Nick Boynton: NHL Concussions Led to Depression, Drugs, Thoughts of Self-Harm

In a first-person essay on The Players' Tribune, former NHL defenseman Nick Boynton chronicled his battle with the lingering effects of multiple concussions and indicated he doesn't want his three-year-old son to follow him in playing hockey.

Boynton wrote he had eight to 10 confirmed concussions as a player from 1999 to 2011 but that "actually more like 20 or 30 of them altogether, and even that might be a bit low."

"With me, there have been times when the anger has been so bad that I legitimately worried that I might hurt someone, or that I'd injure myself," Boyton wrote. "But when family members, people I truly love and care about, would ask me what was going on, or why I was so mad … I wouldn't really be able to tell them. I honestly wasn't even sure."

He added he sought out help to deal with the problems caused by his head trauma, by which time he "was basically drinking and self-medicating and doing drugs nonstop."

Boynton said between his struggles and those of other former players, his mind would go to a dark place at times:

"Whenever things get really bad, and I find myself thinking about death, it's always in the context of release. Escaping the pain. And no longer being around to make the lives of those I love miserable. The idea of dying as a way out. And even though I definitely wouldn't say death has been something that I've wanted—that I actually wanted to die—at the same time, when I'd hit those low points, it was like … I didn't exactly not want it, either. In a lot of ways, as things got worse for me, death started to seem not so bad."

Since the release of the PBS documentary League of Denial in October 2013, the long-term effects of multiple head injuries has become a major topic in sports, along with whether league officials are doing enough to keep players safe.

Whereas the focus was initially on the NFL's handling of concussions, the scope has broadened to include the NHL as well. 

During an interview on HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, the father of former NHL player Steve Montador said Montador had concussions throughout his career, which he believes played a role in Montador's death in 2015.

Shortly after Montador's death, researchers at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre in Toronto examined his brain and found evidence he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

In April 2017, a group of former players filed a lawsuit against the NHL, accusing the league and its teams of failing to properly diagnose and treat concussions.