Who are you? No, seriously, who are you? Don’t tell us your name. Tell us who you really are…deep, deep down, at your core.

Does that sound highly philosophical? Yes. Too deep for a normal hockey column? Perhaps. Then again, Kurtis Gabriel is no ordinary former NHL player. He’s a deep thinker and one who doesn’t mind putting himself out there for a variety of causes. But he’s also leading his life while crafting a path to learn who he truly is.

“It gets really deep from here,” said Gabriel, “so, let me try to surface level it as just like, the number one thing that causes everything to quote-unquote, be wrong or evil in this society, is not realizing who we are.”

“It is identification with the body-mind structure that is the cause of all suffering. Thinking we are an individual body, mind, thoughts, feelings, sensations, with a past and future. Which is the ego,” Gabriel explained. “This bundle that we think is me, that was born one day, (is) gonna have good and bad days. Get a job, work, chase your dreams, achieve highs, experience lows, then die and you cease to exist. That’s not who we are. And most people live from that place, just like I did for three decades, because this world conditions us to believe it, especially in our part of the world. And it’s just not true.”

“I like to say, (it’s) remembering who we are instead of ‘becoming enlightened,’ because it’s who we are already. We just have to remember it. It’s not something we have to go get. It’s the opposite; it’s something we have to decondition. I love using the analogy that we’re all this big, beautiful diamond and we don’t know it, ’cause we’re covered up in caked-on mud. You gotta diligently scrub off all the mud to reveal who we really are. That’s what I’m talking about.”

That is pretty deep. It’s also similar to, but still different from René Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am,” which Gabriel admitted “is probably too deep for this type of interview.”

Descartes is deep. And so is Gabriel. Much deeper than your typical former NHLer. In fact, how did he even get to this point? ‘Cause your typical NHL/former NHL player doesn’t usually concern themselves with these types of questions and thoughts.

“I got to this point because I suffered a lot. The pain was the medicine. It pushed me to scrub off quite a few layers of the diamond I am. It’s a never-ending process,” Gabriel said. “But there’s checkpoints along the way that you just can’t really unsee. You can’t ever go back. I liken it to, do you remember when you found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real? You suddenly realize that everybody in your life, in society, has been duping you into believing a story, which was an illusion.”

“When you understand that he’s not real, it shatters your world for a moment. You’re kind of like, ‘what else isn’t real?’ If they could convince me of something so ridiculous. Nobody ever again believed that Santa was real for one second. That’s what it’s like with your ego. When you get to a certain point of remembering who you are, you can’t go back and believe you are this limited meat-monkey space suit we are living through, with all its limitations and problems. And let me tell you, it’s beautiful.”

The more we peel back the layers with Gabriel, the more we get to understand a tiny bit of what he’s thinking. After all, he’s led a very difficult life.

“(I lost) my father to suicide at 10 years old,” Gabriel explained.

“Looking back at it now as an almost 33-year-old man…at 10 years old, so much was unconscious,” Gabriel continued. “So much was hard to understand. It was like a dream. When my dad was revealed to have died, it was like a bad dream. But then, when it was revealed it was a suicide, it became a dark, dark, dark dream, because this guy was the coolest guy in the world to me, man, as all our parents are. But my dad, man, seemed like the Dos Equis guy, the ‘Most Interesting Man in the World.’

“He wasn’t on any commercials, but he was real in my life. And he portrayed what I thought was just the most grounded masculinity. But, when he checked out, that proved to be all completely a show and phony and not who he said he was. And that pissed me off.”

Of course, that’s understandable. Any child who looks up to a parent, only to lose that parent in such a way, is going to have mixed reactions and is likely to carry that with them throughout their entire life. Gabriel being “pissed off” was part of his mindset that led him from playing hockey at the lowest levels to eventually making it to The NHL.

“It was just, whatever it took, to be completely honest with you, with what I was dealing with,” said Gabriel. “That’s why I’m writing a book about it. All the stories that I’ve gone through, (the) things in my life (that) led me to wanting to play hockey that way (as an enforcer type) and to make that sacrifice, which, growing up, if you would’ve told me, this is what I ended up being, I probably would’ve thought you were lying or didn’t think that I would choose that path. But I thought I had to become somebody because I was identified as my ego. It came from the fire of dealing with what I was dealing with and when I set my mind on something, that’s what I was gonna do. It just didn’t matter what I had to do.”

What he had to do was persevere. Not just by dealing with the toll of losing his father, but also by having to scratch and claw his way through the various levels of hockey as he was growing up.

“I definitely wasn’t born with skates on my feet,” said Gabriel. “My dad, his father being from the Caribbean, was very much into baseball as his favorite sport. He loved cricket, football, squash and basketball. My mother was a volleyball player, a squash player, a soccer goalie and a basketball player. I played them (all of them). At eight months, I was walking. At a year and two months, I was hitting a pop-up wiffle ball out of a machine.

“Dad started me early on that, obviously not needing ice and it’s a little safer. So, (my) hand-eye coordination was there. But as soon as I got out on a pond and checked that out, I said, I’d like to play hockey a bit more. I had seen the Leafs on TV and saw how big a deal it was. (So) My mom put me in figure skating.

“Got the first two badges in figure skating and then she put me into my first year of hockey that winter at five years old with Team Red Newmarket House League. It was just the coolest, most badass, toughest, most revered, most adrenaline-pumping sport that I had tried. I was hooked and the passion was there early on.

“I played House League at Five. House League at six. First Rep Hockey Select, the fourth lowest level, like four levels down of Rep and then Single-A. Then I stayed at Single-A at nine years old, turning 10.

“At 10 years old, my dad wanted me to go try out for Triple-A again. And I said, ‘Dad, I can’t make Triple-A ’cause York-Simcoe Express,’ in my hometown, near Newmarket, ‘they were too good, had future NHLers.’ And he said, ‘No, we’re gonna go try out for a different team, in a different town, Richmond Hill.’ I went there and on his belief in me, I went out there and dominated.

“I was told by that coach, who had scouted Double-A to find Triple-A players, he said, ‘I’ve never even looked at Single-A, but you came out of nowhere and you’re like, my 1A/1B player with Barclay Goodrow on this team.’

“I went into that year with so much confidence, but then, two weeks in, my dad took his own life and that confidence just nose-dived. And I don’t think that coach really handled it super well. I didn’t get to play a lot. I kind of got relegated to the lowest minutes, which is crazy, at 10 years old. I went back to playing Single-A and Double-A until I was 16. I was ready to retire, stop playing Double-A hockey at 16 and figure out what I was gonna do with my life, with all the pain I was dealing with internally.

“My mom just stuck her head in my bedroom door at 16, at the end of that season and said, ‘Hey, do you wanna go try out for the Newmarket Hurricanes in their Spring tryouts?’ And I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘Well, why not? It’s 50 bucks. All your friends are trying out. You’re just as good as them. I know you’re not thinking about playing hockey anymore. You’re in shape. Just go have fun. You got one of their jerseys in the closet.’ And I went, ‘Okay, mom.’

“When I went out there, I fell into this flow state, with the fire and anger from my dad and thought, ‘I’m gonna complete this dream he started six years earlier, without him and I’m gonna go for this thing.’ When that coach had the same message, ‘that we don’t know who you are, but come back next year,’ I went and played that (year at) Triple-A and I went all in on hockey.”

After going “all in on hockey,” Gabriel knew that even though his body wasn’t exactly built for the game, he would still find a way to succeed.

“My body is not built for it,” said Gabriel. “I have a small torso. I got long arms and legs. I had a teammate (who) once called me, Mike Wazowski, from Monsters Inc. Just the eyeball with the arms and legs. High center of gravity. I’m built like a marathon runner. Post-career, I walk around 165-170 lbs, when I played at 215 usually. 

“(I’m) not built to be a big, tough guy, hockey player. I forced it. So I put a square peg in a round hole just because of that much passion and rage. So, I think it gives you some insight into how much it pulled me in with how cool it was, how revered it was. Everybody thought it was the best and that’s what I wanted to do.”

“I loved working at it and there was never a dull moment,” Gabriel continued. “Shooting pucks was a blast. Stick handling was a blast. Hitting people was a blast. Playing hard in the playoffs was a blast. Playing on the pond a little bit was a (blast). Every part of hockey was adrenaline-packed. It was all rolled into one.”

That adrenaline and passion are what helped steer him towards his future role in The NHL as a hard-hitting, physical type of player.

“Growing up, I definitely was watching Darcy Tucker run around in Toronto and Tie Domi and the physical nature of these guys that got the crowd going,” Gabriel explained. “I loved that. But it definitely wasn’t something (where) I thought I was gonna be fighting. I thought hitting was a great part of the game. Then, I saw Rod Brind’Amour in ’06 lead that Carolina Hurricanes team and the way he lifted The Cup and the passion on his face and the intensity of the way he played. The hardworking nature on and off the ice. I just loved it.

“He would get in fights when they were organic and played hard, but he didn’t look for it. That’s what was amazing. But it wasn’t until after I realized that this is what I was gonna do, that I had a coach at Triple-A tell me, ‘Kid, we see how hard you’re working and how bad you want to make it. But you ain’t gonna make it scoring goals or skating circles around people. You’re gonna make it by hitting people. And if you hit people like how hard you work, that means you’re gonna have to fight.’ So that’s when I had to decide. So when he told me that, I signed on, didn’t really think of the repercussions and I was just all Plan A, no Plan B.”

Eventually, he was drafted by the Minnesota Wild in the third round of the 2013 draft. Gabriel debuted during the 2015-16 season and spent two years going back-and-forth between The NHL and the minors before landing with the New Jersey Devils for the 2018-19 campaign. And it was there that his desire to speak up and be on the front line of causes that meant something to him first came about, starting with being the first NHL player to talk about his use of Pride Tape.

“I had to go through my own learning journey and deconditioning through homophobia, to be honest with you,” Gabriel reflected. “Growing up, I used all the homophobic slurs and I was white-privileged. I was straight-privileged. I just had no interaction with these things. When something’s unknown, we fear it as humans. And that’s sad, but it’s true.

“Moving to Iowa in the Midwest, seeing how marginalized people were there, how religion really put down people for no reason. They were all into wrestling and bacon and church and G-d, it was just like a lot. And it made me start to open my eyes. Then, (Donald) Trump got elected in front of my eyes and I went, ‘Wow. I don’t know much, but I didn’t think that guy was supposed to be the President.’

“Then, coming home the summer before signing with the Devils, my partner at the time, she had friends who were in a same sex relationship and one girl came out to be in it. Her parents, who were both doctors, stopped supporting her financially. Now, all of a sudden, she had to work two jobs and move in with her girlfriend right away. I just couldn’t comprehend how that was a thing.

“I couldn’t comprehend my mother caring about who I loved and then actually doing something about it that way and making my life more difficult because of it. It just blew my mind. So that’s why I didn’t do it in Minnesota. And then, to be up there for the Devils on their Pride Night, it just happened the way it did. I felt like supporting it.

“Funny enough, I’m not the first player to wear the Pride Tape in the game. But I’m the first player to speak about it and openly accept the attention that came with it. Jonathan Huberdeau wore it, but he just didn’t want to deal with the activism side of things. I wore it on my stick every game after that.”

Since Gabriel’s playing days ended upon the conclusion of the 2021-22 season (when he was a member of the Chicago Blackhawks), he has gone on a healing journey of his own to remember who he is at his core. He also uses his own experiences to help others remember who they are. 

“One of my most focused on and loved spiritual teachers, Michael A. Singer, says, ‘life’s kind of like this. You wake up every morning, you open your door, maybe with your coffee and you just see what’s parked in your driveway that day. Some days it’s a beautiful shiny car. Some days it’s a fire truck. Some days it’s a beat-down truck, beat-down car. It doesn’t matter. You just show up and just deal with and drive whatever vehicle comes (to) the best of your ability.’ 

“I thought I always tried to do that when I wasn’t as aware, but my gosh, did I let things outside my control dictate my life. I let my ego run the show. But now, as a much more aware person, living from remembrance, I just try to deal with whatever comes and whatever comes now seems to be the path I’m going down.”

That path Gabriel has referenced is a long and winding one without a true endpoint. But, as he said before, there are checkpoints along the way. So, we decided to ask him, should his path ever grant him the ability to make a big-time decision that could help large quantities of people, what would he do?

“I don’t think you can force any human to do anything…because of the ego.” Gabriel began. “But, I would say that it would be amazing, in the perfect world, to have an option for everyone in society, not a mandate, to do training as far as the leading cutting edge of the combination of science and spirituality, quantum mechanics, everything boiled into the most comprehensive course to teach people and remember who they really are, so that they can be people who are not takers, but givers in society. To not live from separation, but oneness.”

“So, think of like this amazing program, or even take it back to just school, where maybe you could mandate that in school, where, instead of some class that we never use, we could have a class and every year growing up, kind of like how a Catholic school has religious classes. Every school, every education program, could have a deep dive into what it means to be human and that we are all one. That we are all the awareness behind the ego. That awareness is the only permanent thing in this reality; everything else comes and goes, including our body. Totally secular and open to all backgrounds and faiths. Because this is higher than religion. It unifies all people.”

“I think that would be the most impactful thing. I got those two ideas. But then, another one would be that everybody has to do a psychedelic-assisted drug trip with mushrooms with a professional. It will be legal everywhere soon. I think that would completely change the world as well. It has been a profoundly impactful therapy for me on my journey of remembrance.”

For those of you who are interested in learning even more about Gabriel’s journey through life, he is co-authoring a book that is due out around June 1st. In addition, he is launching his own website and a podcast, called “The Fight Plan,” among a number of other projects, as he goes about his goal of trying to help people find out who they really are. And while he wouldn’t give away too much about the book, he did say the following.

“I think every single person out there should sit down, whether they put it out or not, or let anybody read it or not and write their own story to themselves,” said Gabriel. “’Cause you learn so much about yourself and it’s a beautiful process. I really hope that people get excited for my book and see themselves in the story. It’s really just my origin story. It’s what I want to tell from my own perspective and my own words. It’s a memoir. It’s not an autobiography; it’s what I experienced. It’s not always exactly the facts. It’s what was going on up here (in my head). I can promise you it will be unlike any other hockey memoir.”

“We’re all in our own world, in our own heads, suffering, when we don’t remember who we are,” Gabriel continued. “So it’s a deep dive into that. It’s gonna be pretty much a punch in the face for 300 to 500 pages, whatever it ends up being. And you’re gonna need a glass of water, very, very often. It’s gonna be intense.

“The goal is to inspire as many of my fellow human beings to do the work to remember who they are. That is the greatest gift they can give themselves and the world.”