From Rise, To Recovery, Kessel's Journey Was Never Easy

Amanda Kessel reached the pinnacle of hockey, only to have a concussion challenge her in ways that far surpassed the importance of the sport

By Evan Sporer, Digital Content Coordinator





From the time she was young, Amanda Kessel had dreams of representing her country in the Olympics.

By age 22, she had reached that goal. By age 23, she had ostensibly lost everything.

Kessel's story is one of tragedy and triumph, a Shakespearean narrative in which the heroine reaches the mountaintop, yells to the heavens, but then falls from grace.

"As time went on I actually lost hope," she said.

It presented her with a crossroads, one that challenged her both physically and mentally. Kessel said she felt lost, disconnected from friends and family, and wasn't the same person.

For one of the best female hockey players on the planet, her passion, which had become such an integral part of her identity, had been stripped from her by a concussion.

Life became different.

Life became unbearably difficult.

"I wasn't even able to think about sitting in a classroom or I would have a hard time like having a conversation with somebody," she said. "I would just feel like I was out in left field, just looking at somebody and talking."

Her identity had been stolen from her. Her purpose had been unapologetically hijacked.

"She was really struggling with the symptoms and wasn't getting better," Brad Frost, Kessel's college coach said. "So some pretty dark days for her then."

"She was really struggling with the symptoms and wasn't getting better. So some pretty dark days for her then."

Brad Frost

U of M Women's Hockey Coach

As they sat in the locker room at Capital Ice Arena in Madison, Wis. 16 years ago, their normal routine began to play out.

Though it was just summer hockey featuring two families that had become good friends, the talent level was immensely high. It featured the likes of Ryan and Garrett Suter, Phil and Blake Kessel, and of course, Amanda.

Ryan and Blake would always be teammates, and also general managers for their shinny squad. Opposite them were Phil and Garrett, Madison Capital teammates as teenagers.

As the locker room draft for the day's rosters began, politicking over who would get the first pick went to caucuses.

Though the arguments changed, the top target was always Amanda.

"It was always kind of a race to who would get her, and make sure she was on their team," said Minnesota Wild defenseman Ryan Suter. "She was good, man; she was really good. Just like she is now."

Amanda was predisposed to hockey at a young age. Older brothers Phil and Blake were always playing sports, and always around the rink. But Amanda's passion, according to Phil, was bred out of personal drive.

"We were pretty competitive around the house, and around the yard," said Phil, now a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins. "It was definitely on her own. Growing up, Amanda was good at every sport she played. She was always the best soccer player, the best golfer. She was always good at the things she did. Growing up, she had her options, and she was a big fan of hockey."

It was around that age —12, she estimates — when Amanda's visions of representing her country began to take shape.

"Having my brothers, I obviously really looked up to them and all three of us just loved [hockey] so it worked out well," Amanda said. "But as far as I can remember I was pretty much at the rink almost every night whether it was for my practices or just going there to watch my brothers' practices."

When she was about 12 years old, Amanda's parents told her the United States women's national team would be playing against the University of Wisconsin at the nearby Madison rink.

"I had to go to the game," Amanda said. "It was a pretty big deal to be able to watch them."

Countless hours were spent with the sole purpose of emulating those players whom she watched and idolized, the likes of Natalie Darwitz, Krissy Wendell, and Cammi Granato.

"When she was in Madison, she was always at the gym working out with her dad, and she was intense," Suter said. "She was probably more dedicated to everything than her brothers."

In those minutes, hours, days, months, and years, the young Kessel worked tirelessly with a target in mind.

Nothing mattered more.

"When I would be skating myself, alone or whatnot, I'd kind of always be in the back of my mind thinking you know, about the Olympics, and keep pushing myself," Amanda said. "I was young so I think I even maybe overdid training because I didn't really know so I was training like twice a day thinking that was what's best.

"Now that I've gotten older I know it's not maybe the best for your body but I was really training hard."

She was serious, and those who didn't know her found that out quickly.

"I remember times trying to be physical on Amanda, and see if it would shut her down, and she just kept skating," Suter said. "She didn't really say much.

"No one really knew her, they just thought, 'She's a girl, what's she doing out here?' Then as soon as she started playing, everyone who didn't know her got to know her fast."

Her environment allowed her to strive. Both of her parents were athletes. Both of her brothers were well on their ways to professional hockey careers.





"When you're really young you don't really know how far you're going to make it but I know that I put everything into that sport over anything else," she said.

But her dream was slowly becoming reality.

"When I started to get into high school I was realizing that it was, you know, realistic … I think I was 17 and I was invited to Olympic tryouts for 2010.

"I got cut from those but I started to think, you know, this is realistic."

It was a motivating factor. Kessel returned for her senior year of high school, and then made the decision to attend the University of Minnesota.

"It was difficult because I grew up a huge Badger fan and then I kind of narrowed it down to Minnesota and Wisconsin," said the Madison native. "A lot went into it, but the facilities that we have here (at the University of Minnesota), you can't really get that at any other women's college hockey team.

"At that time Wisconsin's program had been winning a lot. I thought it'd be cool to try and help … Minnesota was still really good, but try to help them start winning some championships again."

She was following in the footsteps of older brother Phil, a standout in his one year as a Gopher, so much so that months after his freshman season ended, the Boston Bruins used the fifth overall pick to select him in the 2006 NHL Entry Draft.

"I'm a Gopher, right?" Phil said. "That she went to Minnesota, I was happy about it, because that's where I went."

Phil added that Amanda could have chosen Wisconsin, or Boston College, or Harvard, but none of that would have mattered, only her happiness.

She was well on her way to achieving the lofty goal she had set for herself from such a young age.

Amanda had become a silent killer. Her play said all it needed to.

"I honestly don't remember the first time I met her," Frost said. "Obviously, the first time I saw her play she jumped off the page. You knew that she was going to be something special but, you know, when Amanda first started here she was a little more of the quiet kind. She really liked to let her play do the talking versus her vocalizing that herself."

Slowly, Frost said, Kessel began to open up off the ice. She never had a big personality that matched the way she played, but progressively, carved herself out a niche.

"She's just somebody that cares deeply about life," Frost said. "She loves to make people smile. She's become much more outgoing and she's a great teammate."

Hannah Brandt, who, in her freshman season, played on a line with a sophomore, Kessel, came in not knowing what to expect tasked with riding shotgun to an elite talent.

"I was pretty intimidated by her knowing her past, and knowing how good of a player she was," Brandt said. "I was a little scared of her, but once I got to meet her, she was super nice, and welcoming."

Kessel had plenty of reasons to smile herself. In her sophomore season, the Gophers captured the 2012 NCAA women's championship. In 2013, they repeated, and Kessel eclipsed the 100-point plateau at a staggering 2.66 points per-game.

Those credentials were not to be ignored, as the following year, Kessel donned a United States sweater and, true to her own vision, represented her country at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.

And then, nothing.

During a scrimmage in the months leading up to the Sochi games, Kessel was tripped by a teammate. She crashed headfirst into the boards, sustaining a concussion.

"It was just kind of a freak accident," she said. "Two months I was out pretty badly and then I got better. I was able to play in the Olympics."

She showed no signs of battling through an injury. Kessel tied for the most points on her team with six, scored three goals, and helped the United States win a silver medal.

But when she returned home from Sochi, something was noticeably wrong to her.

"Things just, I would just notice little things all the time that weren't right and for whatever reason they just seemed to get worse," Kessel said.

No two concussions are the same, and while the symptoms of Kessel's manifested itself, and then dissipated, things began to get bad again.

"Knowing that she was missing a lot of the pre-tournament, or pre-Olympic games because of the concussion, you're always a little worried about that," Frost said. "And then with her getting cleared for the Olympics, all of a sudden, you're feeling pretty good about the fact that she's healed and she's ready to go.

"But this concussion was a weird one in that symptoms came back a short time after that and then I became really worried for her, not necessarily about hockey, but just in general."

Kessel had just taken off a year of school to play with the women's national team and in the Olympics. Now her academic career, and more so, her life, were being put on hold.

"Obviously you're always concerned about the health for the long run, after hockey," Phil said. "That's always a scary situation."

As Amanda Kessel describes what those months were like, of which she spent close to 18 away from hockey, the pace of her tone slows down.

"A concussion is just so unpredictable that, I mean, I didn't really know if I would ever be back even though I kept telling myself I thought I would," she said. "But deep down, I wasn't really sure."

Hockey had become a major part of her life. But hockey, in the context of her recovery, became very secondary. She left the campus of the University of Minnesota to seek treatment in Marietta, Ga.

"In her voice she wasn't with it, wasn't herself, wasn't, you know - you could just tell she was really, really struggling," Frost said. "Whenever I was talking with her I'd ask her how she was doing and, up until really August, it had always been, 'I'm not doing real well at all, coach,' and so that was obviously a huge concern."

Kessel could perform feats on the ice that came off as artistic. She was a craftswoman, her stick her preferred tool, capable of turning any sequence into a masterpiece.

But as the months dragged on, a hopeless feeling began to sink in.

This wasn't about a top athlete losing her ability to play the sport she loved. This was about a human being losing her personality, her happiness, and a part of herself.

"Even walking around streets, going out to dinner, it was just tough to do daily things," she said. "Like grocery stores. I couldn't go in a grocery store. It drove me crazy that I couldn't do these little daily things that are normal parts of people's lives that you kind of almost take for granted."

She would wake up, sit on the couch, and do nothing, avoiding television altogether. When her condition didn't progress, she turned on the television to get through the day. She had sensitivity to light, and irritability to noise.

"Real light, as soon as I walked outside, just killed my eyes," she said.

Conversations in English felt like they were in a different language because of the mental disconnect she began to float in.

Plenty of people tried to help her out, keep her spirits in check. But empathy can seem artificial when no one knows what is or isn't going on in your head.

"It's hard when anyone goes through something like that. You don't really know what they're feeling like because you've never had that. It's hard to explain that to yourself."

Phil Kessel

Pittsburgh Penguins forward

"It's hard when anyone goes through something like that," Phil said. "You don't really know what they're feeling like because you've never had that. It's hard to explain that for yourself."

Those who were close to Kessel struggled to get through to her. There was the physical distance created by her moving from Minnesota, but a mental disconnect created by her condition.

"There wasn't a whole lot any of us could do from so far away," Brandt said. "With just how bad it was at the time, I don't know, she just needed to kind of rest, and see her doctors, and all we could really do was hope that it got better, and support her.

"We were just hoping that she'd be able to get back to a normal life, and be able to just not live in the pain that she was in at the time. Maybe get back to school, and finish graduating."

She had opened up off the ice in a way that endeared her to the people she came to know. Those very people worried desperately that person was being lost.

"I just loved how much she had grown and matured in the first three years that she was with us and then to all of a sudden … just fear that she just wasn't herself," Frost said. "It was devastating for me hearing her on the phone and talking with her. That's not the Amanda Kessel that I had come to know and love and really respect, and again, it wasn't her fault but she was just hurt, and she was hurting, and it made it really difficult to not be around her to help as much as I wanted to."

Kessel began planning for a future without hockey. There was no sugarcoating or rewriting details as she recounts those months: Kessel was convinced playing hockey was no longer part of her future, and she began to plan an alternate life.

"It's funny, because I did start thinking more about, you know, what I would do with my career and during that time I kind of started developing these pants … I had people making these pants for me," she said. "I wanted to start a little company.

"They're like joggers I'd say, but kind of nicer joggers. I probably had five different samples made of the pant and different versions."

She decided she would produce the pants, or maybe work for an NHL team. She told herself this is what normal would become. But the harsh truth of a life without hockey was one that was setting in.

"As time went on, I actually lost hope that I was going to be able to play," she said. "I just wanted to get back to normal life, where I could go out to dinner or go in to a grocery store. I couldn't really think about hockey during that time because I was pretty devastated to not be able to play it."

The first step, which felt closer to a mile, was getting back in the classroom. That happened in the summer of 2015.

"Just having something to do every day instead of just sitting on the couch," Kessel said. "I was at the point where I was, no matter what I was going to feel like, I was ready to get back into normal life."

Kessel had seen many doctors, tried many different forms of treatment, but nothing that made playing hockey a realistic option. As her condition progressed though, resuming her academic career was at the very least a higher rung on the ladder.

"I just wanted her to get healthy so that, one, for her own sake, she could get back to being a normal person, and, two, so she could get back here and finish her degree because I just know how important that is for these players and for these people," Frost said.

A return to campus meant being closer to many of the young-adults she called teammates and friends, a nod toward normal.

But then came an interesting breakthrough. Upon recommendation, Kessel met with Dr. Michael Collins, who practices out of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's sports medicine concussion program.

When Kessel's symptoms resumed after the Olympics, she became completely sedentary. But Collins prescribed the opposite regimen, advising Kessel to resume exercising to help rehab from the concussion.

"It was scary," she said. "It was exciting for somebody to say that but at the same time I was just nervous and at first had a hard time grasping why I would be doing exercise.

"And then, the more I did that, the more it made sense. I was seeing improvements."

Kessel said, upon Collins reviewing her medical history, he had no concerns this program would have adverse affects, and would see her make a full recovery.

"That's when I started regaining hope," she said.

The notion Kessel would once again play hockey far outweighed the skepticism of an unconventional form of therapy.

"It was a different form of treatment but what she was doing for a year and a half wasn't working," Frost said. "And so, you know, I don't think there's a whole lot of doctors that if you get a concussion on Friday night would say, 'Ok, Saturday get out there and start exercising.' But she had been not living a normal life for about a year-and-a-half, and this was a new treatment, and quite honestly the excitement in her voice just really brought me a lot of joy because the doctor in Pittsburgh said, 'You're going to play hockey again.'"

That was it. She was going to play hockey again.

"As soon as I heard the doctor say anything about that I was pumped," she said. "I couldn't wait to get on the ice."

It took a while, but Kessel made her way back to skating. It began with sessions that flew very under-the-radar, kept secret from the general public. Some were by herself, and sometimes she was accompanied by her Gopher teammates.

"I went out there a couple of times with her, and in watching her out there, it was always fun to see," Brandt said. "I could tell how much she had improved just mentally. You could tell she was just way happier, and you could just see it in her eyes that she was almost a different person than she had been the past couple of years."

At that time, the idea of her playing a game for the University of Minnesota was still naïve at best.

But Brandt said it was easy to tell very quickly that the player Kessel was — "as a forward, I don't know if there was anyone else better at that time" — was still mostly there.

One day in particular sticks out to Frost. He had brought in Christy Gardner, a sled hockey player on the United States women's national team, to talk to the Gophers about toughness and gratefulness, two of his program's core values.

Kessel had class, but showed up late. As her teammates tried out the sled, Kessel put on her skates, and did what Frost had grown so accustomed to seeing her do.

"Our players looked at her, in particular the ones that had never played with her before, which was really everybody but our seniors," he said. "They were looking at her going, 'Holy smokes, like, look at the hands, look at the speed, the talent, and the ability there.'

"And I think our team was you know, starting to look and say, 'Jeez wouldn't that be something if she came back.'

"And then all of a sudden, a month later, she was cleared to skate with us non-contact," Frost said.

Kessel had worked her entire life to create a future she so desperately wanted to be her identity. Returning to her college team after an 18-month hiatus, nothing was handed to a player who had scored 97 goals and has 232 points in 124 collegiate games.

"They welcomed her, and she was on our fifth line and our fifth liners loved playing with her," Frost said. "And all of a sudden our fifth line was pretty good."

Publicly, all of this was kept secret. From the periphery, Kessel was still out indefinitely, and probably forever, with a concussion.

Until she got the green light, first cleared for contact, then cleared to participate in a game, Kessel and her teammates would question if she would again get to wear the maroon and gold.

"It was kind of a progression, and it wasn't just all of a sudden one day she showed up and was able to play, and our players kind of saw it coming," Frost said. "We were always hopeful that she'd be able to get cleared but never really knew."

Things happened rather quickly after that. The University announced early in the week that Kessel would be playing the following weekend against North Dakota. With Kessel's progress so incognito, it only intensified the attention that came with her return.

"There was a huge buzz in the air, which doesn't unfortunately happen a whole lot for our program," Frost said. "All of a sudden people were buying tickets in advance because they wanted to make sure they got a seat and saw her first game back."

Each step represented progress in Kessel's mind. From being able to leave her apartment, to sitting in a classroom, to exercising, and getting back on the ice, to gripping a stick. Yet they all paled in comparison to the final hurdle.

"I don't think I've woken up and been that excited or happy for a day in a long time or any game in my life," Kessel said. "It was interesting. I had to go through a lot of doctors and tests to be cleared. It came quickly because I didn't know if I would play or be cleared."

In what was the last thing any of her closest friends or family could have ever imagined, on the first Friday of February, the PA blared inside Ridder Arena, and Kessel was announced as one of the starters, skating her way up to the blue line as the 2,635 in attendance roared.

"All of us had seen her go through what she went through to get back," Brandt said. "It was definitely something we'll all remember."

"All of us had seen her go through what she went through to get back."

Hannah Brandt

U of M Women's Hockey forward



Kessel had two assists that game, including one 6:51 into the first period on a goal scored by Brandt. Minnesota defeated North Dakota 3-0.

It didn't end there. Kessel played the final 13 games of the season, recording 11 goals and 17 points. That included a hat trick in Minnesota's 6-2 win against Princeton in its NCAA Regional final, and the game-winning goal in the national title game, a 3-1 win against Boston College.

"At first it was just to play in a game," Kessel said. "From going from no hope, toward stepping on the ice, to two or three months later winning a National Championship, it's a storybook ending," she said.

What's next for Kessel is beginning to unfold. She wants to play in the 2018 Olympics, and help the United States end its gold medal drought, having last finished first in the tournament in 1998.

On Sunday, Kessel became the highest-paid player in the brief history of the National Women's Hockey League, signing a one-year deal with the New York Riveters worth $26,000.

Much like the decision she made as a child to chase a dream of being an Olympian, her comeback was fueled by passion.

"It was an incredible amount of hard work and perseverance, determination, and toughness to get back to where she was," Frost said. "For all of our players, quite frankly, this is our Stanley Cup. There's no lucrative contract as they graduate. At the most right now players are getting paid about $25,000 in the NWHL."

From the certainty that she would never play hockey again, to the high of capturing another national championship, Kessel's resurgence outpaced the sullenness of nearly two years of hopelessness by light-years.

"It's pretty impressive," Suter said of her return. "And then to step right in, and help your team win a national championship, that says a lot about her."

Now having rescaled the mountain, Kessel ended her collegiate career again on top, not missing a beat and returning to the form that made her one of the most feared female hockey players on the planet.

"It is storybook," Frost said. "Maybe Disney should call her up and try to do a movie about her. I'm serious, or somebody to write a book.

"You talk about a story of passion and tragedy, and then perseverance, and toughness coming back, and then to come back the way she did and still make such an impact again just speaks volumes to who she is and what she's about."

Kessel laid out a goal at a young age, and then put everything into accomplishing it. Once she did, something out of her control stripped her ability to be the person she had aspired to become.

"I dreamed and hoped them for so long and when they happen, it almost doesn't even seem real," she said. "Like I've wanted this for so long and now I'm here, but I'm definitely not finished with my goals and aspirations."

In many respects, the climb she faced in her recovery was much steeper than that of her adolescence. Kessel was a youth hockey player with a vision so many other children across the country dream of.

But at the pit of that second ascent wasn't just an alternative lifestyle.

It was nothing.

Sitting in a player lounge adjacent to the ice surface at the University of Minnesota's Ridder Arena, Kessel's eyes meets its glare. There are moments of her story that produce different emotions: The hopefulness of the adolescent Kessel, dreaming of becoming an Olympian; the triumphant and proud Kessel, who reached the pinnacle, representing her country; and there's the defeat and gloom that affects her posture and cadence as she revisits her darkest days, when the lights dimmed both figuratively and literally.

But as her attention is momentarily diverted, her mood is re-inspired. Even if she was able to find some form of normal, without hockey, normal would have never felt right.

"I've caught myself at different times saying to my friends that I can't even believe this," Kessel said. "That we played (in the national championship), that we won; everything happened so quickly.

"From where I was to where I came to now, it's been quite the process but I think it's just made me stronger and much more appreciative of everyone who's helped me throughout the process to get to where I am now."