SDHL Talks - Kelly Murray

Sports have always been a big thing in my family. From my grandma, my Farmor, being a senior Canadian Champion in curling, to my second cousin Andy Murray who coached hockey professionally in Switzerland, Germany, and in the NHL, to my dad who played pro hockey in Germany for a season, and even my mom who played basketball in university and is the best athlete I know.

So, it’s no surprise that as my three sisters and I grew up, that sports became a big part of our life. I have three sisters, two older and one younger, and we are all about a year apart in age, which meant a busy household and busy parents growing up.

All four of us played hockey at the highest level in university, and my two older sisters, Logan and Madi, decided to retire after they graduated. But my younger sister Eden and I played professionally in Canada together, winning a Clarkson Cup championship with the Calgary inferno in the now defunct CWHL. After the CWHL folded I came over to Sweden and I have been with SDE for four years, and Eden actually joined SDE for the last half of the 21/22 season before she officially retired.

Our parents exposed us to lots of different things like dance and painting and singing and the piano when we were young, but it was in sports where we all really stood out and excelled. And for me personally, sports, and hockey in particular, has been the driving force for a lot of different experiences in my life, both good and bad.

From winning championships with my sisters, to being called sexist and derogatory names when I played on a boys hockey team, to dealing with mental health issues in university and almost quitting, to surviving that dark time and finding my love in the game again, and finally in struggling to get by as a professional female athlete; hockey has brought me some of the biggest struggles, and some of the best and worst moments of my life. But I guess my story really begins with how I started playing hockey.

Ring of Fire, by Johnny Cash

I was born and raised in a small town in southern Alberta, called Medicine Hat, where our biggest tourist attraction is a large metal Teepee off to the side of the highway. There have been some great people and great athletes to come out of Medicine Hat, but life can be a bit slow in a town that size. And I’m a big believer that if kids aren’t involved in sports or other extracurricular activities, it leaves a lot of free time for them to find bad things or bad habits to get into. So, I think for my parents, they saw sports as that avenue to keep their daughters out of trouble. It wasn’t until my Second Cousin Andy Murray, who my sisters and I always called “uncle Andy”, told my dad about the opportunities available to female hockey players that my parents really considered putting us into hockey.

Cut to my mom and dad getting us to sit in front of the TV to watch Canada vs the USA in the women’s hockey gold medal game at the 2002 Olympics. They bribed us by buying some chips and snacks to get us to sit and watch the whole game. I can still remember it to this day, sitting on that couch, watching Canada win. Watching the players celebrate, jumping on their goalie. Watching the gold medals being hung around their necks. And watching them sing the Canadian national anthem standing on the blue line with their arms around each other’s shoulders. And I just turned to my dad and said, “I want to do that, I want to play hockey”.

That was the trigger for my three sisters and I to start playing, I was 8 years old at the time, which is considered a little late to start playing in Canada. We could all somewhat skate, but none of us were good or had ever played hockey before. I think it was a big avenue for my dad to connect with the four of us. He grew up with three brothers, so when he had four daughters, I think it really put my dad outside of his comfort zone. And when my sisters and I started playing hockey, it was an easy way for my dad to connect with the four of us.

And both my parents went all out when we started playing hockey. I give them a lot of credit for helping my sisters and I learn how to skate and play. My parents would rent ice times at 6:30 in the morning at this tiny rink that was a 30-minute drive away, just so we could skate for an hour before going to school. My dad would run the morning practices and do skating and shooting drills because the four of us were so far behind. One of my favourite things though, was when we would get there in the morning and how quiet the rink always was. I loved it. The quiet, and the smell of the ice.

I won’t lie, my sisters and I did not always enjoy those early morning ice times. The rink was freezing, we had to get up super early to get there in time, and the worst was when my dad couldn’t run the practice because he had to get to work, so my mom had to take over. The thing is, my mom started playing hockey when we did so she wasn’t much better than we were. And I love my mom SO much, but she is probably one of the most intense humans I’ve ever met, only rivalled by my sister Eden. So when mom was running the morning practices it felt more like a day in the army than an hour skate for beginners. We still tease her to this day for some of the hilarious things that happened when “coach mom” was on the ice and in charge of those early morning ice sessions.

But it was because of my parents sacrifices and the effort that they put in to helping us become better hockey players that my sisters and I got to where we did in our careers. And I think that parents pushing their children is a very important thing that is hard to balance in our world today; because if my sisters and I had gotten our way, all those early morning practices would not have happened, those extra hockey camps we went to in the summer would not have happened. And it’s not that we were bad or lazy kids, we just didn’t fully understand what my parents were trying to help us do. The time and energy my parents gave to my sisters and I, pushing us to be better and to keep trying even when we complained and weren’t entirely grateful for their sacrifice and support, is what made the difference for the four of us.

But even though my dad had played, and at a very high level, the world of women’s hockey was a new experience for him. There weren’t many female hockey players in our town, my first three seasons of hockey I had to play with girls a couple years older just to have a team to play on. And then when I turned 11, I still didn’t have a girls’ team to play on, so I decided to try out for the top level boys team for my age group as a defenceman. I was a good defenceman, and I loved the position. I made the team and I think I was one of two or three girls in the entire league. I remember I was so proud to make that team. Our team got these Letterman-style winter jackets that were quite thick and boxy, but I felt so much pride and happiness every time I wore that jacket. I remember wearing it on the school bus one day, and one boy in my grade who had tried out for the same team and gotten cut, told me I looked like a cross-dresser, a tranny, when I wore the jacket. I told him he was just jealous because he hadn’t made the team and I held in my tears until I could make it into a bathroom and cry, because I didn’t want him to see how much his words had hurt me.

I’ve felt that way a lot throughout my career, having to justify why I played, having to challenge people’s expectations of me as a female playing an aggressive male-dominated sport, having to argue and challenge the opinions of others who felt and still feel that women’s sports is a joke and inferior to the men’s game. And having to hold it in, put on the good/brave face, and give the right answer to their slightly ignorant and sometime rude questions, instead of really showing how it makes me feel when people ask me those questions or make those sorts of comments. Having to justify my right to play.

I played boys hockey for two years, and then my sisters and I attended different hockey schools until we went off to university. It was in high school where I got the first chance to win a championship with Eden. In Canada, they do a tournament for female hockey players at the Under-18 level, somewhat similar to TV-Pucken in Sweden. Every province in Canada sends a team. Both Eden and I went to the tryouts and got selected to represent our Province, Alberta, at the Canada Winter Games in 2011. And that was a special experience. Not only because we won the championship, but how we won.

There is another province in Canada called Ontario, where the majority of top female hockey players come out of because they have such a large population. And on their team for this big tournament in 2011, Team Ontario had 14 players that had recently played on the Team Canada Under 18 team. That’s like if Stockholm’s TV Pucken team had 14 players from a Team Sweden roster. And Alberta? We had one player that had played on that Team Canada Under 18 team. Everybody believed that Ontario was going to sweep the tournament. That they were going to win every game and destroy every team because they had so many U18 Team Canada players on their roster. And Alberta? We ended up beating them once during the first few games of the tournament, which everyone said afterwards was a fluke and wouldn’t happen again, and then we went on to beat them again in the gold medal game and win the whole thing.

Sleep on the Floor- The Lumineers

After that tournament, I was invited to the Team Canada U18 tryouts the next two years in a row. I ended up getting cut both years and not making the final roster. Those camps were so cutthroat and intense, and I remember feeling so lonely and out of place both years. I had no idea what to expect, I had no idea what was required of me. And I took being cut really hard.

I got cut from the program that I had always dreamed about playing for. The opportunity to wear that Maple Leaf on my chest was why I started playing the game, and I had blown it. I missed my chance two years in a row. I started to feel lost and without direction.

I didn’t have any female role models in hockey to look up to and ask for help. And of course, there were the big names in women’s hockey, Hayley Wickenheiser, Cassie Campbell, Jennifer Botterill. But I couldn’t access them. I couldn’t get their advice or opinions. I couldn’t watch them on TV consistently and learn from what they did in a game. I didn’t know what I needed to do or change to get to the next level. I was learning through trial and error, and I wasn’t learning fast enough. I tried by watching players in the NHL, Nicklas Lidstrom was always my favourite defenceman. But I had always known I wouldn’t be able to play in the NHL, I could watch these fantastic male players, but I couldn’t relate to them, I couldn’t pretend to be them because I knew I never would be one of them.

And I want to highlight this because I think this is something that gets left out a lot in the women’s game. Young girls, young female athletes need constant access to their female role models, their superstars. They need to be able to watch them, to meet them, to hear what struggles they went through and how they overcame them. They need access to great female coaches and athletes that can help them to personally develop as athletes. They need to be able to watch them on TV, to have tshirts and jerseys with their role model’s names on the back. They need to see it, and see it consistently, to help motivate them to do it. Or they do if they’re anything like how I was when I was young.

And just as a potential trigger warning, I speak on my struggles with depression and my mental health over the next few minutes so if anyone is sensitive to these issues, please feel free to stop listening or skip ahead.

So, I tried to not let getting cut from Team Canada weigh me down too much, and I set my sights on going to university and excelling there. But looking back now I can see that even before I arrived at university, I was feeling a little lost and already struggling with my mental health. I went to the NCAA Division 1 school, and Ivy league school, Cornell University. Again, I went into university thinking I was prepared and ready, but with no real clue of what was expected of me athletically or academically and how I could survive and thrive at the next level. That jump between high school and university is so big, and so many girls go in thinking that they’re prepared for their freshman year but then they arrive and they end up just treading water, trying to survive for their first couple years. And that was me. University was a cold hard slap of reality, and I struggled.

I had some bad injuries my first year at Cornell, and I won’t go into detail on those injuries but I will say that I was severely struggling with my mental health by January. My family doctor even asked me to consider speaking to someone and to try depression medication but I said no, I didn’t think I needed it. But that was part of the issue, nobody had ever really talked to me about depression or anxiety or my mental health, so I didn’t fully realize that I was struggling and depressed. I knew something was wrong with me, but I thought it was in my head and that I was to blame for being a failure. I was ashamed and afraid to tell anyone about how I was feeling, and I was living in a state of denial about how poorly I was doing.

On the surface I don’t think it showed, I was having fun with my friends and my teammates. Cornell was an amazing school, and to this day some of my closest friends, and the most fun times of my life were made on that campus. And I want to state that I had a good relationship with my head coach and that he is a good guy, we still have a good relationship to this day. But underneath that fun, happy shell that I was showing to the rest of the world, I was a rollercoaster of emotions, and I was losing the ability to take control of my life. Even though I thought I had hit rock bottom around January due to some personal incidences, I hadn’t yet hit rock bottom. And I had created some bad habits around drinking and partying that did not do anything to help my mental state of mind, and it pushed me even farther down that hole I was stuck in. I was in a state of denial and pretending that everything was okay, when in reality I was just standing on a bunch of flammable kindling playing with matches.

I made it through and survived that first year. But I was still in a state of denial to my issues. And instead of understanding that what I needed after that year was some therapy and help, I thought my problems were based on my fitness levels, and that I wasn’t in shape and “fit” enough for hockey. I worked out a lot that summer and went into my second year feeling like I had taken control of my life and my body, and that I was ready to thrive and finally excel at the university level. And I think I was able to slightly pull myself out of that hole I had fallen into in my first year. Definitely not all the way out, but enough to see some light and have hope that things were about to turn around for myself.

There is also a big issue surrounding female athletes and their body image. We are constantly being judged by society for our muscle, being told that we are too big or too small, or skinny but too much muscle, or that we look fat even if we are normal sized. It’s very difficult for female athletes to find happiness with their body image when everyone has an opinion on what our figures should look like. It took me years to stop hating my legs and to be proud of my muscle.

So, the first few months of my second year at Cornell went well, I was feeling happy and healthy and like I had a better handle on myself and what was expected of me. And when I speak about this time in my life with other people, I always compare it to putting a band-aid on a cut that needs stitches. I thought I had fixed my problems by getting in great shape, but I had only fixed my shell and I didn’t realize that if I had another injury or if something bad happened that was out of my control, there was nothing stopping me from that band-aid being ripped off and spiralling back down into that deep dark pit again.

The third game of the season, in October, I even scored my first collegiate goal! I was so happy, and my teammates were all so happy for me because they knew how hard I had worked over the summer. The very next period of that same game, I was standing next to the boards and made a pass to my d-partner, the girl on the other team who was forechecking finished her hit on me and I went up against the boards at a funny angle and felt a searing pain go through my right shoulder. I fell to the ice and started screaming. I think I was screaming because of the pain, but also in fear because I knew the second that I had hit the boards that something went wrong.

I went and got an x-ray and sure enough, I had broken my collarbone. But I was told it wasn’t that bad and that I would be back in a few weeks because it was only a small partial hairline fracture and hadn’t even broken the whole way through my bone. This meant I could do aggressive extensive rehabilitation, which was extremely painful, but I pushed through it to try and get back on the ice as soon as I could. I had to wear a sling 24-7 and I couldn’t take notes in class because I had hurt my writing hand, and my roommate had to help me braid my hair every morning, but I still felt in good spirits. One day I was walking with a friend after class, and he made me laugh and I stumbled on some loose rocks. I didn’t fall, I didn’t have to catch myself with my hands, but I had instinctively shrugged my bad arm up and I felt a sharp pain go through my broken collarbone.

After a couple of days, I realized that something was definitely wrong, so I went back and got more x-rays. And I was told that the doctors had misread my first x-ray. They had told me it was a partial break but after looking back at the first x-rays they could see it had been a full break. This meant I had spent the last three weeks rehabbing my collarbone the wrong way and I was back at square one again as it had shifted out of position. This meant that instead of being out for only a few weeks that I was now looking at another 10 weeks of healing time. I would miss over half the season.

And I fell right back down into that deep dark hole. But even deeper this time. I think at this point I had given up; I was extremely depressed and started using partying to mask my pain and my issues again. I was that bubbly, fun, happy person to everyone around me. That band-aid had fallen off and I was bleeding again because I hadn’t fixed my real issues and given myself techniques to handle the bad things when they happened. I sustained another concussion in February of my second year and missed some more games, but at this point I was starting to feel relieved that I didn’t have to play. I didn’t want to be on the ice, I didn’t want to do school. I was focusing on anything I could other than school or hockey or my personal wellbeing so I could keep living in a state of denial. I dreaded having to walk through the doors of the rink every day.

The one place on earth that I always loved to be, that had always been fun and my safe-haven, my happy place, became the place that gave me anxiety and stress and a horrible feeling in my gut, every time I walked through the doors of the rink. I was starting to hate hockey, I wanted to quit.

I had gone from this little girl who had started playing with the dream of someday pulling that team Canada jersey over her head and who truly loved the game of hockey, to someone who didn’t care if she ever put on a pair of skates again. One of my favourite places has always been an empty hockey rink, since I was a little girl at those early morning practices with my family. I loved how quiet it was and the smell of the ice. I think it’s the contrast of how loud a rink is during a game. A completely empty rink is so quiet but in a peaceful way, in my opinion. It’s always been one of my favourite things.

I left that year feeling empty, I was so internally lost at this point that I couldn’t tell up from down. I had zero motivation and just felt numb. I look back now, and it’s so painfully obvious to me that I was severely struggling, but again, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I felt ashamed and guilty and like a failure, and that internal guilt turned into that denial that made me feel like I failed because I was pathetic and weak. When I went home in the spring some events happened that pushed me to finally hit the bottom of that deep dark hole. It was the middle of the day, and I had received some bad news and it sent me on a downward spiral. I was in my vehicle driving and again, I won’t go into details, but I had a very low and horrible moment. I pulled over and ended up sitting in an empty parking lot of a church and crying in my car for three hours straight. It was my rock bottom and I finally had to admit to myself that I needed help.

I was able to speak to someone and get on some medication to help with my depression, which was very beneficial for me and helped me a lot while I was on it. But one day that spring, after I had been on medication for a few weeks, I was having a discussion with my dad, and I was complaining about the last two years and how bad they had been for me, and how it was unfair and I wasn’t happy, and he finally just interrupted my personal pity party and said, “Ok so quit”. I remember just staring at him in confusion and shock. And I asked, “what do you mean quit?”, and he said to me “you’re not happy, you’re not enjoying hockey. You’ve had bad things, unlucky things, happen to you and I understand that, but you need to take control of your life. If you’re not happy then just quit. Quit the team, quit Cornell. Move home. Your mom and I won’t judge you. We understand and we love you. But obviously what you are doing right now is not working so you need to do something to change it.”. And I remember just standing there thinking about it, and this moment of relief flooded over me when I realized I could just quit. That I could move home, stop playing hockey, retire at the age of 20. Just escape my problems and take the easy way out for once. And then I thought about what my life would really be like if I did quit, and I realized it wouldn’t be enough. That I wanted more. More from hockey, more from myself, more from my life. That I didn’t want to quit but to figure out a way to get through this. So I told him “youre right, but no, I don’t want to quit” and so he said “Okay, then transfer. Get a fresh start”. And I said “Ok fine, I’ll transfer”.

Time to Pretend- MGMT

And that was the start of how I ended up at the University of British Columbia, graduating and playing there for three years. My coach and teammates at Cornell were all so understanding and supportive of my decision to transfer. And this is really where my story goes back to being more of a happy one. I had a great time at UBC, I opened up to my team about my mental health issues, I was doing well in school, and I had found my love for the game of hockey again. It took me a couple years to get back to myself, but I was named a USports first-team all-star in my third and final season with UBC, and I finally got to fulfill my childhood dream. In my last year at university, I got selected to the Team Canada roster that was going to the FISU games. I got to represent my country in Kazakhstan, and I got to pull the maple leaf over my head and play for my country. And I’ll never forget that first time I pulled the maple leaf jersey over my head.

That’s not to say that since then my life has been easy and happy. I’ve gone through a lot of personal growth and hardship since then, but that low point in my life dealt me some of the greatest life lessons I’ve ever learned. I’ve learned that I’m resilient, and when I hit my lowest moment and it felt like things were never going to be okay again; I made it through and I’m stronger for it. I’ve learned that when I consistently paint myself as the victim and tell myself that I’m being wronged when life or people aren’t treating me the way I think I deserve, it inhibits my personal growth; because if I lack self-reflection and the ability to acknowledge and recognize when I need to take accountability for my personal happiness, my personal growth will suffer. And lastly, I’ve learned that my struggles with my mental health, and sharing my struggles with others does not make me weak or vulnerable, but strong and brave for being willing to be open and honest with what I’ve gone through. Because I think when people are willing to speak about their own mental health struggles, it allows others to be more open and honest with themselves about what they may be going through.

Like I said, my life hasn’t been completely happy and perfect since that low period. But one thing its done is it’s helped me to reflect on my relationship with hockey and why I continued to play the game. I used to play because I wanted to represent Team Canada. But after university and as I got older, I realized that my career was not going to be defined by the number of times I got to represent my country. So I needed to find another purpose, another reason besides my love for the game for why I was still playing, why I should keep playing.

When I first came over to Sweden, I was still trying to find that purpose. And SDE was a perfect organization for that. I know that SDE gets a lot of criticism because they are a smaller club, and because people look at it in comparison to other big Swedish clubs and organizations that look so fancy and shiny from the outside and they judge SDE. But I know from firsthand experience that what people see on the outside is rarely the full explanation on what is happening on the inside.

And I’ve been asked many times why I’ve stayed so long at SDE. Four years. The longest time I’ve ever been in one city since I was twelve years old. And there’s a few reasons why, but one of the big reasons is because the organization reminded me of my younger self a little bit. Not picture perfect in every way, but with potential, and such a desire to be better and do more. And A huge part of that comes from the management.

Helene and Jan Astrom are the heartbeat and the life of SDE. They are two of the most selfless, kind and giving humans I’ve ever met. They have singlehandedly created this feeling of family within SDE which is at the very root of the SDE culture. And sometimes families have fights and argue, but at the end of the day they have each other’s backs.

I’ve spent the last four years with SDE because I believed in the vision that the club has, and I think they are building something unique and special. They are not dependent on a big men’s team to fund them and take care of them. Everything SDE has built and done is through their own blood, sweat and tears, and I think that this is one of the big factors that helped to create that culture of family within the organization. This team culture of family and the leadership within management is why I think SDE has grown and improved so much as a club in my time with the organization, and why they have been climbing the rankings every year the past four seasons.

And being with SDE helped me to find that reason for why I continued to play, as well as helped me to find a passion to pursue after my playing career is over. I realized I wanted to keep playing to give back to the game and to make things better for the next generation of female hockey players. I don’t do it for the money. There was not enough financial incentive for female hockey players to be in it for the money in my past six years of playing pro hockey. So, I did it for the bigger picture, the next generation. I’ve played longer than my finances really allowed, but in my mind it was worth it. For me, this journey to finding a deeper purpose in why I played the game also led me to finding along the way another passion and where I want my career to be in after I retire; sports management.

And I think that it is so important for young girls, young athletes, to have a purpose, a reason for why they play the game. It doesn’t need to be anything deep or complex, even to just play the game for fun and because they enjoy being with their hockey friends is more than enough. But having motivation to keep playing will hopefully help them to stay in sports, which is so important when you look at statistical averages and see that many girls are dropping out of sports at around the age of 13/14.

Ends of the Earth- Lord Huron

I don’t know if I’ll play next season, I’m planning on moving back to North America with my partner to be closer to my family and my new niece and nephew. It’s going to be so difficult to leave Sweden and the life I’ve built over the last four years. And I’m happy and satisfied with my athletic career, and part of me would love to retire while being a part of the SDE club. But I’m not sure. For the first time in history, being a pro female hockey player is starting to have some financial incentives back in North America. Which means that the women’s game is starting to shift from athletes playing for other reasons to now playing for financial gain. But I think it’s important for female athletes to always have a deeper reason for why they play the game, because to only play for money is not a good enough reason.

And don’t get me wrong, it is a great reason; and increasing the financial stability of female athletes is crucial to the success and development of the women’s game, but I still personally believe that athletes still need more. A deeper purpose. It’s something I’ve been learning about in my schooling. I’m doing a masters in sports psychology, and while scientists don’t fully understand it, they are finding that athletes with a deeper purpose, a deeper level of grit and resiliency, these

are the athletes that seem to have the longest careers and are the ones who best overcome adversity in their personal, professional, and athletic lives.

And from my personal experiences, which I spoke about earlier, I believe that this is true. Like I said at the beginning of this, hockey has brought me some of the biggest struggles, and some of the best and worst moments of my life. But I wouldn’t change a thing. I am the person I am today because of my experiences. And when I look back on the past twenty years of my hockey career, I don’t feel regret or resentment for the hardships I’ve had to go through, only gratitude for the experiences and the opportunities that hockey has given to me to grow as a person and help me figure out what I want that next chapter in my life to look like.