"It's finally improving": Ex-Canucks centre Brandon Sutter opens up about comeback attempt

Mar 10 2023, 1:08 am

It’s been nearly two years since Brandon Sutter played a professional hockey game, but the 34-year-old isn’t giving up on his NHL dream.

Sutter was one of 21 players that contracted COVID-19 when the virus spread through the Vancouver Canucks in the spring of 2021. The players contracted the Gamma variant prior to COVID-19 vaccines being widely in Canada, and it left them all in rough shape.

But Sutter was the only Canucks player to suffer long-haul symptoms, which kept him on the sidelines for the last two seasons.

Never mind continuing his career, Sutter hasn’t always been able to live a normal life since getting sick.

But now, nearly two years later, Sutter had some good news to share during an interview with Don Taylor and Rick Dhaliwal on CHEK. He’s able to skate again, which he’s doing regularly with the WHL’s Red Deer Rebels, a team owned by his father Brent Sutter.

Sutter is still not 100%, and has a long way to go, but is holding out hope that he can try out for a team this September.

“It’s finally improving. Finally starting to feel better. Making some progress. It’s been a long road… Starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel,” Sutter said on Donnie and Dhali.

“You kind of have a dysregulation in your immune system,” Sutter said, explaining what he’s been going through. “Your body is almost in an inflammatory state all the time, and different organs react different ways. It’s just been a grind.”

Attempting a comeback after two years away for a player of his age, even at full health, is a tall task. Sutter doesn’t know if he’ll be able to do it, but he’s at least going to give himself a chance.

“I’m back to working out again, which feels good, because for the longest time I couldn’t do much for training or skating, or nothing. I’ve been working out and skating with the Rebels in Red Deer again here. Kind of keeping my body going and again, I’m not sure if I’ll get back to playing again or not, but I’m at least going to give myself a chance.

“I’m hopeful to give it another try in the fall if I can. It’s nice to just [be] feeling better, I’ve still got some work to do. I’m not normal yet. It’s nice to be a normal dad, a normal guy again and get through the day-to-day stuff without too much difficulty.”

“I’m not there yet”

Sutter thought he had recovered from COVID in April 2021, and returned to play eight games before the end of the 2020-21 season.

He signed a one-year contract with the Canucks on July 28, but started feeling new symptoms in August. He hasn’t played since.

“It is frustrating. It comes out of nowhere. When we got it as a team we all didn’t feel good. We were all pretty sick, especially those first three or four days, it was horrible.”

“It was kind of midsummer… I started noticing difficulty breathing sometimes. I couldn’t really figure out what it was. When I really started ramping up my training in August, and skating and everything, I just started realizing there was no way I could do this. I started having all different kinds of symptoms. It’s bizarre and it’s frustrating because you’re with a group of guys that all got the same strain… we’re all connected with it, and no one else had any issue with it after a couple weeks.

“Here I am two years later, and I’m still grinding.”

Sutter says it can sometimes take him two days to recover from a hard day of skating now.

“I’m not there yet,” he said, adding that upcoming training camps will be his “last chance.”

“I was hopeful this year to return at some point [this season], to try to do something, and now I’m realizing it’s not going to happen. I’m just setting my sights on the fall. It’s kind of my last chance to give it a crack. I’m going to do everything I can. If it works out, I’ll be pretty excited. And if it doesn’t, that’s just the way it goes. You can’t do much about it. Your health comes first.”

“It’s definitely something you miss more than anything”

One certainty is if Sutter becomes healthy enough to play, he’s going to be one motivated hockey player.

He’s played 770 career games, but he’s desperate to play another.

“I still have that drive for it. Even skating with the junior kids here, some days you get back on the ice and you forget how much you miss it… The second it’s gone, it’s taken from you, you realize how much you missed the game, but also just being around the dressing room and with the guys. It’s definitely something you miss more than anything.

“I’m going to give it my best shot.”

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