Concussions force Odut to move on

The beginning of the end of Easton Odut’s Western Hockey League career may have started seven years before he first stepped on the ice with the Brandon Wheat Kings.

He was playing flag football in his hometown, Dauphin, with his friends during intramurals when he was 11 and in Grade 6.

“We had soccer poles at my elementary school and they were out of bounds but we kind of forgot,” Odut said. “I ran out and cut back in right in front of the pole and then I just bumped it with my head.”

It was quickly apparent there was something wrong. He had unrelenting headaches and was taken to the doctor for a diagnosis. It happened during the summer, so it didn’t impact his hockey, but Odut had his first concussion.

Simply put, a concussion is a traumatic brain injury usually caused by a blow to the head that moves the brain inside the skull. The symptoms vary based partly on the severity of the damage but also from person to person.

They include headaches, confusion, amnesia, dizziness, ringing in the ears, nausea or vomiting, slurred speech and fatigue. As the concussion sets in, sensitivity to noise or light, concentration and memory complaints, irritability, changes in sleep patterns, depression and issues with taste and smell can all result.

Rest is the only treatment.

Repeated concussions have recently been linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a progressive disease that can lead to dementia.

While Odut never lost consciousness over the years, five more concussions and many doctor visits lay ahead.

BACKGROUND

Odut, who is now 18, grew up playing minor hockey in Dauphin, and parents Mark and Whitney had him skating by two. When he started playing hockey, he quickly developed a tenacious and fearless style. His rugged approach inevitably got under the skin of his opponents.

“From the moment I started playing, it was just how I liked the game,” Odut said. “My dad wasn’t as feisty as me — I’m sure he had his moments back in the day that he’s told me about — but I just started playing that way and never switched because I found it was the most fun and I was the most effective.”

After the lost COVID year of 2020-21 when he played just five games with the U15 AAA Parkland Rangers, he moved to Brandon to attend the Western Canada Hockey Academy and skated with the under-15 AAA Wheat Kings for his major bantam season.

Brandon took him 34th overall in the 2022 draft.

The record will show the five-foot-eight, 170-pound forward Odut played 45 games over four seasons with the Wheat Kings, contributing four goals, five assists, 18 penalty minutes and a plus-minus of -7. Three of those games came in call-ups when he was 15 and 16.

Brandon head coach and general manager Marty Murray said Odut was impactful when he was in the lineup.

“We missed him, no question about it,” Murray said. “He’s an energizer bunny, he’s responsible, he gets the puck out on the wall, he’s tenacious, you never have to worry about his effort.

“You know what you’re going to get from him every night, and I felt like he never really got to get into a real good rhythm throughout his tenure as a Wheat King, which is unfortunate. I thought he could be a real nice piece of our lineup.”

CONCUSSION 2

During a U15 game with a team that went on to win a provincial championship, Odut was clotheslined by a defender.

He initially wondered if it was actually whiplash because it was mostly in his neck.

“It was a very high hit with his arms to my head and I landed on my back,” Odut said. “Literally it was running into a clothesline and falling on your back. I had a headache and tried skating the next day at morning skate but I had headache, dizziness and nausea. It was definitely a concussion.”

He also had light and noise sensitivity.

One of his coaches at the time was Micheal Ferland, the former Wheat King and National Hockey League player whose career came to a premature end because of concussions. Ferland took the problem seriously and put him in touch with Bobbi Schram at Dynamic Physiotherapy and Sports Injury Clinic, and he began working with her.

Odut also took some time away from the game.

CONCUSSION 3

In his second year of U18 AAA with the Wheat Kings, disaster struck in Thompson on Feb. 11, 2024 when he was hit by a member of the Norman Northstars.

“Their boards are just so hard,” Odut said. “I was leaning against the wall and a guy came in and just hit my head into the boards. It rattled me really bad.”

It was his worst of the three so far. It involved nausea, headaches, his eyes were buggy and foggy and he couldn’t concentrate on certain things like fast movements. He even struggled to read.

To make matters worse, he then had to make the 835-kilometre trip home on the bus.

“It was brutal,” Odut said. “It was extra long too because the roads were bad.”

He took 10 days off, and had two goals and an assist in his return against the Parkland Rangers on Feb. 21 and played twice more before the playoffs began.

Odut admitted there was internal pressure not to miss time that year as the Wheat Kings went 43-0-1-0 in the regular season and went all the way to the Telus Cup final, where Odut scored his team’s lone goal in a 4-1 loss to the Cantonniers de Magog.

“It was tough,” Odut said. “You never want to be hurt when you’re winning every game and having so much fun. We formed a brotherhood on that team and missing a practice or games was just the worst feeling ever. Being close to playoffs, you want to be out there and help your team.

“It takes a toll on your mental health and mental game but I was thankful to have awesome teammates and awesome coaches, trainers and people at Dynamic cheered me up and said the right things to me and my family. I was held high and stayed positive.”

Former Brandon Wheat Kings athletic therapist Zach Hartwick got his first look at Odut then.

“I spoke with him when he was in U18 and had his concussion,” Hartwick said. “His mom reached out to get him to see our doc, Dr. Shaun Gauthier. He had a pretty recent (concussion) coming in to join us (in 2024-25). They can stack up, which isn’t obviously good for the kid, especially when they’re this young too. You never want to see that.”

While the medical help was nice, Odut was eager to get back into the lineup. It was Ferland, who retired from the Calgary Flames in 2021, that Odut relied on the most.

“He helped tremendously,” Odut said. “In U18, when I was coming back, he would run me through drills that he did to see how he was feeling when he was on the ice, just basic stick handling and passing drills. It made my life so much easier and I felt so much support from him helping me.”

CONCUSSION 4

The good news in Odut’s rookie WHL season at age 17 was he was never concussed. The bad news was he was knocked out of commission on Dec. 14, 2024 after 20 games and missed the back half of the season with a shoulder injury that required surgery.

That made him eager to start the 2025-26 season.

“I’ve been counting down the months, the days, the weeks,” Odut said last September. “It was tough watching 40 or 50 games last year. I learned a lot of stuff and after missing that much hockey, you’re just have so much adrenalin hitting you. You’re going to come out hotter than you did before.

“It’s going to be awesome. I’m looking forward to it. I can’t wait.”

He skated in 10 of the team’s first 11 games, but in an 8-4 victory over the visiting Moose Jaw Warriors at Assiniboine Credit Union Place on Oct. 26, 2025, disaster struck again.

“I shoulder checked and saw the D-man there,” Odut said. “I thought he was just going to stay at his blue-line. I should have looked up at the score and known that he was going to come to rock me, but I just tried to flip the puck out.

“The next thing I knew he was right on me and smoosh. Me being the height I am, and most defenders in the WHL are over six feet, it wasn’t anything crazy but it was just how the contact was made because of how much shorter I am.”

It was quickly apparent he was concussed again. This time, Odut had the benefit of not only medical professionals, but also the undivided attention of Hartwick.

“I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have him,” Odut said. “Obviously from my shoulder from last season, he’s like my best friend. I spent the most time with him of anybody on the team, which obviously sucks, but he made my recovery journey from shoulder surgery so much better.

“He always knew what to say and what to do and just to be there for me.”

Hartwick would sit with him when he was upset after getting injured, calming him down and providing a steady presence.

Even with the frequent setbacks, Murray marvelled at Odut’s attitude.

“He never felt sorry for himself and didn’t bring a negative aura to the locker room ever,” Murray said. “He handled everything with a grain of salt and put his head down and tried to push through every piece of adversity that came his way.

“When you’re dealing with your head, it’s something you can’t push through. In today’s world, we all know how delicate those situations are.”

CONCUSSION 5

Odut didn’t play again for 20 days, until the Medicine Hat Tigers were in town on Nov. 15. In his return that night, the universe may have been delivering a message.

“That was the most unlucky I’ve probably ever been in my life,” Odut said. “It was late in a shift and I got the puck deep and went for a line change. I skated with my head down because you go faster and when you’re tired, that’s what you do. A Med Hat player was also going for a line change and we collided.

“Since my head was down skating, it hit right into his chest and rattled everything up again.”

It started with bad headaches, but after the adrenalin goes away, the nausea and all the other symptoms return.

He said with the two significant head strikes, his second concussion of the season was far worse.

Murray said it was getting hard to watch, in part because of Odut’s relentless nature on the ice.

“Let’s face it, the way he plays night in, night out, you’re not going to take that away from him,” Murray said. “That’s kind of one of those things that I love about him as a player but the way he plays. You can’t help but wonder every time he takes a hit or gives a hit.

“You’re kind of cringing a little bit because you don’t want things like that to come back.”

CONCUSSION 6

Odut took 25 days off, returning on Dec. 10 against the Lethbridge Hurricanes. He played five times in an eight-day span, culminating in a game in Medicine Hat on Dec. 17 as the Wheat Kings finished up the first half with an Alberta road trip.

It proved to be the last game of his major junior career.

“That was just a good body check,” Odut said. “It was late in the shift and we were hemmed in our zone for a while. We finally got the puck out and I got to the red-line and dumped it in. I took a simple body check but I guess my body and head didn’t like it.

“Right after, it was straight down the tunnel. Zach knew. He opened the door right when I came to the bench.”

It was his third concussion in just 52 days. The symptoms weren’t different but were worse and significantly longer lasting.

“I would wake up, headache, go to sleep, headache, wake up nauseous, go to sleep nauseous for probably a week and a half or two weeks,” Odut said. “I felt daily nausea, daily eye fog and eye bugginess. Two-and-a-half weeks went by and I was still feeling my headaches. It was a month before I went out with sticks and pucks but right off the get-go when I was looking down at the puck and stick handling, I felt so nauseous. It came back and lasted for a couple of days.

“That’s when we decided to go see a neurologist.”

RECOVERY

He went to his first appointment in Winnipeg in early January, and has subsequently seen that doctor several more times.

The doctor told him to ride a bike because it is possible your brain will allow the resumption of physical activities. He was told to get his heart rate up to 100 beats per minute and fight through the nausea, as long as the symptom disappeared within 20 minutes.

That was fine, but his headaches continued, so on his fourth visit he did a comprehensive test with another specialist. She had him remembering things and drawing patterns.

“You think it’s easy, but when you actually try to do it, it’s tricky,” Odut said. “It was frustrating but was also cool and neat to see what your brain does.”

His test results showed there was no cognitive damage — his brain was functioning like it’s supposed to — but they were concerned with his headaches.

His last appointment was in May, and he asked for the medication that essentially tricks a brain into feeling OK. For the last couple of weeks, he’s taken one pill a day and the headaches disappeared, but it also signalled the end of his hockey career.

“With me taking this, it’s very unsafe to go back and play hockey because I can’t actually feel what I’m feeling, if that makes sense,” Odut said. “My brain is still injured but it just doesn’t feel injured.”

When Odut let the team know, they backed his decision. Murray certainly sympathizes with all the teenager has been through.

“I have kids that are real close to his age,” Murray said. “I fully support the decision Odie and his family made. He’s 19 years old and has his whole life ahead of him. His health in hopefully the next 80 years of his life needs to be the focus.”

Murray added Odut will always be a Wheat King, suggesting he could potentially serve as an eye in the sky for the team one day from the press box. But that’s in the future, and Odut is still on the mend.

He is able to stay on the medication for six months, and then should feel much better, although the noise and light sensitivity haven’t completely left him yet.

“No one should ever feel like that,” Odut said. “It’s brutal. Lights and noise are everywhere in our lives.”

The doctors have no long-term concerns about his recovery, although they have some worries about his return to school when he heads to Brandon University in the fall.

The WHL scholarship outlines that players have to take a full course load to qualify, but since his doctors cautioned he should limit his workload early on, Wheat Kings academic advisor Glenda Zelmer helped him get a doctor’s note.

That will allow him to ease into post-secondary schooling with three courses per semester.

“Glenda is unreal,” Odut said. “She is another person who I can’t live without. She is the one who recommended me getting a doctor’s note and setting me up at BU to make my life so much easier.”

MOVING ON

Odut isn’t the first local player to have his career end with concussions and he won’t be the last. Former Wheat Kings forward Ben Thornton had his career end at 19, and local goalie Tyson Verhelst also called it quits at 19.

Concussions are called the invisible injury for a good reason. A player isn’t wearing a cast or sling, and the symptoms are clear only to the person who is experiencing them.

Odut was concussed in U15, U18 and the WHL, and each of those groups of teammates supported him because there is far more awareness about brain health than there used to be.

“They hated seeing me go down — they hate when anyone goes down — but they understood the consequences and severity of what a concussion can do,” Odut said. “Especially after I got my second one, that’s when they really started to worry.

“It was like ‘Take it easy man, don’t push anything, don’t rush anything.”

That attitude extended into last season when he suffered three concussions.

“They brought my mood back up,” Odut said of his Wheat Kings teammates, who he often watched from the bench during practice. “Especially this year, when I had my concussions, it was easy to stay happy even though it felt like the world was ending for me.”

He still works out at the WCHA — he is able to life weights and do some cardio — so he sees his friends. It hasn’t totally kicked in for him yet that he’s done, and it likely won’t until his buddies return to their teams and he prepares for university.

The team did a nice video tribute to him, and he received many, many texts and messages from friends, teammates and coaches encouraging him to stay positive.

He is taking a Bachelor of Arts, and would love to work as a sports psychologist one day in the future, an idea suggested by his mother. He said his experience would allow him to help others go through significant ups and downs during their careers.

It also means he could be in school for the next seven years.

Odut is walking a new path in his life, a journey that won’t include hockey. For someone who has defined themselves as a hockey player since they were little, it’s a daunting new reality.

“I’ve been playing hockey since I was two,” Odut said. “I had a stick in my hand since I could probably hold stuff. It’s a major part of my life and it always will be but last year with shoulder surgery and then this year, I’ve started to realize there is more to life than hockey.

“Most people know, but there is more to life out there and I’m starting to awaken to that and see that. It’s always going to suck, I’m always going to be sad thinking about this, but I am making the right choice.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com