Playing Career
Considered an inspiration to deaf and hearing-impaired hockey players during and after his professional hockey career, Kyte was the only player of his time to wear hearing aids during games. According to NHL records, Kyte was the first legally deaf player to play major pro hockey. To protect his hearing aids, Kyte wore a specially-designed helmet that had flaps covering the center of his ears. Although Kyte had full hearing at birth, by the time he was three-years-old, he was legally deaf. Doctors discovered he had been born with a hereditary hearing ailment that caused degeneration of the audio nerve. Throughout his career Kyte was very active in charitable causes involving hearing impairment. Kyte learned sign language even though it wasn't necessary for him to communicate and during off-seasons in his early NHL career, he worked with deaf and hearing-impaired children at a hockey school sponsored by Stan Mikita in Chicago. While a player, he co-founded the Canadian Hearing Impaired Hockey Association, a hockey school for the deaf, deafened and hard of hearing in Toronto and not long after, started the Jim Kyte Hockey School for the Hearing Impaired. It was a registered charity he and his family devoted countless hours towards for eight years, operating hockey schools for deaf, deafened and hard of hearing children in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Ottawa. Kyte's hockey career came to an end in 1997 when he suffered severe post-concussion syndrome as a result of being a victim in an auto accident.
Kyte was renowned for his strong physical and reliable defensive play. Kyte recorded a mere 66 points in 598 career National Hockey League games for the Winnipeg Jets, Pittsburgh Penguins, Calgary Flames, Ottawa Senators and San Jose Sharks. In his most productive season, 1988–89, he scored three goals and added nine assists for twelve points in seventy-four games. He retired in 1997.
Kyte is the son of former Canadian university athletic star John Kyte, St. Francis Xavier University's Athlete-of-the-Half-Century. Jim is also the brother of former Canadian track team member Aynslee Kyte.
Read more about this topic: Jim Kyte
Famous quotes containing the words playing and/or career:
“I am now quite lame, from scuffling, all my fingers stiffened by playing ball. Pretty business for a law student. Yes, pretty enough; why not? Good exercise and great sport.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)