Jesse Winchester seemed headed for a solid future with the Avalanche, but fate had other ideas

There is not a hint of bitterness in the words of Jesse Winchester at what fate bequeathed him. Some wistful melancholy over what might have been? Sure.

“Being told you can’t do what you want to do, and always have done, for a living isn’t fun,” he says. “I loved being in Denver so much too, loved the outdoors, really loved being with the Avalanche organization. But I just never got to play.”

The Jesse Winchester of today is the coach of the year in the Central Canada Hockey League with the Brockville (Ontario) Braves for the second straight year. In his second season as the team’s head coach, the 35-year-old has the team in the second round of the playoffs, with Game 1 of the second round starting Sunday against the Ottawa Junior Senators. He’s a married, father of two young daughters, a person who says “I got to live my dream.”

You know how you’re in a great dream, though, and you’re jangled awake and you think “It’s OK, I’ll just fall right back asleep into the dream”, only you never do? Unfortunately, that was a real-life thing that happened to the native of Long Sault, Ontario, and it all played out as a member of the Colorado Avalanche.

Jesse Winchester was a member of the Avs for two full seasons, from 2014-16. Signed to a two-year, $1.8 million contract after a solid season with the Florida Panthers, he was brought in to provide depth at forward and help out a penalty kill that finished 24th in the NHL in 2013-14. He was at the team’s practice facility most every day, a participant in team and community functions and a respected member among the fraternity of players.

But he never played a single game for the Avalanche, unless you count four preseason games in September of 2014 in Anaheim, Montreal, Quebec City and Calgary.

In that final game, at the Saddledome in Calgary, Winchester went to play a puck in the corner and collided with Flames defenseman Dennis Wideman. He went into the boards at an awkward angle, his head bearing the brunt of much of the impact. Winchester already had one serious concussion in his past – in 2011 with Ottawa, after a hit from Buffalo’s Paul Gaustad that sidelined him five months. This one would prove worse.

“I was having a really good camp too. I really felt like we had a good team and that I would develop into having a real solid role,” Winchester said.

But the hit in Calgary produced the same headaches from three years prior, along with vertigo and nausea. What followed was a two-year exercise in complete frustration.

Not too long after the Calgary game, Winchester was back practicing with the Avs, albeit in an orange non-contact jersey. He skated freely and seemingly without any pain or limitations.

“That’s the crazy thing about my whole experience,” he said. “I could go full out at the practice rink, no problem. But once we’d move to the Pepsi Center for game day, I’d get lost.”

Winchester would experience spatial awareness problems skating in the bigger, brighter Pepsi Center. Brighter light can often trigger concussion symptoms to those in recovery, and Winchester always felt worse after skating there. He’d feel better again at the practice rink in Centennial, only to get set back again at the Pepsi Center. It became a Groundhog Day scenario, in the worst sense.

He wound up missing the entire 2014-15 season. His teammates tried to give him as much support as they could, but being around the “injured guy” is always a tricky task for pro players. Nobody wants to be in that position, and Winchester was a brand new player who’d spend his entire six-year career to that point in the Eastern Conference.

“It was lonely,” Winchester says. “Coming to the rink every day, with seemingly nothing wrong with you yet you’re still not playing – that’s hard for both sides.”

Avs defenseman Erik Johnson remembers how “tough” it was to see Winchester want to play so badly, yet not be able.

“I think he would have helped us. He was a really good skater and worked really hard,” Johnson said. “It was just really unfortunate.”

By the fall of 2015, however, Winchester seemed fully recovered and he came to training camp anxious to provide value to a team that had placed such faith in him with a free-agent contract. He seemed fine during the first practice of training camp, and he was looking forward to playing in the Burgundy-White scrimmage at DU’s Magness Arena not long after.

Winchester suited up for the game in his Avs uniform, and took the ice for the pregame warmup. Suddenly, though, those awful symptoms came right back. The noisy, sold-out crowd, the bright lights, the blaring music – it all brought the headaches and the feeling that “something just isn’t quite right” all back again.

The rest of the season would go pretty much just like the previous one. Maddeningly, he’d feel fine many days, but the bad days always returned. By season’s end, not having played for two years and no longer with an NHL contract, Winchester knew his career was likely over at 32.

“Coming out of it, yeah, I was upset and hurt for a while,” Winchester said. “But I knew I had to get over it. I don’t think I was necessarily supposed to make the NHL anyway. I was never drafted. But I found a way to make it into the NHL and was able to grind the grind for a few years.”

Winchester laid low for a couple years, staying mostly at home with his wife in Ontario. The couple started a family, and he’s the father of two girls ages 1 and 3. In the fall of 2017, he was presented with the opportunity to coach the Braves, a CCHL team in operation since 1963. And, lo and behold, maybe coaching is what Winchester was really born to do.

“The players love him,” said Braves general manager, Dustin Traylen. “He’s a fabulous coach. Back-to-back coach of the year awards his first two years – not too shabby.”

Winchester isn’t sure he wants to follow the grinding path it’ll take to keep moving up the coaching ranks. Though he’s not bothered by severe concussion symptoms today, he is wary of what life working in the bigger, louder rinks might mean, and he isn’t sure he wants to start living life out of a suitcase again. He’s taking graduate courses at a nearby university, paid for by an NHL Players Association program, with an accent on renewable energy.

“I kind of jumped into this (coaching) thing with no experience. As a player, I was always kind of interested in it, though,” Winchester said. “I was able to manufacture some success as a player without it always showing up on the score sheet. I think it kind of translated into this. But I’m still fairly new to it. I understand the dedication it would take to (advance further). It would have to be a fit for my wife and two little kids. Really, I’m just focused on the here and now, and enjoying it.”

Winchester is told about another Avalanche player, Conor Timmins, who is coming up on nearly a full year now without having played a real hockey game. Like Winchester, Timmins has practiced a lot with the Avs and the Colorado Eagles, but has yet to overcome some of the conditions of a big, bright, loud arena.

The phone goes quiet for a beat or two longer than normal in the conversation.

“If he needs to talk to someone, let him know I’m available,” Winchester says.