Stories From The Bench
How I broke my leg? You mean the dirty trip and how I went towards the boards and that kind of thing? I can’t remember which rink it was. Down by 178 Street. Anyway, we were playing hockey on a public rink and I broke my leg and there was a doctor on the ice and he said, “Keep your foot in the skate.” And I was lying on my back and there was a circle of guys looking down at me. And they go, “Do you feel any pain?” And I said, “No.” And they said, “Well, there’s 10 minutes of ice left. Do you mind if we finish?” So they throw me on the bench. And there was only one sub, so as every guy came off he told me about the metal in his leg or the plate in his hand, and they’re telling me these disaster stories while I’m lying there on the bench with this broken leg in a skate.
The guys took care of my car and took me to the hospital and took care of that stretch of things. They'd been debating which hospital was the best to go to while they were still on the ice. There was a familiarity to it.
I ended up in the Misericordia ER, hockey pants on, skate on my foot. And a guy walked by with his arm around his girlfriend and he nodded to me and said, “Yep, been there, done that.” Later the doctor pulled up the x-rays and asked me how old I was, and I said 34, and he just nodded. He saw this kind of ice injury once an hour.
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Gord Sheppard
Gord Sheppard is a producer at Citytv. He is married to director and teacher Tracy Carroll. Both of their children were born in Edmonton.
