Article content continued

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or

There’s no woe is me from Mantha, who was drafted in the fourth round by New York Rangers in 2014 but wasn’t signed and was scooped up by the Oilers as a free agent in the spring of 2017. He has an extremely positive attitude, even with only some of his sight back, and after a subsequent heart operation three weeks later to repair a problem.

Doctors haven’t shut the door on him returning.

“I remember the quote from the guy in Colorado who said a positive attitude with one arm is better than a negative attitude with two arms … it’s what you make of the situation,” said Mantha. “You can sit and dwell on it but negativity doesn’t get you anywhere.”

There was no warning that he’d have the scariest moment in his hockey life. There was no family history of blood clots. Just a freak thing. Patrick Russell dropped the puck to him at the offensive blue line, he wound up for a shot and that was it. He saw a stick (poke-check) coming, and it all went dark.

“I threw the puck away in a panic. They came down on a 3-on-2 and I couldn’t see anything out of my left eye. Keegan Lowe was on the ice with me and I was screaming ‘I’m blind, I’m blind.’ I was in a panic to get off the ice. I looked down, I looked up and I thought ‘what the hell is going on?’ I didn’t feel a thing,” he said.

Mantha is on blood thinners now to prevent more clotting and trying to stay upbeat, doing cardio, but no weight training yet.

“There’s no timeline, nobody’s said anything about not playing any more. When I look out of my left eye now I have the peripheral vision but I don’t see anything close in the middle of my eye because the cells in the eye are damaged,” said Mantha. “But I can see colours and shapes with the peripheral vision in the left eye.”