He didn’t know at the time, what exactly had happened. It was a second-round Calder Cup playoff game at the beginning of May. The Toronto Marlies were playing the Syracuse Crunch and frequent foe Jake Dotchin was engaged in a race with Frederik Gauthier before – late, without the puck, and in the most dangerous area of the ice a few feet from the boards – the former Tampa Bay Lightning defender dumped the Leafs first round pick.



Gauthier felt the snap, but he didn’t realize right away that it was serious.



“I didn’t think anything was that bad when I got hit. I tried to get up, it didn’t work,” Gauthier said standing outside the Marlies locker room on Thursday ahead of a weekend series with the Charlotte Checkers.



Even after he was helped off the ice and onto the doctor’s table at Syracuse’s Oncenter War Memorial Arena, Gauthier didn’t fully understand what had happened. Slowly though, when...