For all the notoriety that comes with being a hockey tough guy, underneath there’s almost always a kinder, friendlier story.
Count Stephen Peat as one of those stories. His fists carried him to the NHL, but his heart was what his teammates most admired.
That’s what his old friend Howie Zaron wants people to remember about Peat, who died too young at age 44.
“We just want to make sure people know that Peaty was a good person. People always want to hone in on the struggles, but he was a good person. He had a lot of buddies and we were trying to support him,” Zaron said Thursday, not long after it became public that Peat had died of his injuries after being struck by a car.
The struggles had brought Peat to national attention seven years ago, as he spoke openly about how his life had gone since he retired from hockey in 2007. He had been in rehab battling mental health and addiction issues.
He had struggled to hold a job and had become homeless on the streets of Surrey and Langley, bouncing between the couches of his friends and the cab of his truck.
The NHL Alumni Association confirmed Peat’s death in a social media post Thursday morning, due to injuries in “a tragic accident just over two weeks ago.”
According to Langley RCMP, a 44-year-old pedestrian suffered life-threatening injuries when they were struck by a westbound car at around 4:15 a.m. on Aug. 30. According to a news release by the RCMP later that day, the unidentified pedestrian was crossing the road near Kwantlen Crescent. The driver remained at the scene and was co-operating with police. The investigation is continuing, RCMP Cpl. Craig Van Herk said in an email.
The Mounties declined to confirm that Peat was the pedestrian, but Zaron confirmed that his old friend was the pedestrian who was struck.
Peat grew up in Princeton but moved to Langley at age 14 to try out for the BCHL’s Langley Thunder. Zaron was friends with a number of older players on the team and the young Peat made an immediate impression.
“He wasn’t huge, he was just tough,” Zaron recalled. “He was fighting 20-year-olds and was winning more than he was losing.”
Peat’s fists won him a spot on the team and would take him a long way, all the way to the top, but he could also play,” Zaron said. “You don’t get all the way to the NHL if you don’t know what you’re doing when you’re not fighting.”
But fighting was his main job, something his era of hockey valued highly. And Peat was a well-liked teammate because of it.
“He was a protector, he didn’t like teammates being pushed around,” Zaron said.
Those fights, though, did long-term damage. Hand and groin injuries forced him to retire after playing just one game in the 2006-07 season. He also had been dealing with post-concussion effects.
Life quickly became a struggle.
In a 2017 interview with The National Post, he said he had first noticed post-concussion-related issues late in his playing career and since retiring he had struggled with headaches and daily life. He had tried to become a realtor but couldn’t pass the exam. He had worked in construction and at a Harley Davidson repair shop, but never for very long.
“Some days I get up and I — it’s a struggle. I’m paying the price for it,” he said. “When the curtain goes down, no one sees that f—ing part. No one’s cheering me on right now, you know? They don’t see the struggles.”
He went to rehab, trying to find his way back from addiction. But the problems were deeper than that, his father Walter once told The New York Times.
“They need to figure out the root cause of his pain, not just try to get him off of the pills,” the elder Peat said.
Zaron, a longtime youth football coach, is well-aware of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a brain condition that is believed to be caused by repeated head trauma.
CTE is understood to cause problems with thinking, behaviour and mood, and eventually leads to dementia. CTE has been found in the brains of many former athletes who played contact sports like football, hockey and rugby — CTE can only be confirmed by direct posthumous examination of the brain. His friend’s struggles were due to CTE, Peat’s friends had long assumed, Zaron said.
A 2015 fire at his father’s home in Langley was pegged to Peat, who eventually pleaded guilty to arson by negligence, though he insisted the fire started after he had accidentally left a blowtorch on in his father’s garage and forgot about it while he was outside working on his truck.
And in the years since, he was convicted of a variety of minor offences, like driving without a licence, uttering threats and mischief.
Despite his struggles, Peat didn’t regret the hockey path he had taken, but still obviously wished things had gone a little differently.
“I wouldn’t say regret, though I think as he got older he wished he was a little smarter about how he went about it. But he also told me, ‘I gotta protect my teammates,’ ” Zaron said.
Zaron said he would go out around Langley looking for his friend every six weeks or so. Peat was still unhoused, but Zaron usually was able to track him down. He would bring some food and they would chat.
“He still had his wits about him,” he said. “Even in his darkest hour he could talk the pants off somebody.”
Sometimes he would hear that Peat was going up to visit another friend who lived near Zaron and so Zaron would leave Gatorade and granola bars out by the street for his friend to pick up. He always did.
“A little like knowing the bear is always going to come past,” Zaron said, with a chuckle.
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