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By David Haugh, McClatchy-Tribune News
Opening his suit jacket in the Chicago Blackhawks dressing room to reveal a device attached at the belt that looked like an MP3 player, Nick Boynton swore it was no big deal.
The pump helps Boynton, a Type 1 diabetic, deliver doses of insulin to his body through a catheter placed under the skin. One day when Boynton, a 19-year-old first-round draft pick of the Boston Bruins, was working at his family's farm in Canada, he couldn't get out of bed.
A misdiagnosis and 35 pounds of weight loss later, doctors in Boston correctly identified that Boynton's pancreas basically had stopped producing insulin. Every day since, between 10 and 15 times, Boynton checks his blood-sugar level to make sure the pump permits his body to function like any healthy person's, let alone that of a National Hockey League player.
At first doctors advised Boynton take a year off from hockey to adjust to a new diet, new medicine and a new way of life, but that only would have delayed the NHL debut of the star defenceman who had been captain of the 1999 Ottawa 67's Memorial Cup championship squad.
"It has never really stopped me from doing anything," said Boynton, 31.
For a Blackhawks team that needed to play desperate hockey Sunday night in Game 5 or risk flooding the Chicago streets with sports angst, Boynton supplies a fresh source of inspiration.
Playing in only his eighth game as a Blackhawk since being acquired March 2, Boynton represented an ideal symbol for a team that needed to remember how to make the best of whatever it has.
That included how to stop fretting over the officials applying one set of rules to Chris Pronger and one to everybody else and start focusing only on the things they can control, how to ignore everything else but the mental discipline required to achieve success.
Nobody on the Blackhawks roster provides any better example than Boynton, who says he hasn't met Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler yet, but knows they share a disease they have refused to let limit them.
Boynton removes his insulin pump before skating onto the ice, where the journeyman defenceman was Friday night in Game 4 for the first time since April 9 as coach Joel Quenneville tried shaking things up. During intermissions, Boynton will consult with team medical personnel to make sure his blood-sugar levels aren't too high or low. By now, after 12 years and more than 500 NHL games, Boynton can read the signs in his body better than an odd-man rush.
"As long as I take care of it, it shouldn't stop me from living normally," Boynton said.
His past year has been more nomadic than normal, and for reasons that have nothing to do with diabetes. It began as a free-agent in Anaheim and weaved through American Hockey League demotions to Winnipeg and Rockford, Illinois, before the Blackhawks, who traded for him on March 2, thrust him into the Stanley Cup final to match the force of the Philadelphia Flyers. Boynton took 13 shifts for a total of eight minutes 21 seconds of ice time on Friday, better than he expected for a 31-year-old who had been idle for two months.
"I'm not that old," Boynton said, laughing. "The outcome wasn't what we hoped for, but these are the situations you dream of growing up. You never can really stay in game shape, but the coaching staff has helped me try. Adrenaline helps a lot, too. With all the ups and downs I've been through this year, it was just an unbelievable situation to find myself in."
Nobody found it hard to believe, though, that Boynton found himself in the penalty box after mixing it up with the Flyers' Scott Hartnell in the second period of Friday's contest: Boynton for slashing, Hartnell for cross-checking.
Remember that Boynton was the only Blackhawk to retaliate against James Wisniewski of the Anaheim Ducks after his cheap shot leveled Chicago's Brent Seabrook. It was Boynton's first game with the team. That willingness to do the dirty work and stick up for teammates has helped Boynton make friends quickly at each of his five NHL stops.
When the Ducks signed Boynton last July, for instance, Anaheim general manager Bob Murray said he hoped Boynton could help replace the imposing physical presence Pronger provided before the team traded him to the Flyers. A year later, both blue-liners find themselves in very different roles in the Cup finals: Pronger influencing the series more than any player and Boynton hoping to inject some life into a team suddenly with a sporadic pulse.
"I can get a bit excited sometimes, but with these guys I just try to be calm and cool," said Boynton, who was again in the lineup on Sunday night. "Sometimes young guys get excited and it's easy to do, especially in this situation, so I try to set an example."
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