The very public passing of Saginaw Spirit forward Terry Trafford this year was among the saddest stories I know.
Not knowing Trafford other than as a player, I’m highly unqualified to condemn him for the act that took his life and shattered the ongoing existence of others.
Purely & simply, I have NO idea what the thought process was that led to Trafford’s decision for self inflicted death.
Similarly, there’s NO way I’m going to condemn the Saginaw club, who to my knowledge and first hand experience did very little out of the ordinary here.
Players on OHL clubs are disciplined all the time, for all sorts of infractions.
Name any OHL team, and I can easily cite an example over the past 25 years where a player was punished or disciplined, usually no more or no worse than the sanction the Spirit imposed on Terry Trafford.
And as for the death of a hockey players dream, admittedly, that’s a tough reality to deal with.
But on any given night in the OHL, of the 40 players dressed for the game, possibly two players will live out the dream, a handful more will have a partial payoff, but the majority in any OHL game are at their peak, and are realistic about what comes next for them.
Terry Trafford was a good skating, hard working player.
I said as much in a note to Los Angeles Kings on March 9th, 2012 in a game in which I thought he showed, as a 17 year old, decent promise.
Two years later, the promise and the player are dead, and that’s about the saddest OHL story I’ve ever known.
I’m Fred Wallace