Ilijah Colina had just wrapped up his rookie season in the Western Hockey League as a 16-year-old with the Portland Winterhawks when he received a text from his mother.
Mitchell Slater, one of his childhood friends growing up in North Delta had gone missing and the family was asking if he had heard from him. He hadn't.
It turned out the boy had taken his own life.
Colina, a talented centre touted as a potential NHL draft pick, didn't realize it at the time, but the loss of his friend Mitchell planted a seed of depression that cast a shadow on his soul. It would take him to the point where he began to have his own suicidal thoughts as he struggled to adjust to the next phase of his junior career with the Prince George Cougars.
That hole he had stumbled into grew deeper by the day. Eventually, two-thirds through the 2018-19 season, he left the Cougars and the game he loved, even at the risk of jeopardizing his ambition to become a professional hockey player.
"I had to do it, I was just killing myself slowly, trying to work through hockey with that stuff going on in my head " said Colina. "It was a break I needed and I feel if I didn't do that I'd being a worse spot than I am."
The first sign mental illness was creeping into Colina's life appeared in November 2017, a couple months before the trade that sent him to Prince George. Winterhawks coach Mike Johnston noticed Colina wasn't himself and stopped him during a practice and asked if he was OK. Colina knew then something was wrong. For the first time in his life, in his first year of NHL draft eligibility, he wasn't enjoying hockey and he didn't know why.
"I was just confused and lost and I felt it affected me everywhere - emotionally, physically and mentally," he said. "When I'm playing hockey it's usually the only thing I want to do and it's most fun thing I could do, but when I'm not having fun with the guys I knew then it was affecting me. My brain was just a fog. I just felt I was in a dark place sometimes and didn't know how to get myself out of it."
Getting traded from Portland to Prince George and leaving his teammates and billet parents behind was a shock but the Cougars gave Colina a fresh start and the promise of plenty of icetime. He had friends on the team - Liam Ryan and Jackson Leppard - and they helped him through his most difficult days.
Colina got off to a great start last season, with two goals in the first four games and was playing regular shifts and on special teams as one of the Cougars' top face-off specialists when he suffered a concussion in a game at home against the Tri-City Americans Oct. 24, 2018. It sidelined him for the next two weeks and sent him into a terrifying tailspin.
"Before the injury I felt great, I was my normal self and was enjoying life," wrote Colina in a blog he sent to the Battle Adversity Creativity Hockey website. "However, after the recovery I found myself creating the same negative energy. I have had two serious concussions previously and was experiencing severe trauma.
"During my recovery my depression was reaching a point where I felt attacked. I was lonely, as all I could do was lay in bed for the next two weeks. I questioned my existence and wanted to kill myself. I felt my presence was not needed and that I would only hurt people with the negative energy I was creating. I had no control of anything.
"I remember crying in my bed, night after night," he said. "I didn't know what to do. I was scared of my own mind and was worried for myself. It was like there was another person in the room trying to harm me. I didn't know how to deal with it, it was horrifying."
He recovered from his concussion but Colina's anguish did not go away.
In late-January of this year, while on a week-long roadtrip to Alberta, Colina's fragile mental condition was compounded by the Cougars' struggles on the ice. They lost their eighth-straight game at the end of the trip in Edmonton and were on their way to club-record 17-game losing streak.
During that trip, an intense feeling of homesickness crept into Colina, something he'd never felt before. Early one morning, as he lay on the floor of the bus traveling with the team, he read a blog posted by his high school friend, Abby Zawada, a university basketball player for the Fraser Valley Cascades, which went into detail about her two-year battle with clinical depression and it brought him to tears.
Her words convinced Colina he could no longer fight this on his own. He needed help.
Unable to focus on hockey, he met with then-head coach Richard Matvichuk to tell him he needed to leave the team and go home to reconnect with his family and friends to lean on them and the familiarity of his home to help him recover.
"I left feeling thankful because (Matvichuk) understood," Colina said.
The Cougars did not hesitate to back him on his decision, offering their full support while stating publicly he had left the team indefinitely for personal reasons.
"First off, it was, 'whatever it takes, whatever you need, we'll help you out,'" said Cougars general manager Mark Lamb, who assumed Matvichuk's head coaching duties over the summer. "Missing him on the team was secondary to his health. You miss him but you don't even think about that, you just want him to get better.
"It's not the first time I've ever dealt with anything like that, that's for sure. You need to be open about it. It's a very serious illness, not just for him but for everybody on the team and if anything like that happens we'll support him on any way we can."
It's only in the past two decades that junior hockey leagues have come to recognize the need for a proactive approach to dealing with mental health issues. They are aware of the effects of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) as a result of concussions and that brain injuries are being linked to depression and suicide, as in the case of former Cougar Derek Boogaard.
Junior teams are more aware how to recognize the signs of depression and other potentially harmful warning signs in young athletes and mental health topics are discussed regularly in league meetings. It was a much different world in the early-1980s before Lamb went on to this NHL career and was still among his teenaged peers in the WHL.
"People just kept it quiet, you didn't want to lose your job," said Lamb. "You didn't want to show any type of weaknesses that could be used against you so you just closed right up.
"It's a big difference when you have a torn-out knee. The doctors fix it. But when you're not feeling good and you don't know what's going on, you thought it was a weakness and you didn't understand it.
"What helps so much now is that it is out there. We want everybody to feel really comfortable and come forward in any type of those situations. It's no different than any other disease. Sometimes it's in the family for awhile. It's a worldwide thing, it's not just in hockey. Every team has players who have this and what we're trying to do is get in front of it and (find out) what kind of support you can give kids and their families."
This season, the 19-year-old Colina was the team's top centre in training camp but hurt his shoulder in the second preseason game and missed the first eight games of the season. Lately he's been on a roll. He scored a goal against his Winterhawk teammates Dec. 4 in a 5-4 overtime loss. Them, in Saturday's 4-2 win over Victoria at CN Centre, he scored the gamewinner in the third period and the opening goal 88 seconds into the game, which triggered an avalanche of stuffed toys and winter clothing on Teddy and Toque Toss Night.
"He's a very good player and he's very popular," said Lamb. "He's a big leader on our team and I think the positive part, when you go through that adversity he did go through, is it makes him a better leader because he understands that. If we have more of that in the dressing room, he's the perfect person to talk to.
"I give him a lot of respect on how he carries himself and what he's fought through, and you know it's never over. It's one of those things and you'll probably have to deal with the rest of your life."
Colina first shared his story publicly on the BAC Hockey website and its online portal for other athletes dealing with mental issues. BAC Hockey is a hockey skills development school in Calgary operated by Blair Courchene, a Prince Albert Raiders scout who also suffered from depression during his hockey career.
"The only reason I did it was I just want to help as many people as I can," Colina said. "I know I'm not alone on the mental side of it, I just hope to help everyone."
Other than talking to his former hockey coaches, Colina didn't seek outside help but knows there are health professionals ready to step up to the plate. He's aware of the MindRight Athletes Society Initiative For Mental Health initiative started by 20-year-old Kelowna Chiefs captain Myles Mattila of Prince George. MindRight helps athletes with mental health issues overcome peer pressure and will put them in touch with the help they need. He and Mattila played against each other in major midget hockey.
"I have good days and bad days and talking about it helps, but it's hard to talk about it," Colina said. "My teammates have been great. I'm sure everyone understands. After I published that (blog) all my teammate texted me, even the ones that graduated. Everyone is supportive and they understand.
"After all the feedback it made me think that I could be a leader in that kind of community, just with what I've been feeling. I've got through it. I know I misunderstood it before I started with it. People who struggle mentally are not weak, we're as strong as everybody else. That's the message we have to get out there."
He offers some frank advice to others dealing with similar issues.
"Try to stay as positive as you can, no matter how bad the situation is or how bad you're feeling or how depressed you get, you just have to stay positive," he said. "If it gets to the point where you don't want to be be here anymore, talk to someone about it right away. Don't keep it inside."
