USA Hockey Adult Hockey

Many adult hockey players have good stories about how they started playing in their current leagues. Some never really stopped playing. Some came to the sport later in life and found a new calling. Others gave it up for a while but returned to a game they love.

But Russ Gonglewski’s story is different, even if some of the themes are familiar.

Gonglewski quite literally had the game taken away from him for a number of years after a harrowing accident as an on-duty police officer in Florida that could have claimed his life as well.

But in January, Gonglewski, 34, was able to get back to the sport he started playing as a middle-schooler in Buffalo, N.Y.

“There’s nothing quite like that feeling,” says Gonglewski, who plays in the Florida Panthers Adult Hockey League.

And his tale is a good reminder that the feeling should never be taken for granted.

The accident

Gonglewski’s life changed forever on Sept. 21, 2009. He doesn’t remember anything about what happened, but eyewitness accounts and a harrowing video told him all he needs to know: he turned his squad lights on and was in pursuit of a reckless driver when another car pulled in front of him and created a high-speed collision.

Witnesses on the scene cut him out of his seat belt, pulled him from the car and radioed for help. Gonglewski was unconscious and in a coma for a couple of days.

Both of his ankles were broken and he had a major Achilles injury as well – on top of lingering concussion problems, perhaps the most troubling of all since they were a re-aggravation of symptoms he had suffered from in the past.

He was in a wheelchair for two months and out of work for seven months. And he was out of hockey for more than six years.

“Concussions were the thing I needed to get clearance for before I could play again,” he says. “What would happen if I had any contact while playing?’

The comeback

There was some trepidation still on the part of Gonglewski and his family, but after getting medical clearance to play within the last year, he laced up the skates in January because, he says, “You have to go out and do what you love.”

It’s still a work in progress when it comes to trusting his body, just as it was when he returned to active duty as a police officer. Gonglewski says he was a “pretty good” ice hockey and roller hockey player before the injury, and in coming back from major injuries to both legs it’s been a challenge at times.

“I’ve been kicking off the rust and getting up the courage to go into the corners and across the middle. But the guys get that. They don’t expect me to do all that. Even when I go and stop to the left, I’m a little weaker,” he says. “I still have to get my timing back, but being out there it’s like I’m on cloud nine.”

What it means

As a result, Gonglewski once again has the connection to the sport he has loved for so much of his life. He says he coached a roller hockey team for a couple of years while he wasn’t able to play. That was great, he says, but it wasn’t the same as playing.

“I missed every day of it,” he says.

He missed the things that so many adult hockey players enjoy and come to expect.

“The stress from work, home, just goes away when I’m on the ice,” Gonglewski says. “The camaraderie, just getting along with a bunch of guys – and having an escape from everything. There’s never a dull moment. It’s fast-paced, fast moving. There are no other sports like it.”

Perhaps just as important to Gonglewski is that now that he’s back on the ice, his son can see him play – and hopefully follow his dad’s hockey-loving path. Logan hasn’t quite turned 2 yet, but already he’s been on skates and is playing hockey.

“I brought him into our locker room,” Gonglewski says. “… He bangs on the glass and says ‘goal’ and things like that.”

It’s no wonder, then, that Gonglewski summarizes his return to hockey like this: “I’m happier in general just being back.”