Editor’s note: Denver Post reporters Terry Frei and Mike Chambers spent the past year chronicling the recovery of college hockey standout Jesse Martin following a life-threatening injury. During that time, they stayed in contact with Martin and his family and talked to teammates, coaches, doctors and friends while reporting for this project. Today: The hit and its immediate aftermath.

Lying on the ice in Grand Forks, N.D., unable to move his limbs, University of Denver center Jesse Martin pondered his future, and was horrified. The Pioneers’ senior assistant captain didn’t yet know that he had suffered three fractures to his C2 neck vertebra, an injury that can cause death or, short of that, paralysis, ventilator dependence and a markedly shortened life. Yet he was aware enough to tell himself: You’re going to be a quadriplegic.“You run through everything real quickly in your head,” Jesse said in late July, sitting on a stool in the kitchen of his parents’ home in Edmonton. “Your relationships are done. Somebody’s going to have to take care of you for the rest of your life.”

As the first anniversary of his on-ice injury approaches, he is rehabilitating in his Alberta hometown. He has lingering physical issues, including headaches. Nerve damage affects his feeling and causes pain in his left arm and hands. So, this isn’t a Disney story. He isn’t scoring the game- winning goal in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

Yet, in almost every respect, his recovery is remarkable.

He is scheduled to start a job this week as a commercial-lending consultant with Canadian Western Bank in Edmonton, and begin playing hockey in a no-contact recreational league.

It’s at the heart of why Jesse, 23, for months has described himself as “the luckiest man in the world.”

“I’m not about to feel sorry for myself and say, ‘Poor me, I didn’t get a chance to make it in the NHL or the American League,’ when I can walk around, play golf, go skate and have as much of a regular life as you can after something like this,” he said. “If you could have told me, on the ice, when I couldn’t feel anything, that this was how it was going to be, I would have taken that in a second.”

His father, Terry Martin, notes that Jesse was in grave danger at the outset.

“We’re here together as a family,” he said. “I’m not looking at a picture on the mantelpiece of my son and missing him and having a hole in my heart because he’s not here anymore to share the rest of our lives with. . . . So the glass is full. Not half-empty and not half-full. To me, the glass couldn’t be fuller.”

Road back is long, marked with milestones

Jesse has had many triumphs, such as his return to driving, skating, golf and swimming, and his graduation from DU.

He has had many disappointments, notably when DU athletic department officials informally — and prematurely, he believes — told him he wouldn’t be allowed to return for one more season with the Pioneers, under any circumstances, because of liability concerns.

DU, though, has agreed to leave Jesse on scholarship if he decides to seek a master’s degree in a one-year postgraduate program in the 2012-13 academic year. He was going to begin graduate school this fall but changed his mind.

“It was a combination of how slow the healing process is coming along and just wanting to be around my friends and family here, rather than go back to Denver, go to school and be around the hockey, but not be given the option to participate in it,” he said.

Now, it’s possible he won’t return to DU at all, especially if he likes his new job.

His long road back began Saturday, Oct. 30, 2010.

Silence, then hearing a crack

In the second game of a weekend series at North Dakota, Jesse, a slight senior listed at 5 foot 10, 180 pounds, centered DU’s top line.

A seventh-round draft choice of the NHL’s Atlanta Thrashers in 2006, Jesse arrived at DU in the fall of 2007. By that night in Grand Forks, he was established as a popular teammate with a mischievous sense of humor and as an intelligent young man who read classic plays and liked to debate teammates about current events. He was the Pioneers’ top faceoff man and defensive forward, seemingly destined to give pro hockey a try after the DU season.

Midway through the second period of a scoreless game, Jesse collected the puck in the right corner, near the DU net. He began up ice but lost control of the puck and looked down. North Dakota winger Brad Malone leveled him. Malone led with his right elbow, and his right shoulder collided with the right side of Jesse’s head.

“I didn’t want it to go into the slot, so I reached out for it, and all of a sudden I’m on the ground and it goes black,” Jesse said later.

When he stopped sliding, his forehead rested against the bottom of the boards. Play continued with Jesse motionless. A Fighting Sioux skater fired the puck wide of the net, and it curled around the end boards and struck the unconscious Jesse in the helmet. Only then did the whistle sound. In an eerie coincidence, Jesse had come to rest beneath an advertisement on the boards for Altru Health System, the Grand Forks hospital.

Moments later, he regained consciousness.

“I opened my eyes and I’m looking at the boards, in a real awkward position with where my arms are,” Jesse said. “I thought, ‘Maybe I’m winded and I’ll give it a second.’ I tried to catch my breath and get up. Nothing was responding.”

DU trainer Aaron Leu rushed across the ice. The normally raucous North Dakota crowd went silent.

“I’m real scared here,” Jesse told Leu. “I can’t feel anything.”

While Leu tried to comfort Jesse and called for a stretcher, the referees and linesmen conferred and assessed the 6-foot-2, 212-pound Malone a major penalty for charging, as well as a game misconduct.

Once trainers stabilized Jesse’s neck, he was placed on a gurney and wheeled off the ice. While an emergency medical technician prepped him for loading into an ambulance, Jesse heard a loud crack. Characteristically, but incredibly under the circumstances, Jesse managed to joke.

“I asked the guy, ‘Did you hear that?’ ” Jesse said. “And he said, ‘Yeah,’ ” and then he turned white, like he just broke my neck or back — if it already wasn’t broken. He looked worse than me. I told him, ‘Stay with me now.’ “

The ambulance raced toward Altru Health System.

“I kind of began to feel a twitch in my leg a little bit, in my foot,” Jesse said. “It started moving a little bit. . . . I was strapped down so I couldn’t see my hands, either, but I guess I was moving my fingers a little bit.”

Horror unfolds for family

In Edmonton, Jesse’s longtime girlfriend, college student Tracy Freund, returned home from her job at a retail store and tuned in to the DU radio broadcast on the Internet. Horrified by Pioneer play-by- play man Jay Stickney’s description of what happened, she called DU players she had numbers for, knowing they wouldn’t get to their phones until later but asking them to call her as soon as they had information about Jesse.

In Las Vegas, Jesse’s parents — Jacquie and Terry Martin — were at Cher’s show in Caesars Palace. They were in town for a conference related to Terry’s role as vice president of Homes and Land Canada Corp., publisher of glossy real-estate advertising magazines. Terry’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He ignored it. Calls kept coming. Concerned, he went to the lobby and checked his phone and learned that Natasha, Jesse’s sister, was desperate to reach him. Terry called her. She was watching the game on TV and told Terry that Jesse had been taken off the ice, on a stretcher, with an apparent neck or head injury.

On his phone, Terry typed out an e-mail to a Denver Post reporter at the game: “Can you please call me with any info on my cell. Thanks so much.” Terry received a quick response from the reporter with a promise to keep him updated once he knew more.

Then Leu called from Grand Forks, and soon after, so did a doctor.

“It was extremely frightful,” Terry recalled, “because the doctor was nervous. He was trying to be as tactful as he could be, but you could tell he wasn’t sure himself. He didn’t sound confident.”

Terry went back into the showroom and let his wife know that they needed to leave. Outside, he told her why.

The Pioneers said a prayer for Jesse after the second period, then finished off a 3-0 victory. “We made sure that we got that win for him,” goalie Sam Brittain said.

After post-game interviews, DU coach George Gwozdecky went to the North Dakota dressing room to meet with a home-team doctor, who showed him X-rays sent via e-mail from the hospital. Jesse had a broken neck. Shaken, Gwozdecky returned to the visiting dressing room to tell his team.

“We had guys crying,” the coach recalled.

On the phone, doctors told Jesse’s parents their son had suffered three fractures to the C2 vertebra — or the second one down, with an odontoid, or a toothlike extension, going from it up into the C1 vertebra — and trauma to his spinal cord.

Leu called Dr. Eric McCarty, orthopedic surgeon for both the DU and University of Colorado athletic departments, who was in Norman, Okla., with the Buffaloes’ football team. He would become a crucial voice of counsel in the ensuing days. Arrangements were underway to airlift Jesse from Grand Forks to Hennepin County Medical Center, a Level 1 Trauma Center in Minneapolis. Many players asked whether they could go to the Grand Forks hospital, but Gwozdecky decided only senior defenseman Jon Cook, Jesse’s best friend on the team, would visit the emergency room with the coach and help serve as a “conduit” of news for the players. The two went to the hospital and stayed with Jesse until he was loaded onto another ambulance, beginning the trip to Minneapolis. When Cook returned to the hotel, his teammates could tell he was frightened.

Leu, traveling with Jesse, stayed in contact with the Martins during the four-hour transfer.

“It felt like about 10 seconds,” Jesse said later. “It all happened so fast. . . . I’m just in a whole bunch of pain and I’m real scared.”

Leu told Terry Martin that during the trip, his son was talking, appeared to be gaining more feeling and could grip his hand. Upon Jesse’s arrival at the Minneapolis hospital early Sunday morning, doctors put his head in a “halo,” held in place with four screws into his skull.

In Las Vegas, meanwhile, Terry stayed up all night, chugging coffee and getting updates from Leu. Jacquie curled up on the bed in a fetal position, crying. Terry booked an early-morning flight to Minneapolis, and the two arrived at the hospital Sunday afternoon.

“He did not look well. We didn’t know if he was going to be paralyzed or whether he was going to die,” Terry said.

Coaches, family at the hospital

A day later, with Jesse seemingly out of life-threatening danger, DU assistant coach Derek Lalonde told him on the phone that Brad Malone was “pretty shaken up.” At Jesse’s behest, Leu called Malone and held the phone to Jesse’s ear. The two talked for about 10 minutes, and Jesse told Malone — a 2007 Avalanche draft choice destined to sign with Colorado after the season — not to blame himself.

While some media reported Jesse had seen a replay of the hit and deemed it clean, Jesse’s recollection months later was that he hadn’t yet seen the video at the time.

“I gave him the benefit of the doubt and called him,” Jesse said. “I don’t regret doing that. If you can do something to stop someone from suffering, why wouldn’t you do it?”

Doctors kept Jesse in traction all week while pondering surgical options. He was in great pain and had little feeling in his arms. “He was very much on tenterhooks that this could be, if not fatal, permanent paralysis,” his father said.

DU assistant coach Steve Miller visited early in the week, then returned to Denver as Gwozdecky replaced him on watch Wednesday.

“I walked into the hospital room, and he’s got the birdcage on, he’s just lying there,” Gwozdecky said later. “I’m trying not to look shocked and react in any other way than I normally would when I see Jesse. I said, ‘I’m glad I’m here, how you feeling so far,’ kind of tapped him on the hand, shook his dad’s hand and hugged his mom and started chatting. He was in a pretty good frame of mind. It was a relief to see that he was doing as well as he was.”

The Martins, though, interpreted Gwozdecky’s demeanor as surprisingly cavalier. And, because Jesse already had spoken to many of his teammates on the phone and was fatigued, they were upset that the coach was intent on shooting a video of Jesse addressing his teammates. Months later, Gwozdecky bought up the video shot that day with pride, an indication the coach and Martin family weren’t on the same wavelength. That wasn’t surprising for several reasons, including the inevitable tension affecting all involved in Jesse’s injury. But, another factor was that by his senior season, Jesse’s relationship with his coach had become uneasy.

As an assistant captain and team leader, Jesse met with DU coaches on a weekly basis. In those meetings, his inquisitiveness could seem challenging. If ignored, he wasn’t happy.

“As a freshman, you’re excited to be there and you look up to your coaches,” Jesse said. “One year out, you start to resent some things and really understand some things. It’s really difficult when there’s no room to ask some questions and get an understanding or a clarification.”

Months later, asked about the tension, Gwozdecky said Jesse’s skills as an unselfish forward and fearless shot blocker outweighed any friction.

“There were so many other things that Jesse brought to the table, as a player, as a student-athlete, and as a teammate, that would far and away outweigh any of those concerns about (Jesse) having to dissect every move that was made,” he said.

Fight for a second opinion

Surgery to fuse Jesse’s C1 and C2 vertebrae was scheduled for Friday, Nov. 5. It wouldn’t have been the most drastic type of C1-C2 procedure, involving wires around the back of the neck and the inclusion of the skull in the fusion. But it would have permanently affected his neck movement.

“They told us a percent of how he wouldn’t be able to turn his neck right or left, or up and down, so I began to act that out in front of a mirror to see what that would be like,” Terry Martin said. “It seemed to me that was a very serious step to take without anyone else looking at the situation.”

Gwozdecky offered to help, so Martin explained why he hoped to line up other opinions, making it clear he didn’t want “another testimonial” about the hospital’s neurosurgery team.

“George went away for an hour and a half, and he came back and called me over,” Martin said. Gwozdecky told Jesse’s father he had made some calls, but answered no when asked whether he had lined up ways to get additional opinions.

“All I did was say, ‘Terry, from what I have heard from people I know, who know this hospital, this is one of the top centers for this type of injuries,’ ” Gwozdecky said later.

On edge, and desperate to find out whether there was an alternative to fusing, Terry Martin responded with anger. He believed the coach hadn’t delivered on a promise to find other options, and the incident further eroded the family’s already rocky relationship with DU’s coach.

Gwozdecky later explained that he had checked around but considered himself “a bit player” in the drama, emphasizing that Dr. McCarty and Leu were the experts. McCarty recalled that Leu was pushing the idea of a second opinion, with the DU trainer saying Martin was refusing to sign off on the fusion until he was convinced there were no viable alternatives.

“Mr. Martin spearheaded it all,” McCarty said. “As soon as it was determined Jesse was stable, we were in agreement to look at other options.”

In the wake of his exchange with Gwozdecky, Martin remembered that Don Waddell, the general manager of the Atlanta Thrashers, phoned early in the week to voice support for Jesse, who was a 2006 draft choice of the team and had attended the team’s summer development camps. On Thursday, Nov. 4, Martin called Waddell and explained he was seeking information about surgical options. Within a few minutes, Martin got a call from Dr. Scott Gillogly, the Thrashers’ team physician and surgeon. Gillogly asked to get Jesse’s records sent via overnight courier. Leu agreed to that, and also sent a set to McCarty, who later that day spoke with Dr. Alejandro Mendez, head of the surgical team at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn. McCarty said that after that discussion, everything changed.

“We knew there was another option, a different approach that sounded a lot more feasible than fusion,” he said.

Mendez also spoke with Terry Martin, telling him he would come over to see Jesse and look at his records. After doing so, he sat down with Terry and Jacquie Martin and Jesse’s girlfriend, and explained that the renowned Hennepin team’s emphasis was on saving the lives of gravely injured patients and enabling them — miraculously in some cases — to walk out the door. But, in Jesse’s case, Mendez said, there might be other surgical options to irreversibly fusing the vertebrae. He mentioned aligning the fractures, then placing a screw through the vertebrae, working through an incision in the neck. He told the Martins he had no problem conferring with Gillogly.

On Friday, the day of the scheduled fusion surgery, Gillogly called Terry Martin and told him he received the records and compared notes with Mendez. He agreed with the St. Paul doctor that fusing should be a last resort and that trying to align the fractures and installing a screw was the best option.

“Being fused would have been like living in a neck brace,” Jesse said later.

The Martins gave the go-ahead for Jesse to be transferred to Regions Hospital.

Head-turning surgery

Mendez performed the surgery in St. Paul on Monday, Nov. 8.

“He was so pleased that he had been able to get the screw in the right spot. He said it wasn’t perfect, but it was as good as they could possibly hope,” Terry Martin said.

Neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Brown of Colorado Springs said: “There are different approaches for odontoid fractures, some of which can be quite debilitating. The procedure (Jesse) had offers him a great chance to live a relatively normal life.”

Brown, president of the Rocky Mountain Neurosurgical Society, added: “The problem with a fracture of the odontoid is that you have to stabilize that in some fashion. You have to let it fuse naturally putting people in a halo device or by doing a fusion or using a screw, as was done on this young man. You can’t allow that to remain unstable. If it does, the patient could potentially pinch off their spinal cord and die, or suffer significant, progressive neurological problems. If you lose spinal cord function at that level, you can’t breathe and typically you will die.”

A few days after the surgery, Jesse was able to walk on his own — albeit haltingly, and wearing a halo. His doctors were thrilled. That week, Jesse realized that he already had beaten significant odds.

“It was emotional, but they explained that most people that suffer this type of injury . . . die instantly,” he said. “And the small percent that survive are paralyzed from the neck down and therefore can’t control their own breathing, and those people usually die within a year or two because they’re on life support. I’m in the small percent that survived, and I’m in the smaller percent that wasn’t paralyzed, and an even smaller percent being operable. I said to one of the doctors, ‘It’s kind of like winning the Powerball.’

“And he said, ‘It’s kind of like winning it twice.’ “

Mike Chambers: 303-954-1357 or mchambers@denverpost.com

Terry Frei: 303-954-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com