Nearly paralyzed, Cole Bardreau thankful for chance with Flyers

At first, his hands just felt a little numb.

Cole Bardreau had gone headfirst into the corner boards after he simultaneously got pushed from behind and hit a rut in the ice at Houston Field House in Troy, N.Y., home of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Engineers.

Bardreau, a sophomore for the Cornell Big Red in this Jan. 19, 2013 game knew he was hurt, but had no clue that a vertebra had broken two different places in his neck and was in extreme danger of being paralyzed. The injury came only two games after returning from the World Junior Championship where he and Flyers prospect Shayne Gostisbehere won Gold for the U.S.

"I thought it was my chest like a bruised sternum or maybe a concussion," Bardreau said in a phone interview. "Obviously if I knew that I had a C-7 fracture, I wouldn't have jeopardized that by playing the rest of the game. It was something that I thought I could play through and it was gonna go away."

The 5-foot-10, 194-pound New Hampshire native finished the game, broken neck and all, and two days later told Cornell's staff that his neck still hurt, so they took him for a precautionary X-ray.

"I went in with my bookbag on like it was a normal day," Bardreau said, "and I came out in an ambulance. It was pretty scary."

Hard to believe that a little more than two years later Bardreau is not only fully recovered and playing hockey again, but signed a two-year entry-level contract with the Flyers Thursday.

The center, who turns 22 in July and says he plays like Tampa Bay's Ryan Callahan, nearly never walked again.

"I can't remember the doctor's exact words right now, but he basically said I was actually really close (to being paralyzed)," Bardreau said. "It was a unique case that I took to several doctors and no one agreed on a timeframe for a recovery for playing."

Eventually Bardreau found a doctor in Rochester who took the case to a conference and found a similar case in Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Steve Smith, who broke his neck in a game when he was playing for Utah in college and similarly didn't know until two days later.

"Crazy as it was, he was one of my favorite football players," Bardreau said. "I grew up in North Carolina when he was playing for the Panthers. I really liked him."

Just like Smith, Bardreau spent three months post-surgery in a stiff neck brace with no lifting weights allowed. Slowly but surely he worked his way back into a normal routine and played 26 games last season as an assistant captain for the Big Red.

This season he played in 30, notching five goals and 17 assists. The Boston Bruins and Detroit Red Wings wanted him, teams he attended prospect camps with last summer, but instead he decided on the Flyers after the Big Red season wrapped up in the first round of the ECAC playoffs.

"The biggest thing was that as a player they want me to play the same way I see myself playing," Bardreau said. "Sometimes going to the next level it can be different. Someone might see themselves as a goal-scorer when their team doesn't see them in that role, so I think just the role they had is the role I want to play. That was huge for me."

After taking in the Flyers-Stars game Tuesday, meeting the coaching staff and checking out the practice facility in Voorhees, Bardreau also saw the Lehigh Valley Phantoms' digs in Allentown, Pa. He'll get to know that building well soon, as he will join Gostisbehere and Co. next week for the remainder of the season on an amateur tryout. First he'll touch base with his professors at Cornell and find a way to graduate on time with his major in applied economics and management.

Bardreau isn't a flashy goal-scorer, instead a gritty center, a self-proclaimed "in-your-face guy that will compete and work hard every shift." He had no idea that the Flyers' reputation was built on that same mentality.

"I didn't know much about them," Bardreau said. "That's another thing, too. They seem to pride themselves on their hard-working mentality and that's something I pride myself on as well."

Reach Dave Isaac at disaac@courierpostonline.com. Follow him on Twitter @davegisaac.