Maybe it's because he died at 28, the age that I am right now. But there is something devastating about Derek Boogaard's story. The unlikely rise through the upper ranks of hockey, where his 6'8" frame eclipsed any hope of becoming anything other than what he was: an enforcer. The way he died, overdosing on painkillers in 2011 while earning millions from the New York Rangers. That at the end of the day, the people Derek Boogaard loved most might have felt like any player he pummeled: with a full view of the destruction that was about to unfold, but without any way of stopping it.
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