‘It kind of changed my life’: Jake Muzzin’s NHL career has been an uphill battle

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Jake Muzzin could barely sit down. He was 16 when he was diagnosed with two herniated discs. He faced surgery and an uncertain future.

Possibly not being able to play hockey was the least of it.

“I had to sign a waiver saying I understood that I might be paralyzed when I woke up,” the Maple Leafs defenceman said after practice on Thanksgiving morning at the Leafs’ training centre in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke. “There was a chance I might not be able to walk again.

“It kind of changed my life.”

He is 30 and in his ninth season in the NHL, and he brings something important to the team.

Unlike Toronto’s flashy young stars, success for him was improbable. Because of that, he possesses the perspective of somebody who has had to struggle to achieve.

“Mine has kind of been a rocky road,” he said, as he sat, with a small tear in his right nostril and a scab on his right upper lip, in front of his dressing stall. “I think it makes you stronger and tougher.

“Thank God I have had a good support cast in my life. There have been a lot of people that helped. It wasn’t just me.”

Muzzin, traded from Los Angeles to the Maple Leafs in January, is unlikely to make headlines, either good or bad. On a team full of firepower and flash, his greatest value is experience and grit. He is Toronto’s lone player to win a Stanley Cup, and without him, its lineup is as soft as gossamer and angel’s wings.

The Leafs play their sixth game of the season on Tuesday night, at home against the Minnesota Wild.

Muzzin had a goal and an assist in Saturday’s victory in Detroit, but at best he would be considered a secondary or third-dary scorer, if there is such a thing. His partner on defence, Tyson Barrie, has the lightning-quick speed and wicked shot from the point. Muzzin delivers the thunder that goes with it.

It’s a chip he shoulders with strength and size, but it is more than that. It is stubbornness and fortitude that accompany perseverance. For him, hockey has always been an uphill climb.

He grew up in Woodstock, Ont., and was a Maple Leafs fan as a kid. He was 16 when he was chosen by the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds in the first round of the 2005 OHL draft. Then his back began to ail. Doctors diagnosed the ruptured discs but thought they would heal through rehabilitation. When it did not work, surgery was prescribed.

“The injury occurred from an accumulation of things,” Muzzin says. “I was a kid and was growing very quickly, I was playing a lot of sports, didn’t know how to properly work out and my body just broke down over time. It got pretty bad.”

The procedure was done early in 2006 and required a long recovery. Muzzin did not play hockey for more than a year.

“Doubt creeps in,” he said.

He returned to the Greyhounds midway through the 2006-07 season, and was so good that the Pittsburgh Penguins selected him in the fifth round of the 2007 draft.

“The Penguins took a shot with me based on potential, but I was not ready to play in the NHL at the time physically or emotionally,” Muzzin said.

He returned to the OHL for two more seasons and blossomed into an outstanding player. In his final year, he was the Greyhounds captain and won the trophy awarded to the league’s top defenceman.

Although he had an opportunity to be chosen by another NHL team as an overage OHL player, nobody drafted him.

“That was almost a blessing,” Muzzin said. “It meant I was available to talk to all of the teams and not locked into one. A lot of people were interested.”

He signed with Los Angeles as a free agent in 2010, and made the Kings’ opening-night roster. He was soon farmed out to their AHL affiliate and finished the 2011 season there. He spent the next year in the AHL, but was recalled by L.A. during the 2012 playoffs. He was scratched throughout the postseason, however, so his name was not engraved after the Kings won the Stanley Cup.

He spent a majority of the past seven seasons in Los Angeles, and had six goals during the playoffs when the Kings won a second title in 2014. He expected to finish his career in California, so he was surprised when he was dealt to the Maple Leafs on Jan. 28 in exchange for forward Carl Grundstrom, the playing rights to Sean Durzi and Toronto’s first-round pick in the 2019 NHL draft.

“I was shocked, but I was able to get my mind around it,” Muzzin said. “I figured if I was going to have to leave the sunshine in California, there was probably no better place than Toronto, which was close to home.”

The Maple Leafs are happy to have him in their dressing room. He provides toughness and the perspective that they need.