
Sounds like quite the mornings Weber and Price went through as players. Being run over by a bus multiple times. Being in a car crash. What’s worse?
It helps explain why Weber was so reliant on pain medication to play. He is not the only player to have had that experience, and that is obviously a dangerous road to go down. Which is why it is something Price avoided at all costs.
“Not outside of Advil,” Price said. “That was one thing I was always very careful about because I had friends and family and all sorts of connections to that world, and I know the road that could possibly lead to. So I always kind of shied away from that aspect of it. But Advil was never out of reach.”
Weber’s story about the impact a slo-pitch softball game had on his ability to walk resonated with Price. He played in that same charity tournament in Kelowna last year, one that attracts many current and former NHL players who live in the area, and Weber was not the only one who was not quite as spry as he once was.
“It’s kind of the same thing for me,” Price said. “We played in that tournament last year and, you know, most of the hockey guys, we’re not young guys anymore. You can kind of see by the end of the day everybody’s got some kind of hitch in their giddy up, you know? So, I knew exactly what he was going through.
“But I think we’re also fortunate. Like yeah, it sucks, for sure. There’s no doubt we paid a price for what we did, but we also have a lot of tools at our disposal to help us kind of get through it. We’ve all had physical therapy, we all know the types of treatment that are available. We’re also kind of lucky in a sense that we’re able to take care of ourselves.”
The thing about the softball tournament that makes it so difficult for Weber is he loves to play. He played in a league in Kelowna every summer. As he was doing his video conference a few weeks ago, there were framed baseball bats in the background.
He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to play again.
“I hope so, I love baseball,” he said. “The kids are in it, I love it. So hopefully that’s something I can do.”
As for Price, he can hit the outdoor rink to skate around with his kids, but playing hockey is something he, too, hopes he can one day do again.
“I actually do miss playing the game. I miss playing hockey,” Price said. “I’m kind of hoping one day I could go out and maybe score a goal or two. Playing goal again is pretty unlikely with the torque it takes on my knee. Even when I’m out skating with my kids on the outdoor rink, I can still feel in my knee that it’s pretty shifty compared to my other side. But I’m hoping one day I might be able to go putt around and hit a few goalies in the head.”
These two teammates who sat next to each other after the most disappointing moment of their professional lives, a moment that essentially ended each of their careers, are still coping with the loan they took out on their bodies to allow them to chase that dream, to raise that Cup just once.
It is a fate they both accepted long ago with a lucid knowledge that those loans would come due, and the interest rate was quite high. The reason they knew is because of the number of players before them who felt the same way when they were done playing, and the ones that come after them will surely make the same decision.
It is simply the going rate for playing this game at the highest level.
“Yeah, but it always seems whoever you talk to,” Price said, “the majority of the guys say, yup, I’d sign up for it again in a heartbeat.”
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