Overcoming a severe eye injury to be back amongst winning ways.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: From humble beginnings growing up in Toronto to becoming one of the league’s premier forwards in the National Hockey League (NHL), Carolina Hurricanes player Manny Malhotra’s journey has been interesting, to say the least.
Born on May 18, 1980, Malhotra – currently the only player of Indian origin in the NHL – is the son of a Punjabi father and a French-Canadian mother. His father, with a Ph.D. in polymer chemistry, worked for Xerox, while his mother was a housewife who also held a Ph.D., in biochemistry. Malhotra has said in interviews that he doesn’t know Punjabi or Hindi very well, since English and French were the languages spoken at home, and that he has never visited India in his life.
Although they made education a top priority for Malhotra and his three siblings, from a young age, he found himself drawn to hockey. That’s not terribly surprising since he grew up in Canada, which practically breeds hockey players, and after playing throughout his school years, Malhotra decided to take a crack at going pro.
He played with a minor league team in Canada known as the Mississauga Reps, part of the Metro Toronto Hockey League, for some time until 1996, when he was drafted 17th overall in the first round of the Ontario Hockey League draft. He played with the Guelph Storm team from 1996-1997, eventually becoming team captain and leading the team to the 1998 Memorial Cup finals before losing to the Portland Winter Hawks by just one goal in overtime.
After the 1997-1998 season was over, Malhotra was drafted into the NHL by the New York Rangers. He was the seventh overall pick in the draft that included top pick Vincent Lecavalier, who won the Stanley Cup in 2004 with the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Rangers organization is perhaps best known for being the last NHL team hockey legend Wayne Gretzky ever played for. After some negotiating drama regarding his contract, Malhotra signed with the Rangers for a three-year, $975,000-per-year, with performance-based incentives built in that could have earned him $2 million annually.
Malhotra’s induction into the NHL made him just the second player of Indian origin to ever be in the league. The first was Robin Bawa, who was drafted by the Washington Capitals in 1987. Also a Canadian, Bawa played for three other NHL teams until 1999, when he retired from the league after having a relatively unremarkable professional career, at least from a stats point of view.
During his inaugural NHL season, Malhotra played a total of 73 out of 82 total games, scoring eight goals and 16 points. Malhotra stayed with the Rangers until the 2001-2002 season, at which point he was traded to the Dallas Stars right at the trade deadline. Despite being an effective player at the forward position, the general sentiment at the time was that Malhotra had not developed into as big of an offensive weapon as the Rangers wanted, and he was therefore traded off.
Malhotra played for the Dallas Stars until November 2003, seeing mediocre play and only an incremental boost in playing time. After being dumped by the team, he was picked up by the Columbus Blue Jackets, where both those aspects of his game improved noticeably. He then played in Slovenia from 2004-2005, during the infamous NHL lockout, in which a labor dispute caused the entire season to be cancelled.
Upon returning to the US, Malhotra stayed with the Blue Jackets until 2009. During that time, his stats continued to improve, peaking with a March 2008 game against the Detroit Red Wings in which he scored a career-high three points, commonly known as a “hat trick.” Despite his gaining in both skill and popularity, however, Malhotra’s contract was not renewed in 2009, and he was subsequently dropped.
He then played a brief stint for the San Jose Sharks, which saw his playing time reduce. Despite that, however, Malhotra has said he immensely enjoyed his time with the team; the Sharks were a legitimate Stanley Cup contender that season, and Malhotra relished the chance to play in the post-season for a team that had championship potential.
In July of 2010, he signed with the Vancouver Canucks, taking him back to his home country of Canada for the first time since joining the NHL. He was playing some of his best hockey before sustaining a gruesome eye injury that required intense medical attention and kept him out of the game for a long stretch of time. His left eye was hit by a puck, causing massive bleeding and, as it turned out, severe vision loss in that eye (the video of his injury incident can be viewed below).
When he returned to the ice for the Canucks, he found his vision impairment severely limiting how well he was able to play. During the 2012-2013 season, Malhotra played nine games without scoring at all, causing the team’s general manager to make the difficult decision of benching him for the entire season. His contract expired at the end of that season, making him a free agent.
Now, Malhotra plays for the Carolina Hurricanes, and is having a career-defining season with the just 17 year-old team. Malhotra scored his first goal in 19 months on November 6, 2013, hitting the game-winning shot against the Philadelphia Flyers. He is now also the team’s alternate captain, and is signed to be with the team at least through the end of this season. The Hurricanes, which won the Stanley Cup in 2006, is currently 24-20-9 and ranked fourth in the Metropolitan division.
Malhotra is married to Joann Nash, the sister of National Basketball Association (NBA) superstar Steve Nash. They have two sons, Caleb and Isaiah, born in 2008 and 2012, respectively.
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