KENORA, Ontario � Joe Murphy wanders outside in a steady rain, eventually finding a place to sleep for the night in the doorway of a small restaurant.
His black tennis shoes are soaking wet and the bottom of his feet have pruned and turned bright white.
Murphy, selected by the Detroit Red Wings with the No. 1 overall pick in 1986, earned more than $13 million while playing 15 seasons in the NHL, but he is homeless again, just like last year. He doesn't own socks, so he rips a T-shirt into strips and wraps them around his ankles.
"These are my socks right now," Murphy says. "My feet have gone all white. Freakin' nasty. I don't need to remove my toes, I don't think. But it's going to be stinging and nasty, right?"
Dozens of people have tried to get Murphy off the streets of this small tourist town the past two years, including the NHL Alumni Association, members of the local police department, former teammates, his lawyer and an entire team of mental health experts and social workers. He refuses almost all of it.
Murphy stayed in an extended-stay motel paid by the NHL Alumni Association for several months last winter but moved out, although he can't offer a coherent reason. He spent time at a hospital in Thunder Bay, Ontario, on the banks of Lake Superior, for a court-ordered mental-health evaluation. But he's back in Kenora. He slept in a tent but he says it ripped. And now, he is back sleeping on benches, in doorways, inside a tunnel and under a gas station sign at the edge of this town of about 15,000, about 340 miles north of Minneapolis.
A year ago, Free Press photographer Eric Seals and I spent several days with Murphy in Kenora working on a story about Murphy. The whole time, I was consumed with one question: How does one of the NHL's No. 1 overall picks end up homeless?
Earlier this summer, I heard Murphy was back on the streets, so we returned to Kenora. After searching for him for 18 hours in a steady rain, we found him walking down a road near a Walmart. But this time, a different question keeps nagging at me: Why does he stay on the streets, refusing assistance?
"I do like being alone," Murphy says. "I have a lot of energy. People are always coming after me to talk. Not physically. I can feel the spiritual stuff. I just like being alone in a room. When I'm out talking to people, it bothers me sometimes."
Murphy is obsessed with angels and archangels. He believes spirits control people by getting them to say things and do things like "marionettes." As if they're puppets.
"Did you hear that?" he asks, looking at me with a stunned expression, while sitting in a booth at an A&W.
"What?" I reply.
"Come on, you know what happened," he says. "There was a spirit above your head and you told it to leave and vvvrrpp! Gone."
He will say this to me several times over a couple of days in Kenora, mentioning the spirits he hears above my head.
"You didn't hear that? You have a power," he says, as his eyes widen and he looks at me in wonderment. "You just did something. I was listening to you. I don't know if you heard it. You just took somebody out. I don't know who it was. It's none of my business. But they are gone."
Murphy talks openly about having mental health issues. Murphy has struggled with depression, difficulty thinking, short-term memory loss, emotional instability and suicidal thoughts _ all of which are symptoms associated with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative disease believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head.
Murphy suffered several concussions playing professional hockey, although it is unclear what impact that has on his current condition.
Murphy was part of the failed attempt to attain class-action status in a concussion lawsuit against the NHL. The lawsuit argued Murphy "suffered multiple head traumas during his NHL career that were improperly diagnosed and treated by the NHL. Mr. Murphy never was warned by the NHL of the negative health effects of head trauma."
The NHL announced an $18.9 million settlement in November for more than 300 retired players who accused the league of failing to protect them from head injuries or warning them of the risks involved with playing. Each player who agrees to the settlement will receive $22,000 and could be eligible for up to $75,000 in medical treatment. "The settlement came for the lawyers," Murphy says. "I have a settlement payment. It gets paid on July 1 or before. It works out to about $35,000 Canadian."
As he says this, it is past July 1, and it is unclear whether he has chosen to opt into the settlement. He says he has no desire to claim $75,000 in medical assistance, although he incorrectly assumes he could get $75,000 in cash. "Now, what they have in place, it's another $75,000 _ I can go get," he says. "But they have the NHL's doctors look at me. I'm not signing up for that. I don't want that extra money. I don't want them to check me out."
Talking to Murphy is fascinating but also confusing. Nothing moves in a straight line. The subject changes suddenly. Thoughts don't always connect. Follow-up questions are futile because he jumps quickly to the next subject.
Maybe, he's being cagey. Or he is afraid to let it out that he could soon come into some money _ he says everything is about to change and talks about moving two-and-a-half hours west to Winnipeg for the winter. Or maybe, everything is sort of jumbled in his brain. It's not clear. He won't say what he's going to do.
"In hindsight, I think there will be other lawsuits; I'm not looking for _ " he says, and doesn't finish his thought. Instead, his tone changes and he starts to rattle off some quotes that sound like an athlete spouting cliches in a post-game interview. "I have food, shelter and clothing," he says. "The game is a great game. I don't want to talk about the concussions. The game is playing great they are concussions free, and they have all the protocols, and it's a great game."
Murphy is a fascinating case study at the crux of several issues _ traumatic brain injuries, mental health issues and the ripple effect of concussion lawsuits on professional sports. How do you help somebody who doesn't want help? Or won't accept it?
And what will happen to his life if he comes into a sudden influx of cash from a settlement?
