Elmira, NY  – It was a game that started like any other—better than a lot of others, actually—for Dylan Demers. After returning to his hometown Maine Wild in Biddeford, Maine, Demers was entering just his 12^th game of the season and had been mired in a season-long slump heading into a road trip to upstate New York. Demers would score his first goal of the season that night—a flubbed, seeing-eye slapshot—and then, on the very next shift, find himself being helped off the ice by his teammates.

"At that moment I knew that not only was I concussed, but it was my worst one yet," said Demers, a second year defenseman who has been integral in the improvement of the Mustangs hockey program. "I cleared the paramedic's protocol and tried to go back out. When I went to turn behind the net I went directly into the boards. Having had three prior concussions I had always said my next one was my last one but I hadn't believe it was as damaging as it turned out."

It was a long, challenging road for Demers to find his current home in Auburn that saw him wrestling with a challenging bout with post-concussion syndrome, the loss of one of his best friends and confidants with the passing of his grandfather, and a challenging journey back to the ice in which he would ultimately credit with saving his mental health.

Demers began this journey in the hockey-mad town of Biddeford in the mid-2000s. As a wide-eye kid he saw the Tigers win three state championships and looked up to current Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Brian Dumoulin, a two-time Stanley Cup champion, who brought home two state titles in his two years in Biddeford.

"Witnessing Brian dominate high school hockey was one of my biggest inspirations to this day," he said. "Without seeing him I wouldn't have been motivated to strive for my own goals and to compete at the highest level. I guess you could say Biddeford was an intense, beloved hockey town."

The quest to compete at the highest level ultimately began to pull at Demers—and pull him away from his hometown club. He would eschew his senior year of high school hockey to lace his skates up for another hometown team—the NA3HL's Maine Wild. He was the first Tiger to leave high school hockey for juniors since Dumoulin several years earlier.

"I knew I had impossible shoes to fill," he reflects. "I didn't make that leap for professional dreams, though. I just wanted to go to college and felt this was the best path. The decision cost me a chance at a state title, some friendships, and the social life that comes with your senior year of high school. I wouldn't change any of it because it helped shape the person I am today."

After a solid 2016-17 with the Wild that saw Demers register 16 points in 43 games as an underage defenseman, Demers began to yearn for bigger things. After being told by one of his coaches in Maine that he was not good enough or prepared enough to play in the USPHL his next opportunity would be just that. The Jersey Shore Whalers, from coastal New Jersey, would contact Demers about the opportunity to make the jump to the USPHL.

"A second didn't pass before I knew what my next journey was after reading that e-mail," he would later say. "This decision was one of the biggest turning points in my life. The relationships and experience I had will last a lifetime."

It seemed that Demers had a vessel to take his career to the next level. It wouldn't take long before that ship began to take on water, however. After spraining his MCL on the first day of training camp, Demers got off to a slow start with his new club but would eventually find his footing, registering 8 points in 35 games with the team's Premier club, a vast step up from his previous home in the NA3HL.

It was still a challenging year for Demers, who at 18 years old had worked 45 hours a week to pay for his tuition and billeting with the Whalers and was living away from home for the first time. A few months after high school graduation Demers would lose a friend from his graduation class in a tragic accident, coupled with multiple on-ice injuries and off-ice struggles with mental health.

"It was a tough battle with my mental health," he said. "There were a lot of heartaches and injuries, but they healed and I realized although it wasn't the season I wanted statistically, emotionally, or financially I had grown into a better hockey player and, most importantly, a grown man."

Demers intended to return to the Whalers for the 2018-19 season. He was offered what he describes as "the deal of a lifetime" to return to New Jersey. Then came the biggest hardship of his career—the news that his grandfather had been diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. He was given 3-4 months to live but would ultimately only live one more as the cancer had crippled him in its late stages.

He would ultimately make a life-altering decision—to return home and lace his skates up for the Wild again.

"I was at a crossroads," he muses. "I chose family over hockey and I would do it again. My Pépère wasn't just a grandfather, but also my best friend. I wanted him to have the chance to see me play one more time. One night we were playing in Cape Cod and I had one of my best games of my life, racking up four points. I called my father to tell him and he told me that my Pépère wouldn't last the night. I couldn't find my wallet when we got back to the rink and by the time I found it and got to his house he broke the news to me that he had passed about ten minutes before I arrived, while I was looking for my wallet at the rink. I will think about that for the rest of my life."

While still grieving with the loss of his grandfather, Demers would turn to the one thing that had always consoled him—hockey. He returned to the Wild ready to begin healing. Just three games after his return from the loss of his grandfather his hockey career would be up-ended. A shift after scoring his first goal of the season, Demers would turn innocuously in the offensive zone and find himself blindsided by a stray elbow from a towering defenseman, instantly knocking him out.

Demers would attempt to return to the game but couldn't. From there he would spend the next month unable to drive, let alone skate or work out. After a full month he felt he had fully healed he returned to the line-up, limited to power play duties to ease him into the line-up. When the Wild fell behind by three goals the competitor in him flared up—and, in a decision he describes as stubborn—he insisted he could return to the game at full strength. In the second period he received the butt end of a stick to the face, dizzying him and sending him to the locker room for the remainder of the game. He would attempt to play the next day but was dizzied and fatigued. He knew this time was serious and it felt like this concussion may have been the final one.

"I had known Dylan for about five years prior and I had known this wasn't his first concussion," said current Mustangs goalkeeper and former Wild teammate Ben Feldman. "When I first saw him get hurt I thought, 'oh man, not again' and this time it just seemed a little more serious. I was hoping he would bounce right back, but this was serious. He was such a big loss in the line-up, but as a close friend of his it hurt to see him in so much pain."

Demers final game with the Wild left a blank page in his story, an unfinished career in which he went out on anything but his own terms. Post-concussion syndrome set in. He spent nearly two full months in pitch-black rooms, resting in bed and fighting off dizziness and fatigue. He would eventually begin work at his father's contracting company but struggled to make it through the day, frequently taking naps on the job to fight grogginess and extreme fatigue. After three months he was officially diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome. The road to recovery ahead was long—it would take nearly four months to heal fully—and hockey became an afterthought as he focused on his physical and mental health.

Then, in August of 2019—nearly 9 months after his last competitive game—the pull to return to the ice began. He reached out to Feldman, who had already committed to Central Maine, to tell him he was considering a return to the ice.

"I had no idea what he was going through," said Mustangs head coach Matt Buotte. "I remembered coaching against Dylan in high school and thought very highly of him as a player. When Ben [Feldman] told me he was interested in coming to Central Maine I was excited to give him a call and talk to him a bit and see what his plans were. It was a great phone call, obviously."

It was an exciting moment for both the Central Maine hockey program and the player himself.

"That call with Coach Buotte saved my life," said Demers. "It saved my relationships with the people I loved. I know hockey is just a game but it's a game I've been in love with for 18 years. A game that brought me out of a black hole and depression and into a college student and hockey player again."

Demers immediately immersed himself in the campus and within the team, excited to be back on the ice and having the opportunity to play hockey again. It was not the NCAA dreams of his youth that he was living out but it didn't matter. It was hockey and he was just happy to have the chance to take the ice again on his own terms.

"I have to give Dylan so much credit," said Buotte of the second year defenseman. "Sometimes when guys work to make it to the highest levels, they don't want to play ACHA hockey. That's not to discredit our league or anything at all because I was the same way—you want to play in the NCAA and anything short of that feels like failure. But Dylan never spoke like that, he didn't have that perspective. From day one his message to his teammates was, 'guys, this is hockey—we are lucky to be playing, especially at a place like Central Maine'. He knew how fragile your career is, how short your time can be in this sport, and every time he took the ice you knew he was going to leave it all out there."

Demers would first return to the ice after nearly 10 months off it as the Mustangs opened their 2019-20 season against the University of New Haven, a game the team would ultimately lose but produced one of the most memorable games in school history—a thrilling, back-and-forth affair in front of a packed Norway Savings Bank Arena. It was a moment he thought he would never experience again.

"Jumping on the ice at The Bank in front of our fans, that was a feeling I'll never forget," he said. "It was true bliss to touch the ice competitively when I thought I had lost that forever. I remember stretching in front of our bench and I just looked up at the stands, looked around me, and I had to hold back some tears. It was the first time my mom had seen me play in almost a decade as well. It was special, I couldn't have been happier or more of proud of what I went through just to play the game I love."

The team's next game—a 9-2 road defeat against Dartmouth—presented a new challenge. Demers was struggling to get used to the pace of the game and felt frustrated that he couldn't play to the standards he had set for himself before the concussions derailed him.

"We were in the lobby of the Dartmouth rink and [assistant coach] Jordy [Knoren] and I were talking to him," said Buotte. "He was so hard on himself. We just reminded him of how long of a road he had just came back from, it was going to take a little time. I didn't expect anything less—he stuck with it and it didn't take long for him to get the results he wanted."

It was probably not coincidence, then, that the team's next game took them on the road to play the University of New England in—as fate would have it—Biddeford. Demers would start on defense in front of his hometown friends and family and on that night it seemed that, in the same town his hockey career had begun a decade and a half earlier, the next chapter of his career had begun in earnest. Demers would score his first collegiate goal on a shorthanded 2-on-1 midway through the first period before scoring his next two goals in the second period, completing his first collegiate hat trick in spectacular fashion in his hometown.

"You can't tell me there's no such thing as hockey gods," joked Buotte. "That was a pretty special night at the rink. We needed that game so badly after starting 0-2 and Dylan bounces back and has this incredible game. I think that was when he realized, 'hey, there's some gas left in the tank here'."

Demers would go on to have a spectacular first year with the Mustangs, tallying nine points and logging massive minutes on the Central Maine blue line. It was a year that he considers "one of the happiest of his life".

"Just being able to play the sport I love with teammates and coaches that are irreplaceable," he said. "The experience here has been amazing. Playing in a hockey community with the support of Central Maine's other sports teams, just being with the boys and the relationships I built…I can confidently say it was one of the most fulfilling years of my life."

Demers is hoping to complete a successful stint at Central Maine before moving on and completing a bachelor's degree in his business studies.  He hopes to get into coaching and give back to the game he loves when his career officially wraps up.

For the second time in the past two calendar years he is being kept off the ice—though this time it is a global pandemic and not an injury that has him sidelined. And though COVID-19 has derailed his season—along with much of the ACHA—he is still staying positive.

"If I never play another game again, I will have no regrets," he said. "The fact that I got to come back and play the sport I love competitively, it will always settle right with me."