STORY BY JOURNAL STAFF, EDMONTONJOURNAL.COM
EDMONTON ? Matt Cook, who battled back from cancer to play on Canada's national sledge hockey team, died early Sunday afternoon in his Edmonton home, surrounded by family members. He was 22.
He was training in October with the national team in Ontario for the Vancouver Paralympics when he encountered difficulty breathing. Doctors discovered a recurrence of cancer in his left lung. Given three to six months to live, he returned to Edmonton to be with his family.
“Everything happens for a reason, 100 per cent,” he told The Journal in December.
“I might not ever know what that reason is. I am not afraid of death. The only thing that bothers me is I'm leaving behind my family.”
Cook's parents, Don and Lynn, brother Brady and sister Marina were dedicated to doing everything they could for him during his final months.
Brady, who had been playing for the Burnaby Express of the British Columbia Junior Hockey League, requested and was granted a trade, became captain of the Alberta Junior Hockey League's Camrose Kodiaks and wore No. 23 — Matt's number.
Marina, an up-and-coming high school basketball player, took time off from the sport to be around Matt.
Don, a captain with the Edmonton Fire Department, was transferred to Hall No. 12, a two-minute drive from the family home.
“Matt has never asked, 'Why me?' ” Don Cook said in December. “The only tears we've seen him shed are when he thinks about how our family will cope.”
Matt Cook was originally diagnosed with bone cancer in 2005 while playing for the Bonnyville Pontiacs of the AJHL. A tumour discovered on his left ankle led to the amputation of his leg below the knee. Later, a catheter inserted to facilitate his chemotherapy severed a vein and he had to undergo open-heart surgery to repair it.
Initially, he resisted sledge hockey.
“I told my Dad there was no way that I wanted to play sledge hockey,” Cook told The Journal.
“I just pictured a bunch of guys on the ice, trying to pull themselves around on toboggans.”
Then he saw a demonstration of the sport between periods of one of Brady's games and was impressed by the athleticism of the competitors.
He arranged to receive a sledge from Hockey Canada, pushed himself to get back in shape, and spent countless hours practising with his father to perfect his stick work. Within a year he made the national team, the first veteran of junior A hockey to do so.
Cook played in the world men's sledge hockey championships in November 2008 in Prince Edward Island as Canada won the gold medal. He also contributed to Canada's sweep of the Four Nations tournament at Nagano, Japan, two months later.
“Hockey is the thing that got me out of bed,” Cook said at the time. “There were days when I just wanted to stay in bed and give up.
“I think maybe I get frustrated and bitter, but never angry. This is the way things go.”
Cook travelled to Saskatoon in January when the national sledge team was announced at a world junior hockey championship game. He didn't have a spot on the roster but was introduced with the rest of the team during the second-period intermission.
“It's a sad day for everyone involved with the AJHL,” Fort McMurray Oil Barons coach and general manager Gord Thibodeau, a cancer survivor himself, said on Sunday.
“Matt was a tough character player who battled on the ice and off the ice. He was an inspiration to everyone involved in our league.”
Cook's battle against cancer inspired many in the hockey community, most notably Shannon Szabados, who was the first-string goaltender for the Canadian women's team that won gold at the Vancouver Olympics. Szabados had FLM, for “Fight Like Matt,” inscribed on the back of her headgear as a tribute to Cook and helped raise nearly $5,000 in donations for cancer research.
“He's my inspiration,” she said during the Olympics. “I've got him on my mask and in my heart. He's an amazing person.”
Funeral arrangements are pending.
