A ‘Canucks Ties’ Follow-up: The Unfortunate ALS Beat Goes On

Unfortunate is an obvious understatement. Since VNH published its ‘Canucks ties’ stories back in April about the connection between Canucks Head Coach Bruce Boudreau, Canucks President Jim Rutherford and former NHL’er and ALS patient Mark Kirton, there’s been more bad news.

Maybe you heard, maybe we’ve already forgotten about it. That’s the other part about this that’s more than unfortunate. With so much suffering around us in different forms, with so many causes, it’s understandably difficult to keep track. Attention only seems to come in the form of bad news, and while waiting for interview material, I’m only getting around to this two weeks later.

The headline read: “Salming, Hockey Hall of Famer, Diagnosed with ALS”

“Shocked,” said Boudreau upon hearing the new August 10th. “He was by far the best conditioned athlete you’d ever want to see. He was a race horse among a bunch of plough horses, no matter how a good of shape you were in, he made you look silly. So strong and physically fit that you can’t picture this, so when we heard the news, A, it’s very shocking, and B, how unfortunately coincidental that two (of my) teammates from the same era have the same disease. It doesn’t seem really plausible.”

The three crossed paths with the Toronto Maple Leafs between 1979 and 1981. Salming played defence for the Leafs for sixteen seasons.

Like in the case of Lou Gehrig, the baseball player the disease was re-named for, a man known as the ‘Iron Horse’, the affliction cares not what your physical conditioning may be. It’s a blind, tragic lottery.

“As with our friend Mark Kirton, it deteriorates your body and it’s very sad to see,” Boudreau said. “Borje, like Mark, will be a real battler.”

Kirton took the battle public and has elicited the participation of hockey legends and media stars to raise awareness and support for ALS research. Medicines have been found to slow the effects while the search for a cure continues. Presently there isn’t one.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a progressive nervous system disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing loss of muscle control, loss of breathing and other functions, and eventual death. Average life expectancy upon diagnosis is about five years.

“There’s some cutting edge (treatment experiments) ones that are very exciting, but these things take time,” Kirton told us after visiting the Canucks in April. “To go through three trials it could be a two year process. And once they do hit on something, it’s a long process to go through the red tape. Approval through Health Canada, approval through the provinces and get it to the patients, right?”

For now Salming, one of about 800 ALS patients in Sweden, remains at home and has asked for complete privacy. At some point, other patients can only hope the 71-year-old decides to step forward, to use his prominence to take the awareness factor around the world to another level.

Salming has the outspoken support of former teammates and other cohorts.

“I am gutted about Borje,” former Maple Leafs GM Gord Stellick told VHN. “I didn’t get to see (Dave) Keon and the others play so much personally, so to me Borje is the greatest Leaf ever. I admired him more for when the Leafs weren’t that good and he would still give his Hockey Hall of Fame performance every night. I treasure even more that he was a hall of famer off the ice.”

“They’ve been battlers their whole lives and been successful at whatever they’ve done, and I just pray to goodness that this is a slow-acting thing and they get to last an awful lot longer,” Boudreau said.

( Find Mark Kirton and his videos on twitter @KirtSpeaksALS #EndALS )