Team Canada hockey player became legally blind in his 20s

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Twenty-year-old Conrad Eder had never had issues with his vision. In 2017, it was no different as he prepared for a “run-of-the-mill” optometry appointment which he assumed would result in a “looks good, see you next year” conversation.

“My mom wears glasses and, at the time, I didn’t,” Eder said. “So, she encouraged my sister and I to go to the optometrist because she figured we were getting up to university age and probably needed glasses because she needed glasses.”

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As most appointments go, Eder had the regular scans and tests done before seeing the optometrist, including the fundus photography test in which a photo is taken of the back of the eye to examine the retina. Eder says the visit continued as normal as they went through the standard tests.

Nothing about the appointment had suggested anything out of the ordinary until Eder recalled his optometrist pulling up the scans from the tests and pausing.

“He looked over to me and he said something along the lines of, ‘You know, I’m not qualified to give this opinion, and I don’t want to overstep my knowledge base, but I think that this is strong evidence to suggest that you have this disease.’”

Eder recalls feeling fairly calm, during the appointment, despite the life-changing news.

“I was, frankly, clueless,” Eder said. “I didn’t have a good understanding of the repercussions of the disease.”

Eder underwent an array of tests over the next year and was eventually diagnosed with Retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disease where the cells in the retina slowly die, resulting in vision loss.

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Now 27 years old and with a degree in economics from Laurentian University in Sudbury, Eder lives in Ottawa pursuing his latest accomplishment: playing blind hockey.

“I have central vision, but I don’t have peripheral vision, and that’s what defines my experience playing blind hockey. It’s what defines my life.”

Last year, Eder had been scrolling through YouTube and found himself watching a blind hockey game between Canada and the United States.

“I was watching it and thought, ‘This looks pretty good, this looks kind of fun,’ ” Eder said. “They’re all blind. I’m blind. This might be worth giving a go.”

A quick Google search later, Eder found the Canadian Blind Hockey website, which had been advertising a summer training camp. The camp was to be held over a series of days and gave blind and visually impaired people the opportunity to get on the ice every day and develop their skills. Eder registered right away.

“Having never played (blind hockey) before, understandably I was placed in the development category,” said Eder. “I got a chance to meet a bunch of great guys, great blind hockey players, from all across the country.”

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Eder hadn’t played hockey in years. Like most Canadian kids, Eder’s parents signed him up when he was young, and he played until he was around 10 years old.

“At that point, soccer took over,” Eder said. “That was really the sport that I played for the bulk of my life. I still do.”

Throughout the training camp, the athletes — from rookie to experienced — were given numerous opportunities to improve and showcase their skills.

“Blind hockey does a fantastic job of organizing these events, including everything from ensuring we got food in our bellies, to getting shuttles to and from the hotel and the rink.”

Ultimately, the training camp gave Eder a chance to earn a spot on the national team for the 2024 Canadian Blind Hockey tournament.

“On the last day of that camp, myself, along with a few other players who had been fairly successful playing in the development division, got the opportunity to get called up and play with the high-performance players in their showcase game at the end of the tournament.”

Canadian Blind Hockey was first founded in 2009 under the name “Courage Canada Hockey for the Blind,” but was renamed in 2016. The national sports organization runs varying programs across Canada for children, youth and adults of all playing abilities who are blind or partially sighted.

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“In blind hockey, we use essentially a classification system,” Eder said. “There’s three different classifications of vision and the sport allows so much ‘vision’ on the ice at any given time. That way, we keep it fairly even.”

The league uses the International Blind Sports Federation’s classification eligibility standards, which classify players as either a B1, B2 or B3. Athletes with no vision are in the class B1 and the scales move up the more functional vision they have, up to 10 per cent of functional vision. Eder falls under the class B3.

“There is a misconception that is out there that, if you’re blind, you can’t see a thing. But that is really not the experience of most people, including myself, who are legally blind. There’s very much a spectrum of vision that each of us are able to use in our daily lives.”

Eder says that while off the ice there is the opportunity to build a lot of relationships based on that commonality of vision loss, on the ice the camaraderie is solely focused on the sport.

“One of the coolest things is that when you hit the ice with a bunch of other para-athletes, that quality just totally fades away. You hit the ice as a hockey player.”

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For Eder, blind hockey came to him with a multitude of benefits he has grown to appreciate.

“Perhaps this is a quality of sports more generally, but it gives you something to aim for. It gives you an opportunity to better yourself, better your physical health and better your mental health.”

While the sport still uses the standard International Ice Hockey Federation safety protocols, some rules and equipment are modified to compensate for the players’ visual impairments.

One of the adaptations is an adapted puck that is three times the size of a traditional hockey puck and is made of hollowed-out steel with ball bearings enclosed within it that make noise as it moves.

“Generally speaking, the forwards will have slightly more vision and the defencemen will have slightly less,” Eder said. “It’s not a hard and fast rule, but I think that’s part of the reason why I gravitated towards playing forward as a B3.”

Eder plays at the competitive level, where all athletes must be legally blind, though, at the recreational level, athletes only have to be visually impaired.

While losing your vision later in life can seem like an insurmountable challenge, Eder says he believes people are stronger than they think and new opportunities can always come up, even if one’s path takes a different direction. “Sometimes we underestimate situations that we can handle.”

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