Link Gaetz was a former up and coming hockey enforcer who's NHL career was brutally cut short in 1992 when he was thrown from a Camero traveling at 80/mph. He would go on to never play another NHL game after suffering brain stem injuries and losing 50% of his movements on the left side of his body. He morphed into a minor league lifer. Over the years he has had problems with drugs, alcohol and the law; To say the least, his reputation of being the meanest hockey player to ever live has followed him to every city he has played in. Link had played for over 24 teams during the rest of his career ranging from Anchorage to Mexico City and almost everywhere in between, before hanging up the skates in 2007. After playing his final season with the St. John Scorpions, Link went virtually missing. After finally tracking him down, Link has agreed to participate in a documentary film about his life and career. This is a blog to track the development and production of the upcoming documentary film "The Missing Link" about former hockey enforcer Link Gaetz.

UPDATE 09.11.2009 - Link: Back in Town.

So I talked to Link the other day, he’s back in town and said that Saskatchewan was good and that he had made a few bucks. I’m here still in Fort St. James on the last legs of my job here which wraps up on the first of October. Things are still in the works, still sorting some stuff out. When I get back to Vancouver the production should start taking off and we’ll go from there. Proposal is practically ready to start sending around with a couple of touch ups and added information.

That’s about all the information I really can release about the project right now.

Also bellow the photo is the introduction to an article I’m currently writing about Gaetz.

Enjoy

-James de Boer

For Link Gaetz, it would have been the comeback of the century…After a 1992 car accident that saw him narrowly cheat death, the 6’3’’ 240 pound defenseman’s NHL career was over before it had even really started. After spending the rest of his career in the low ranks of professional hockey bouncing from team to team, league to league and earning the reputation as ‘the meanest player to ever play the game’ -  Gaetz’s career is all but over as he sits at his parents house in Mission, BC, waiting for a call for work from a pipe line union. Not Gaetz’s ideal career choice, who was once regarded as one of the best young defenseman coming into the 1988 NHL entry draft. For Gaetz, his whole life up until his retirement in 2007 has been spent in cheap hotels, dank arenas and dingy bars. Now at age 41, with all the excitement in the past Link is finally ready to move on to the next phase in his life.