Local Hero Named USA Hockey Disabled Athlete of the Year | FEATURE

John O’Connell walks from his home to the local bus stop with his hockey bag and stick in tow and sunglasses on.

O’Connell, who is 62 years old, takes the bus from his hometown of Toms River, New Jersey into Penn Station in Manhattan. From there, he rides a train to Newark Penn Station. Another train ride lands him in Boonton, New Jersey. At that point he hops in an Uber to arrive at the Bridgewater Ice Arena.

In total, it takes roughly four hours of travel time, all just for O’Connell to play hockey for an hour.

After the exhaustive travel, O'Connell reaches his destination. He walks into the arena pulling his bag behind him with a white walking cane tapping in front of him.

Oh, did we mention that he does all of that traveling and playing hockey as a blind person?

“I’ve become very good friends with a couple of bus drivers out of Toms River. They think it’s cool. They see the hockey bag,” O’Connell laughed. “You think the world is going to hell or falling apart. I meet all sorts of people. Overwhelmingly, I meet people that want to help me all the time. It gives you a good sense of people.”

O’Connell, who served over two decades with the U.S. Air Force, plays for the NJ Warriors, a hockey program that gives disabled US military veterans an opportunity to play the sport. The travel isn't easy and sometimes it takes him nearly 12 hours total from the time he leaves his home in the afternoon to when he arrives back at the end of the night. But O'Connell won't let anything stand in the way of his playing the game. Not travel. Not age. Not blindness.

And it is because of his perseverance and dedication to overcome obstacles on and off the ice, O'Connell was named the 2025 USA Hockey Disabled Athlete of the Year.

“It was a real honor,” he said. “You’re invisible to the world as a blind person. It’s just nice that somebody recognizes you. That somebody sees you.”

O’Connell, who will be the Devils’ 'Hero of the Game’ for Monday’s Military Appreciation Night, is legally blind but still has limited eyesight. He can see what’s directly in front of his line of vision, but he can’t see peripherally – so he won’t see people standing right next to him – and has nearly zero vision at night.

Despite those limitations, he didn’t let it interfere with his ability to play hockey. And in many ways, hockey has revitalized his life.

“There are a lot of blind people that become the cat in the window because they have so many close calls (of getting hurt),” he said. “When I first went to (school for the blind), they told me broken bones were going to be part of the deal, just get used to it. So, a lot of people get afraid to go out and have a close call with a car crossing an intersection and say it’s just not worth it.

“Hockey forces me to keep my skills up. It keeps my senses up. It keeps me sharp."

Despite going blind in his 50s, O’Connell never let it be an excuse.

“When you go blind, everyone tells you the things you can’t do,” he said. “You can’t fly an airplane. You can’t drive a car. You can’t work. You can’t do this; you can’t do that. It’s just no, no, no, no.

“But when it came to hockey, no one ever said no to me.”

O’Connell’s first exposure to hockey was a coincidence.

He grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island as a youth. His father, Raymond, was a police officer whose station was on Coney Island. And next to the police department was a hockey rink. So, his father asked John and his older brother Ray if they wanted to play hockey.

They figured why not?

"We didn't know what we were getting into," O'Connell laughed. “I remember being in the car early mornings with my dad because ice time was always at like 5:30 a.m. or really late at night on a weekend."

On occasion, his father would take the kids to watch the New York Rangers play at Madison Square Garden. And of course, they sat in the upper deck.

“This was back in the day when you could smoke,” he noted. “And the smoke would make its way all the way up to us. Sometimes, it was hard to see the ice it would be so thick.”

O’Connell added with a huge smile, “the biggest thing I remember was watching games with my dad. That was a lot of fun.”

The more he skated and played, the better O’Connell became as a player. While he was in high school, his family moved to Connecticut, and he played for his high school hockey club.

“I was good, I wasn’t great,” O’Connell said humbly. But he was “good” enough to land on the varsity squad as a defenseman and occasional center immediately.

But as his high school career was coming to an end, O’Connell had to start thinking about his future. And he thought about the bigger picture, the global picture.

23 years, 4 months, 11 days

That’s how long O’Connell served with the United States Air Force. And it was all because he wanted to see the world.

“In high school, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I wanted to travel because (my family) never traveled anywhere. We didn’t have the money,” he said. “So, I looked at going into the Merchant Marines. I went to a high school career thing and there were these two Navy pilots there. They said, ‘You should just be a pilot. Then you can travel, and you don’t have to stay on a boat.’”

O’Connell followed their advice. He attended Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. He joined the Air Force ROTC, got a pilot slot and went on to fly with the Air Force.

And not only did he get to travel out of tri-state he got to see the world. During his time with the Air Force, he took part in many humanitarian missions from all across the globe.

"We were providing hope around the world," he recalled. “We were providing food or assistance to people, whether it was earthquakes, floods or famine. That was fulfilling. You felt like you were making a difference.”

O’Connell didn’t just deliver aid. He met and talked to the locals firsthand and learned about their lives and culture.

“I considered myself kind of an ambassador,” he said. “Traveling around the world, I met a lot of people that didn’t speak my language, didn’t look like me, didn’t worship the same god as me, but I realized they were just like me.

“They’re just trying to keep a roof over their head and put food on the table for their family.”

O’Connell stepped away from active duty for a time and joined the New York Air National Guard. He was put back on active duty following 9/11 and was stationed at McGuire Air Force Base.

After a few more years serving his country, he retired from active duty for good. In all, he served over 23 years for his country.

Hockey took a backseat during his early years of service. But the passion was still there simmering in the embers. It would just take some time to reignite.

In the early ‘90s O’Connell was stationed in San Antonio, Texas. It wasn’t exactly a hockey hotbed of an area. However, some expat Canadians started a league in a hockey rink that was converted from an old roller-skating rink. One side of the “boards” was made of cinder blocks.

O’Connell decided to put a team together with all the military branches in the area as a fun stress reliever.

“There were five military bases, so we had members from each one of the bases,” he said. “We took anyone. We had maintenance people, security people, two civilians with DoD. Everyone played and looked forward to playing. There was that camaraderie.”

It has been a decade since O’Connell had played regularly. In fact, he was still using his old beat-up high school equipment. But the re-fell in love with the game.

“That’s where that spark ignited as an adult,” he said. “I was away from hockey for a while and now it was fun again.”

To make the experience even sweeter, O’Connell’s team won the championship three years in a row. And they didn’t just beat anybody to win. The team they faced was sponsored by a large chain that recruited and paid players from Canada to play for them.

“They had all this nice gear and their new bags, and we were ragtag,” he recalled. “(Winning) was a really big deal. It was a good feeling.”

It was also during this time that O’Connell was given his tactical call sign: “Slapshot.”

“I got the name from my boss, who said I spent more time on the phone talking hockey than I did doing my job,” he laughed.

The fire was burning once again for the game. And this time it would not go out. Even though life was about to throw some obstacles in the way.

“Over the last 10 years it’s been a slow decent into the abyss.”

That’s how O’Connell described his blindness.

“It just kind of happened,” he continued. “I didn’t just wake up one day and I couldn’t see. Weird stuff was happening, and it progressed to where we are today.”

Initially, O’Connell thought he just needed reading glasses. So, he went for a checkup expecting to walk away with some new lenses. But that’s when he learned it was more serious.

“I went in and there was something really wrong with my retinas,” he said.

Just as O’Connell’s first exposure to hockey was a coincidence, another coincidence would keep him in the game.

In a twist of fate, his doctor at the Wilmer Eye Institute at John Hopkins in Maryland certified Paralympic athletes for vision. After talking a bit of hockey, he suggested that O’Connell check out Blind Hockey in Washington, D.C.

O’Connell joined the club and loved it. However, the travel from New Jersey to D.C. was burdensome and expensive. It required an Amtrak ride and a hotel night just to play 75 minutes of hockey. But a coach with Blind Hockey, a veteran, told O’Connell to look into the NJ Warrior.

However, O’Connell was hesitant.

“A lot of times people don’t want to deal with a blind person,” he reasoned. “They don’t know how to help you. You scare them and they think you’re a liability.”

Still, O’Connell called. He explained his situation and said he was just looking for some ice time.

“I wasn’t looking to play on a team,” he said. “I just wanted to get some skating in instead of going to Washington. (The coach) said, ‘we have a game coming up’ and asked if was going to be at the game. I thought yeah, I’ll go to the game and watch.

“The coach goes, ‘No, you’re second line left wing.’”

O’Connell played in that game – of which the Warriors won – and has never looked back.

In 2024, at the USA Hockey Warrior National Championship, O’Connell and the NJ Warriors went undefeated to take home the Tier 5 National Championship.

But a year later, O’Connell thought he was getting kicked off the team.

Ted Curtin, who co-founded the New Jersey Warriors, asked O’Connell if they could do a quick Zoom call.

“We never do Zoom calls,” O’Connell said. “I’m thinking this is it for me. I get on this call and there are two other people on there. “

That’s when the group informed O’Connell that they had submitted him for the USA Hockey Disabled Athlete of the Year.

They added: “We put you in for it, but you won it on your own.”

“I was like, what?” he laughed. “I thought I was getting kicked off the team and instead I got Disabled Athlete of the Year.”

He added: “I didn’t travel four hours (to hockey rinks for accolades). I did it because it’s fun, it keeps me in shape and I’m having a good time. And somebody recognized it. And that’s nice.”

Off the ice, O’Connell is a passionate advocate for people with visual impairments and disabled veterans. He has appeared twice before the New Jersey State Senate to push the legislature to provide transpiration for veterans who need help to get to appointments, run errands or get to the hockey rink. He was appointed to the New Jersey Commission for the Blind State Rehabilitation Council and was elected to the board of directors for the Blinded Veterans Association, for which he is a member of the Adaptive Sports and Recreation Committee.

O’Connell is living proof that no matter how big the obstacle, nothing is impossible. No matter your age, your vision, your distance, your ableness, if you have the will to succeed, you will find a way.

“I would say to anyone, no matter what your situation is, it’s only impossible until somebody does it,” he said. “If you want to play hockey, get to the rink, put the skates on and just see what happens.”

Photos courtesy of the O’Connell family.