When Janice Thériault met her future husband Paul at Lake Superior State University in 1969, he was a charming hockey player with a scholarship and a wink that caught her eye in the cafeteria.

Decades later, after a long coaching career that touched the lives of hundreds of players, including a 16-year-old Wayne Gretzky, Paul died in January 2024 in a Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario care home, unable to speak, trapped inside a mind ravaged by the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). He was 74.

Janice, who now lives in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, spoke with TSN at length for the first time about her husband’s illness and his posthumous diagnosis of CTE, which is caused by repeated head trauma.

She said Paul, even as his condition worsened, understood what was happening to him - and insisted his brain be donated for research after his death.

“Paul was a gentle man and a gentleman,” she said. “He didn’t deserve to go out this way. Nobody does. He said, ‘I can’t speak to this, but I can donate my brain.’ He wanted his suffering to mean something.”

Paul’s brain was sent to researchers at Boston University. In February 2025, more than a year after his death, Janice, their son JP, and Paul’s brother Jack received confirmation: Stage 4 CTE had destroyed Paul’s brain. At the time of his death, Paul’s brain weighed less........

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