Retired Wild goalie Josh Harding at peace with MS, abrupt end to NHL career

 

CELEBRITIES with MS

JOSH HARDING

 

Retired Wild goalie Josh Harding at peace with MS, abrupt end to NHL career

 

By BRIAN MURPHY | Pioneer Press

PUBLISHED: March 21,

 

A hospital bed in Charlotte, N.C., is an improbable place for an NHL career to end, as unlikely as absorbing a half-dozen bags of saline intravenously without having to urinate.

 

But there lay Josh Harding on a Saturday night in early December 2014, a thousand miles away from his family and light years from his fading life as the Minnesota Wild’s goaltender of the future.

 

Brian Murphy sigHis body was so dehydrated from the effects of multiple sclerosis and playing two minor-league periods for the Iowa Wild against the Charlotte Checkers that Harding had to be loaded onto a gurney and carried to an ambulance from the visitor’s dressing room at the Bojangle’s Coliseum.

 

Sara Harding took one look at her gaunt husband on FaceTime and immediately bought a one-way plane ticket from Minneapolis, not knowing when she would return — or if she would be coming back alone.

 

“She was really scared,” Harding recalled Tuesday. “That was the final dagger. It started hitting me that I still have a family and life to live here. People that I love and that love me, I saw how scared they were and how much it affected them. I knew it was time to put up the pads.

 

“The doctors all told me if I kept doing this to my body, trying to keep playing at such a high level, it was going to kill me.”

Harding was scheduled to return to Xcel Energy Center on Tuesday night to deliver the “Let’s Play Hockey!” chant before his former team played the San Jose Sharks in a pivotal Western Conference game.

 

More than two years after seeing the light and playing his last professional game, Harding finally is at peace with how it ended so prematurely, so unfairly and so inevitably 13 years after the Wild drafted the junior star in the second round out of Regina, Saskatchewan.

 

He just finished his second season as high school goaltending instructor for head coach Curt Giles and the Edina Hornets, a fulfilling and convenient foray into a new profession. Harding lives in Edina with Sara, their 4-year-old daughter Paisley, 7-month-old son Jayden; and his 9-year-old stepson Talan.

 

Paisley could not wait to help her father in the Wild’s pregame ritual.

 

“The first she said when she woke up wasn’t, ‘Good morning, daddy,’ but ‘This is Let’s Play Hockey Day!’ ” Harding said. “She’s been practicing.”

 

Harding and his family were invited to Tuesday’s game by Wild owner Craig Leipold, who recently hosted the former goalie in his suite.

 

He has not worn his pads and mask since Minnesota was eliminated from the 2015 playoffs by the Chicago Blackhawks. Harding’s final days as the netminder he no longer wanted to be ended quietly when his contract expired.

 

Dictating terms of their retirement is a luxury few NHL players enjoy. Harding was only 31. He should have been in the prime of his career.

 

But he was diagnosed with MS in November 2012, only months after signing a three-year, $5.7 million contract extension to compete with Niklas Backstrom for Minnesota’s No. 1 job.

 

Harding initially was unbowed by the diagnosis, vowing to power through whatever havoc the unpredictable disease of the central nervous system wreaked on him. Initially he was able to play and play very well.

 

Harding earned a shutout in his first start after learning he had MS. Medication and a strict treatment regimen of rest and rehabilitation allowed him to remain Backstrom’s backup through the lockout-shortened 2013 season.

 

Before Game 1 of Minnesota’s first-round series against the Blackhawks at United Center, Backstrom injured his knee during warmups. Pressed into service, Harding was stoic in an overtime loss and played well during all five games of the Wild’s series loss.

 

Harding received the Bill Masterson Memorial Trophy in recognition of his perseverance and dedication to the game.

 

The next season, Harding posted an impressive 1.65 goals-against average and .933 save percentage in 29 games, including three shutouts. Never mind the Masterton. There was Vezina Trophy talk for Harding as the league’s top goalie.

 

“I was having the best season of my life, but over the Christmas break I changed medications as a precaution against (other side effects),” he said. “When you’re playing in the best league in the world and throwing new stuff in your body, trying to beat this disease … that might have been in my head when I started going downhill.”

 

Harding’s last NHL game was New Year’s Eve 2013. Fatigue set in. His balance became erratic. His starts dried up. Denial morphed into depression.

 

Harding worked hard during the summer of 2014 to prepare for training camp. But in September the Wild demoted him to Iowa of the American Hockey League. In his second start, Harding collapsed in Charlotte and his career was finished.

 

Years earlier Harding had befriended Giles, a former North Stars defenseman. Their hometowns were not too far apart in Saskatchewan. When MS forced Harding to retire, Giles immediately reached out.

 

“He asked if I was interested in coaching. It took me a bit of time to make a decision, but I’m so glad I took him up on the offer,” Harding said. “I couldn’t be happier or more thankful Curt kept me in the game. I trust Curt with my life. He’s a great friend who I’ve learned a lot from.”

 

Harding said the Hornets have begged him to don his goalie pads in practice, but so far he has refused, wary of disrupting a treatment routine that mostly has keep his MS symptoms in check.

 

“All the boys try to talk me into it, but I haven’t fallen for their trick yet,” he said. “I think they’d light me up anyways.”

 

Harding earned enough money in the NHL to ease into retirement financially secure. He has found the right balance of medication and a sleep schedule that works for him. He misses hockey dearly but not the NHL demands of relentless night games, early morning hotel check-ins and work weekends.

 

“I’m lucky enough to have the best job in world right now, and that’s being a dad,” he said. “My kids are my life.”

 

Harding’s best save was realizing when he had made his last one.