Former NHL player Jim Kyte, now dean of the School of Hospitality and Tourism at Algonquin College, is philosophical about life’s twist and turns. ‘My dad used to cite the 90-10 rule – life is 10 per cent what happens to you and 90 per cent how you react to it.’Algonquin College
The first part of Jim Kyte's life story may sound discouragingly familiar to anyone following the trials and tribulations of the NHL's ongoing concussion debate. Kyte was a 6-foot-5, 210-pound defenceman, drafted 12th overall in 1982 by the Winnipeg Jets, the first legally deaf player in NHL history.
He played 598 NHL regular-season games and accumulated 1,342 penalty minutes before his career ended at the age of 33, as a result of post-concussion syndrome.
Unlike some of his peers, however, Kyte's playing days didn't end on the ice. It came as a result of an automobile accident – in 1997 his car was smashed by another vehicle in Kansas City, where he was playing for the San Jose Sharks' minor-league affiliate, and hoping to make his way back to the NHL.
It took Kyte almost a full year to recover from those injuries, but here's where his story takes an unusual detour.
Once the fog cleared, Kyte forged a second career in academia, earning an MBA from Royal Roads University in 2007. He is now dean of the school of hospitality and tourism at Algonquin College in Ottawa and pondering the idea of pursuing a doctorate.
So many stories about ex-NHLers, who played a hard physical game and paid a physical price, ended tragically. Kyte is the opposite of that – and proof that as debilitating as post-concussion syndrome can be, for some, there is a light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
"Life isn't easy," said Kyte, 52. "Life is hard. But every morning I wake up, I say to myself: 'Today's going to be a good day.'
"My dad used to cite the 90-10 rule – life is 10 per cent what happens to you and 90 per cent how you react to it. I didn't really appreciate that until I was the victim in a car accident. A guy ran a stop sign, an uninsured motorist. My car flipped three times I'm told; I don't remember anything. I woke up with the fire department, cutting me out of the car. So basically, I'm thankful I'm still here."
But Kyte did more than just survive the accident. He thrived in its aftermath. On one level, he said, it was an easy decision to walk away from professional hockey because the renowned concussion specialist, Chicago-based Dr. James Kelly, told him he would never play again. According to Kyte, it was far better to get the bad news from a doctor than from 30 NHL general managers and their 30 minor-league peers.
Determining he needed to make a clean break after his career ended, Kyte returned to his hometown of Ottawa to ponder his second act.
One of his first decisions was to stash away all his memorabilia, anything that reminded him of his playing days. It was important, symbolically, to put the past behind him.
"You can go into some guys' homes, some of my former teammates, and you'd think you were walking into a Hall of Fame," Kyte said. "There are jerseys up, trophies, almost a shrine to their careers. You could walk into my home and never knew I played. There wasn't one photo up; all my jerseys were put away in a closet. To me, it was, 'Okay, my career is over, I need to move forward, and I can't be stuck in the past.'"
Kyte went back to school as a mature student and earned a living as a motivational speaker, while he was studying for his MBA. His academic career began with a chance meeting – the dean at Algonquin College heard him on the speaking circuit and asked him to put an advisory committee together to develop a sport-management program. Eventually, Kyte was asked to develop a business plan and when that was accepted, he was invited to run the program.
"I saw a window, a very small window of opportunity that may never come again in my lifetime – and I recognized that," he said. "So I worked 60 to 80 hours a week to make sure I built a successful program. It turned into, not just a job, but a career."
Life as an academic suits Kyte.
"My kids ask: 'How come you spend so much time at work?' and my answer is: 'I really like going to work. I really like working with the people I'm working with. I enjoy intrinsically working with young people.' They show up at our door, with a dream and a hope for what they want to do – and we're there to help them achieve their dream, and support them along the way.
"As a community college, we're an open-access institution. We deal with some students who barely scraped by in high school and others who really excelled. We deal with special-needs students, and first-generation immigrants. It's a very dynamic classroom. It's amazing when they come in in the first semester, and then you see the changes in them after four years, or even two – when they're walking across the stage, graduating, and they're different people, more confident. It's wonderful to see."
When former Calgary Flames' teammate Theo Fleury spoke at Algonquin College about his experiences as a sexual-abuse survivor, it was Kyte who made the introductions.
"He wasn't a one-dimensional jock," Fleury said. "I love it when guys leave the game and are successful in other areas."
Kyte started in the NHL as a 20-year-old and remarkably found ways of playing, despite his hearing loss. Kyte developed tricks – such as using the reflection from the glass of the boards – to see players bearing down on him. Improvements in hearing-aid technology have demonstrably improved the quality of his life. He is, for example, able to conduct a lengthy interview, completely over the telephone from his office.
"My first cellphone, I never spoke on it," he said. "Basically, it was an e-mail device for me. Then I ended up getting some new hearing aids with a Bluetooth device attached, and it changed everything for me. My ability to speak on the phone has greatly improved because of technology.
"The hearing aids are now smaller ... [and]
with the directional-microphone technology – and so many different settings – it's greatly improved."
Kyte has a laundry list of aches and pains that he can trace to his playing career: He fractured his fifth lumbar vertebrae; he's broken his wrist, his thumb and many of his fingers; he's had shoulder surgery. He'd never had a knee problem until the fall of 2015, when he was on a goodwill tour on behalf of the military and tore a knee ligament in a ball-hockey game against the troops in Kuwait.
After Kyte had his accident, doctors advised him to keep a diary to track his recovery. His first entry came on Oct. 27, 1997. From the next day – Oct. 28 – until Sept. 6 of 1998, Kyte said he had a headache "for every waking moment of my life – from an intense migraine to a dull headache, all the time. That Sept. 6 was the first day I woke up without it.
"When you're in that kind of discomfort, you can't help but be a little ornery. I wasn't a nice person to be around for a while. My teammates came around for the first couple of weeks, but they don't have time to put their life on hold for me – nobody does except family.
"Life keeps going on without you. It was a good lesson for me. The world is not going to stop for anybody. But you learn, the sun is going to come up the next day – and you better be ready for it."