NEW YORK— Mike Richter, the once-mighty goaltender, strolled about Montreal, unable to comprehend what a McGill University doctor had just informed him: she would not clear him to play hockey. The 36-year-old had sustained a concussion in November 2002, half a year earlier. That was his second concussion in eight months, and the first one left him with a broken skull from a slap shot to the head. Richter believed he had three, four, or even five years of hockey remaining in him. But the assessment in Montreal dashed such aspirations. He went to a nearby park and had a bite to eat while contemplating the doctor’s comments. His world felt radically altered when he walked out of the workplace.
When he walked in. At that point, the basic act of calling his wife seemed too tough. “I couldn’t mouth the words: ‘Hey, it’s over,'” he grumbled.
Richter’s identity was going to change. In September 2003, little than a year after his final injury, he formally retired. That season, the New York Rangers elevated his number 35 into the rafters. When he retired, he was the first goaltender in franchise history with 301 wins, and he led New York to a Stanley Cup victory in 1994. He was a franchise legend who also lost – a man at a crossroads in his life, attempting to reclaim his health after a difficult succession of injuries.
Richter believes he would have been better prepared to retire at age 22 than at 36. By his 30s, he had devoted so many hours to hockey. The sport had established itself at the centre of his existence. And suddenly it was gone.
“It is like a death,” Richter explained. “That’s who you were, and you are no longer that.” However, the end of one profession resulted in the commencement of another. Richter was always interested in the world beyond his sport, which led him to Yale University and a career in renewable energy. Thirty summers after winning the Stanley Cup, he is the president of Brightcore Energy, a firm dedicated to saving customers money while reducing their environmental footprint.
He’s discovered his post-playing career mission.
“In the world,” he joked, “you have to keep reinventing yourself.”
The path to reinvention was not straightforward. Richter found himself weary by 10-minute walks along the Hudson River while recovering from a concussion in 2002, which was a far cry from his NHL training. He described his symptoms as being hungover and jetlagged at the same time. Bright lights and loud noises were challenging to manage. He was tired but couldn’t sleep. “It was a horror show,” he explained.
In some ways, the protracted rehabilitation process helped him refocus. He has small children who he relied on “in ways they don’t even recognise.” going his health back became the most crucial thing, rather than going back on the
ice. He simply wanted to feel like himself again. It happened gradually. Concussions are not like knee or shoulder injuries, which have fixed deadlines. Recovery is not a linear process. Richter’s mental state improved as much as his physical condition. During that time, he resumed applying to institutions, hoping to complete the undergraduate degree he begun in the 1980s at the University of Wisconsin. Yale admitted him into a program for non-traditional students “with exceptional backgrounds and aspirations,” and he enrolled in 2004. While in New Haven, Conn., he joined the club bike team and volunteered as a hockey assistant for the university for four seasons.
Yale provided Richter a sense of direction amid a period of transition. And he still didn’t know.
When asked what he planned to do after graduation, he had a simple answer: he was returning to school. “It was a good segue,” he explained.
Richter had a very different college experience than most of his younger classmates. He did not live on campus, but rather with his family in a little house near the coast in Guilford, Connecticut. His free time, which concentrated around raising his children, looked very different from that of the younger pupils. Most people on school were unaware of his NHL experience, and if they knew, “they didn’t give a hoot,” he explained.
His age resulted in several strange and occasionally hilarious exchanges. When Richter arrived early for class, a student started
to ask the former goalie about missing an upcoming class. That’s when it hit Richter: The kid thought he was the professor. Overall, though, the age gap was, in his words, “surprisingly not odd.” He found he melted into the community around him and graduated with a major in Ethics, Politics, and Economics — “you get a smattering of everything and how it interacts,” he said — and a minor in environmental policy. He had enrolled with an interest in the environment.
“This is the air we breathe, this is the water we drink, this is the limited resources we either have or don’t have,” he said. “We better figure it out and figure it out right, fast. Because everybody’s got a stake.”
Now, Richter has been out of professional hockey as long as he was in it — a bewildering thought, he said. His second act has led him to Brightcore, where he’s been president since 2016, shortly after its 2015 founding. He had already been working in the environmental field and met the two founders, both of whom had experience on Wall Street and in clean energy, through a mutual connection.
Brightcore provides clean energy solutions aimed at helping clients reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Recently, it worked with Bard College to install a geothermal heating and cooling project in the library, replacing what the university described as a “fossil fuel-fired system.”
“These are not easy things to put in, but done well they’re really robust and resilient and quite quiet,” Richter said of the Bard project. “It’s like we were never there once the sod goes down. It’s a pretty impressive transformation.”
Brightcore, which Richter said has around 120 employees, also works with other energy forms, including solar and LED lighting.
The day to day for Richter, who expressed interest in running for political office in the past and hasn’t ruled it out in the future, includes lots of phone and video calls with clients. He primarily focuses on business development and sales, but as a company leader, he also aims to keep employees motivated. He finds most come into the work highly driven because they recognize the importance of the environment’s future.
Despite his hectic work schedule, Richter keeps the Rangers, and hockey in general, in the forefront of his mind. He attends as many regular-season games as possible, and he will watch any postseason game on television, regardless of the team. Since 2014, the Mike Richter Award has been presented to the best regular-season goalie in men’s collegiate hockey. Richter spends his free time playing in a men’s league. He remains a fan of the sport. As a player, Richter aspired to make the most of his opportunities and reach his full ability. Now he’s on a different team, attempting to achieve the same in his new field of work.
“It’s fascinating to go from one world to another,” he told me.
“I believe you’re addressing a wider, relevant need. “If you can make the world a little better, that’s great.”
Leave a Reply