Paralyzed Hill-Murray Hockey Coach to Encourage Jablonski

Hill-Murray has a varsity coach who knows all too well what Jack Jablonski and his family face now that doctors say the teen hockey player will be paralyzed despite surgery. His career as a player ended the same way, but he wants the Jabs to know he can still get back to the game he loves.

Pat Shafhauser's life changed when he too went head-first into the boards while on the ice. Now, while everyone else at Aldrich arena is on skates, he has his own set of wheels.

"I love watching the kids develop confidence," Shafhauser said. "On the ice, I'm trying to help them to be better players and win games. Off the ice, I hope they get something out of it -- that they are going to face challenges."

Shafhauser is no stranger to challenges. As a player, he helped Hill-Murray go to a state championship in the late 1980s. He went on to play in college and professionally in Switzerland, but he was checked in the back during a game, broke his neck and was paralyzed from the chest down.

"To go from being a professional athlete who relies on his body all the time to not being able to move, being helpless, was incredibly difficult to get my head around," Shafhauser recalled.

Shafhauser told FOX 9 News it took him years to get over his anger about what happened -- and even longer to re-learn how to take care of himself. He says that's why it felt like he had been kicked in the stomach when he learned 16-year-old Jack Jablonski suffered almost the exact same injury.

"It was heartbreaking in the sense that I know what he might be in for," Shafhauser said. "It's a lot of work, frustration, disappointment. It's work to get through that."'

It may seem strange to some that a man who lost so much on the ice would want to come back -- even as a coach, but he says he is showing his players that he is a living example of how they too can overcome any obstacle -- on or off the ice.

"As much as I felt I lost because of hockey, I feel like I've regained it many times over since I've been back," Shafhauser said.

When the time is right, Shafhauser says he will reach out to Jack Jablonski because he says the sight of other people with similar conditions living full and happy lives is what inspired him to do the same.