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Hirsch has done both. Now retired from hockey, the broadcaster with Sportsnet is an advocate for mental health who shares his own story to help others who might be struggling, hiding or driving full throttle toward the edge of a cliff, as he once did in an attempt to end the pain that knocked him harder than any puck ever did.

Hirsch remembers vividly the night everything changed. He was 21, he’d been drafted by the Rangers — he had everything he’d ever worked for. Out with friends one night, random, dark thoughts began ripping through his brain. “I was standing there talking to them and I started getting these deep, dark, repetitive thoughts. Harm thoughts, intrusive sexual thoughts.”

He got himself home, but the next morning the thoughts were still there. Hirsch didn’t know what was going on, but he did know this: He couldn’t tell anyone.

Photo by Jason Payne / PNG

“I started avoiding everybody. If practice was at 10 o’clock, I’d show up at 9:50,” says Hirsch.

The avoidance behaviour was about survival, but it only isolated Hirsch further. Games were his salvation—the adrenaline and the focus would put his anxiety and looping thoughts on ice. But it wasn’t enough.

“Summer of ’94 I tried to break my own hand so I could leave New York and go back to Calgary, but I couldn’t do it. I was stuck in New York. I called my mom to come out to help me get up, get out, get to practice, but I didn’t know what was happening.”

When Hirsch took his mom to the Empire State Building, he told her that he wanted to jump off it.