Arizona State hockey player Matthew Mayich remains incapacitated more than two weeks after he collapsed during an outdoor team practice in Tempe.
“Matthew’s injuries [are] from exertional heat stroke that caused the lack of oxygen to his brain,” the family’s attorney, Robert Carey, told The Times on Thursday. “There were no other contributing conditions, only exertion-related heat. This is not a coma, and the family is at his bedside praying for a miracle.”
While the family has not given up on the 21-year-old former draft pick of the St. Louis Blues, Carey said the prognosis they have received is not good.
“He’s been incapacitated from the moment he left the field, and with no chance of recovering,” said Carey, who added that he is limited on what he has been authorized to discuss concerning Mayich’s condition.
He added that the family is “just giving him a chance to have a miracle. And when they decide that’s not coming — I don’t know. They’re in a position no parent should ever be in.”
Mayich was selected by the Blues in the sixth round of the 2023 draft but never signed with the team. He played four seasons in the Ontario Hockey League and one at Clarkson University last season before transferring to Arizona State.
Arizona State and its police department referred questions from The Times to a recent statement from the university. In its statement, the university did not mention Mayich by name because of “privacy interests” but talked about an ASU hockey player “who collapsed during an outdoor workout on Aug. 20” and “remains hospitalized.”
Arizona State said that the workout was a team event at which coaches and training staff were present, “along with a third party who had previously worked with the ASU Hockey team.”
The university stressed that it has policies regarding the engagement of “outside entities who interact with ASU student-athletes” and heat-illness guidelines for outdoor workouts. It added that James Rund, senior vice president for educational outreach and student services, would lead a review into the “circumstances surrounding the workout and related university policies, procedures and training protocols.”
“The review will take the time needed to collect and assess information in a manner that is thoughtful, respectful of the student-athlete, his family, his teammates and ASU’s privacy obligations,” the statement says.
The practice took place on a field outside the team’s on-campus arena. According to the university’s statement, the campus police department responded to a 911 call at approximately 8:30 a.m. “and began investigating as they would anytime they are called to a serious incident.”
The temperature at around that time in Tempe that morning was in the upper 80s.
Carey said that from talking to people who were present at the practice and relying on “other objective evidence,” he has determined that it was a military-style practice that ran “nonstop for well over an hour. And there was no rest, and there was almost no water.”
“Matthew was struggling,” Carey said, based on the information he has gathered. “He was disoriented, confused, dizzy, well before he collapsed. … Matthew was demonstrating signs of a problem well before he collapsed, and they did nothing.”
After Mayich’s collapse, Carey said, the staff was “completely and utterly unprepared” to treat him.
“So when he left the field that day, by the time he got to the hospital, there was almost zero chance of recovery,” Carey said.
Carey, who was chief deputy attorney general of Arizona during the 1990s, said he has been retained as the family’s counsel to help guide them through the situation, but no decision about any kind of legal action has been made at this point.
“They’re not going to make any decisions, and I’m not going to make any recommendations, until we get an investigation completed that’s transparent and robust and competent,” Carey said. “We need to know what happened before we can say you have rights or here’s a way to fix things for other kids down the road. …
“We just need to see what the evidence is. That’s our main goal right now, let’s go get the evidence and figure out what happened.”
He added that the family wanted him to express their gratitude for the outpouring of support they’ve gotten during this time.
“They’re from Canada and they’re in Arizona, where they had no connection really, and they’re sitting in a hospital every day,” Carey said, “and they’re just very appreciative of the support they’ve received across the country to help them.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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