Roman Polak didn’t want his teammates to visit. The big scowling Czech defenceman was lying in a hospital bed, drifting in the fog delivered by his post-surgery painkillers. He is pretty sure he didn’t have a TV, but he had a laptop ... yes, he definitely had a laptop. When asked about those five or six days, he can’t remember much of what he did.

But he remembers that he didn’t want his teammates to see him like that. That stuck.

“They had a tough schedule, and I didn’t want them to see me, there,” says Polak now, five months after 13 screws were installed to repair the broken leg he suffered in Game 2 of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ first-round series against Washington. “I’d rather stay by myself. I don’t know. I didn’t feel good after the surgery, and it was painful, and I didn’t want anybody to see me as I’m laying there in the bed, you know, struggling. I don’t like that.”

He almost stumbles, the big tough guy, before a grin pushes his heavy, permanently five o’clock-shadowed cheeks to the side.

“And I was on drugs too, so mostly I was just high. I probably wouldn’t remember it.”

Polak is in camp for the Leafs, and you can tell. In one drill at a morning skate before Tuesday’s pre-season loss to Ottawa he pokes at centre Dominic Moore, and knocks down Patrick Marleau. He is also part of what might be the last generation of true smash ’n’ bash defencemen. After he cross-checked Connor McDavid during a World Cup warm-up and Auston Matthews retaliated by cross-checking Polak, Polak’s assessment of the Matthews hit was, “good technique.”

“He likes to hit people,” says Matthews. “That’s what that definitely told me. He actually hit me pretty good earlier that game.”

And while it’s hard to be a basher in a league that gets faster every second, Polak was one of coach Mike Babcock’s security blankets last season. But the injury — that half-twirl into the air, the landing — was gruesome, and it’s a long road back. Goaltender Frederik Andersen was right next to former Leaf Stephane Robidas when he suffered one of his broken legs, and thought right away this was the same thing.

“Well, he’s just got to get healthy,” says Babcock. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t paid any attention to him, until he’s in a situation to play in a game, it’s just a matter of him on rehab.”

The night of the injury Polak was devastated: As teammate Nazem Kadri puts it, “he wasn’t in good shape.” Beyond his emotions, it was the most pain Polak had ever experienced, and that included the time a puck tore through his cheek and he returned to the bench with stitches. As the Leafs landed back in Toronto he felt the cabin pressure squeeze his leg: surgery provided some relief. And that was the start.

“After three weeks here I went home, and I felt just useless,” says Polak. “Because you are on the crutches and playing with the kids or something, and I just can’t do anything. So you’re there but you’re not there, because you just can’t help. So basically for my wife I was basically like the third kid.”

His 5-year-old daughter Isabella would dote on him, bringing him cookies, candy, and drinks; his 2-year-old son Markus delighted in swinging the crutches around. “He was smacking everything,” says Polak, with a note of fatherly pride. (He has both their names tattooed in script on his right arm, and once wore matching Halloween costumes with Isabella.) He spent three months on crutches. When the cast came off, he found he was a one-legged man.

“Oh, there was nothing there,” said Polak. “The thigh and the calf just disappeared.”

The rehabilitation clinic is outside his hometown of Ostrava, and it specialized in car crash victims — as Polak puts it, “they teach people to walk again, so they were prepared.” He started by walking in the pool. But, uh, Roman ... how did you get there?

“Yeah, I shouldn’t have been driving,” he says, abashed. “But I had a left foot on the brake and the right foot on the gas, and I had to lift the whole foot, and it was actually a good workout, just lifting it. Raising it up and down.”

He says he feels like himself, but that his leg still hurts. Does he feel it in games? Is it like his left ankle, which required two screws after one high ankle sprain and he can still feel when he climbs stairs?

“It just hurts,” says Polak. All the time. He spent nearly an hour doing post-skate icing and rehab. Must hurt a lot, huh? He shrugs.

But the 31-year-old is being given a chance, and his teammates are happy to see him. Andersen says “Especially with the younger guys, he can let them know once in a while how things are done. Not in a …. what do you call that? … not in an asshole kind of way, excuse my language. But it’s just how it is, we should do it this way, and it’s something me and the younger guys can learn from.”

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“I root for everybody who works hard and competes hard and does things right, but in the end, I never confuse the player and the person,” says Babcock. “At this time of year, you’re looking for players. At the same time, you’re hoping they’re really good people. If it’s a 50-50 situation and the tie goes to the best person, a guy like Polie has a chance to win.”

Morgan Rielly tells the story of a team karaoke night during training camp at Blue Mountain in 2015, and how he and some of the younger players like Jake Gardiner and Matt Frattin were nervous, and didn’t do very well. Next up went Polak, still new to the team, and he belted out the 80s song Life is Life, parading through the crowd, dancing with his teammates. He didn’t know all the words, but he let it all hang out. People were dying laughing: this big scowling serious man, acting the fool.

“That was the first time I was ever around him,” says Rielly. “And I think he was making fun of himself, because ... it makes everyone feel better about themselves when he goes out to do that. He’s the one who’d rather be the butt of the joke rather than making fun of other people.”

Polak was willing to be vulnerable, then. He is back to being the tough guy, now. Roman Polak is a relic of an earlier time in hockey, trying to keep up, trying to recapture his own past. He is hoping that to his teammates, he can somehow be the same.

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