Leafs' Brodie on self-care, family health scares, and pesky buyout talk

During his 13 years in the NHL, Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman TJ Brodie has seen all sorts of growth when it comes to the game of hockey.

While the game has transitioned towards a more speed and skill-focused league, Brodie also admitted that the culture around how players discuss their injuries — and choose to play through them or not — has drastically changed during his hockey career.

“The whole thought behind it is different,” Brodie said in an interview with Daily Hive. “It used to be, if you could skate, you could play. Is it worth struggling through an injury that’s going to nag you the rest of the year? Or is it better to take a couple games off here and, you know, feel 100% and give yourself the best chance to be available down the stretch?”

Caring about his health was put into perspective when he collapsed during a practice with the Calgary Flames back in 2019, but it wasn’t the first health scare that’s hit close to home for Brodie.

Back in 2015, Brodie’s wife Amber found out she’s one of 90,000 Canadians living with the chronic autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis.

This week, the couple has partnered with A&W’s Burgers to Beat MS campaign, where $2 from every Teen Burger sold will go to MS Canada to support Canadians living with MS.

“Sixty per cent of the people that get diagnosed are between the ages of 20 and 39,” Brodie said of the couple’s involvement with the A&W campaign. “There’s lots of life decisions being made at a time whether it’s marriage, jobs, kids, and I feel like MS Canada was very helpful with us to understand what the disease was, what it entails for us.”

“It just felt right like an easy yes, to share our story and let people know that they’re not alone,” Amber added. “It’s like an ever-evolving disease. I think the biggest thing when I was first diagnosed was you have this image of what people with MS look like or what happens, and that’s not the case. Everyone’s journey with the disease is very different. So just when people are first diagnosed, it was very helpful to know that there was there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of thing know that my own journey was going to be what it is.”

Now prepping for his fourth season with the Leafs after 10 years in Calgary, Brodie will be joined once again for his 11th NHL training camp alongside longtime teammate Mark Giordano, who previously served as his captain and defensive partner in Calgary.

“I was hearing rumblings about it, and I didn’t think it would actually happen,” Brodie said as he recalled the trade from Seattle to Toronto that reunited him and Giordano on the Leafs. “We got to spend a lot of good years together in Calgary and get a couple extra ones here. He’ll be a lifelong friend on and off the ice. He is someone that you know, has taught me a lot about the game and really helped me along the way.”

But with the Leafs expected to be in a salary cap crunch this season, Brodie knows all too well about navigating the day-to-day rumour mill in a market as big as Toronto.

Back in June, Brodie was at the centre of buyout rumours — sparked first by Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli and then later discussed on Sportsnet and TSN as the vaunted Toronto Sports Topic of the Week.

“I didn’t know about that until my agent texted me about it,” Brodie said. “The things I’ve learned through my career is, you know, if you can’t control it, don’t worry about it. And that was what happened… there’s no point losing sleep over something that’s out of your hands.”