Flyers broadcaster Myrtetus using lessons learned in hockey in battle against colon cancer

Jason Myrtetus thought that he was just getting older. He had noticed, at 45, that his vision was diminishing, forcing him into reading glasses and then all-the-time glasses. This, he figured, was more of the same.

He endured the symptoms for 18 months, ignoring them as best he could, justifying those he couldn't.

"All the signals were there, in hindsight," Myrtetus said. "But eventually I couldn't ignore them anymore. I was trying to figure out what was wrong. I knew something was wrong."

Myrtetus has been the pregame, intermission and postgame host of Philadelphia Flyers radio broadcasts since 2008 and the on-demand content creator and host of the "Flyers Daily" podcast. He's someone the Flyers consider an integral part of their community.

He sleuthed through the internet, finding all the best-case and worst-case solutions, diagnosing himself with everything from a bacterial infection to Crohn's Disease to ulcerative colitis.

"All while, at the same time, knowing that the 'C' word is in the back of my head," he said.

As the 2024-25 season started, the symptoms started to change, to worsen, to become unendurable and undeniable, with chronic diarrhea, chronic constipation, blood, trips to the bathroom sometimes reaching 30 or 40 each day.

His colonoscopy, scheduled for February, was months away when he finally landed in the emergency room.

The scans were moved up. The colonoscopy was moved up. Doctors removed three polyps and found a mass, a tumor located just above his rectum. They took a sample. He would have to wait for the results.

On Dec. 20, Myrtetus got the call from his doctor. He had stage 3 colon cancer.

"Yeah," he said. "It buckles your knees."

* * * *

Myrtetus didn't intend to have a career in sports. He didn't intend to have a career in radio. But after he found that a degree in forestry would involve entirely too much math and science, he switched majors to what then was known as broadcast cable communications at Penn State.

He was working at a beer distributor, as a beer runner, not long after the swap when a long-haired guy wearing a radio station hat came in and paid with a check.

The name on the check was Ed Wenck. Myrtetus recognized the name, from the morning radio show on the rock station. He approached him about an internship.

"He said, 'I'd love to have the beer guy as an intern,'" Myrtetus said.

Myrtetus was offered a spot the very next day.

After years in rock radio, he migrated to sports, and from programming to on-air personality.

By then, hockey had long been part of Myrtetus' life, dating to age 3 or so. His older twin brothers decided that they wanted to play and, of course, that meant Jason was all-in.

He started at 4. By 6, he was fully ensconced as a goalie.

"I played organized hockey from basically 5 years old until 50, to varying degrees," said Myrtetus, who added coaching to his resume 25 years ago, both on his son's team and as an assistant with his high school coach.

It was hockey, then radio, then radio and hockey.

The job has taken him from James Hetfield of Metallica to Pantera to Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, from the Flyers' run to the 2010 Stanley Cup Final to the days of Claude Giroux and his childhood idol, Ron Hextall.

"All of these dominoes just kind of fall into place, so you don't even question it," Myrtetus said. "You just go. I guess this is just what I was meant to do."

* * * *

At the end of February, Myrtetus is resting up for his next chemotherapy treatment, which he gets every other Thursday. His voice gets tired as he says it, weary with the weight of the known and the unknown.

"Those 4-5 days after chemo are a little slice of hell," he said.

When he was diagnosed, he went into fight-or-flight mode, a surge of strength that sustained him for the first two weeks, through meetings with oncologists and his care team, until the day he came home and effectively collapsed.

"I'm like, I'm going to kick its butt, my gloves are off, let's go," he said. "Brave front and really aggressive toward how I'm going to handle this. … The day that I came home from us finalizing my treatment, the moment I walked in my front door, it was like somebody put a shop vac in my body and took all of my adrenaline, all of my energy away."

He was in bed for three days.

Now it was reality.

He was staring at eight chemotherapy treatments in 16 weeks, an every-other-week course of drugs that has left him down 42 pounds since the diagnosis, a weight that keeps fluctuating with the draining effects of the cancer treatments.

After those treatments comes five weeks of radiation, plus a chemo pill five days per week. Then surgery.

It's an aggressive approach based on his age, 52, his relative health, his body weight, all the years of life that he has ahead. They want the treatment to be curative, to ensure that the cancer doesn't return in five years.

"But that means that this next nine months is not going to be easy," Myrtetus said. "And starting off, it hasn't. It's been tough."

He is tough enough to handle it, though, taking his hockey life and applying it to fighting this disease.

"It's just been my entire identity, like I adapt everything I learn in the game to everything that I face in life," Myrtetus said. "The same thing with the cancer treatment, drawing back onto my days as an athlete, kind of doing one period, one game at a time."

He is drawing on the support he's gotten from his family, wife Angela -- "She's singlehandedly going to save my life," he said -- and his three kids, plus the hockey community, including Flyers coach John Tortorella and "NHL on TNT" analyst Eddie Olczyk, from those around the game that have been touched by cancer or touched by Myrtetus or both.

The Flyers, who are especially attuned to supporting those who have been impacted by cancer, also have thrown their weight behind one of their own, someone whose knowledge and work ethic they believe has been crucial in the launch of the Flyers Broadcast Network.

Myrtetus recalled using lessons from Olczyk, who was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in 2017, while Myrtetus' mother battled cancer, eventually succumbing to it in early 2020. That came four years after his healthy, non-smoker father died two months after being diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, which already had metastasized to his brain.

Olczyk had noted being encouraged by his wife to attack his treatment "as a hockey player," and eventually helped walk Myrtetus through his treatment. The pair still keep in touch.

"You try to tell people what they need to know, not what they want to hear," Olczyk said. "Any sounding board that I can be for anybody that's in the cancer battle, regardless of it's colon cancer, the battle that I had, or anything else, very important to be there.

"As I told Jay, I said, 'If this old broken-down hockey player and horseplayer can do it, you can too.'"

Myrtetus and Tortorella have become close through the "Hockey & Hounds" weekly podcast, in which they discuss not only hockey, but also their shared passion for animal welfare, featuring a shelter dog that is available to be adopted on each episode.

Myrtetus has appreciated the way in which Tortorella has approached him during this time, pressing him to confront the situation, to keep battling, to not sit and sulk and pity himself.

"It's kind of like, 'Just push him,'" said Tortorella, who said the pair were "like teammates."

"I don’t think he's looking for pity or feeling sorry for himself. I think he's pushing himself and it's kind of like locker room talk that him and I go through. I send him a text every once in a while, 'Don't [expletive] it up,' and just keep pushing through it and stuff like that and we have a few laughs about it."

Myrtetus, early on, decided he wasn't going to retire into the shadows after he got the diagnosis. He wasn't going to hide. Throughout his life and his career, through talk radio and broadcasting, he always has been open and honest.

Why would this be any different?

"I've always been very transparent with the audience," he said. "I think they can identify with it. I'm not this made-up radio thing. I've always been [open] about trials and tribulations of life, going through parenting and all that stuff in my career. I just think it makes you authentic.

"So I decided early on that I would go public with my diagnosis and what I'm going through because I knew that people could identify with it and it would help people and, selfishly, I knew it would help me."

* * * *

Before one of his early treatments, Myrtetus was taping his "Flyers Daily" podcast, what the Flyers refer to as the foundation of their in-house network. It was a Wednesday night, hours before he would head in for his next dose of chemo. He told the listeners that he didn't want to go.

He had finally felt better, recovered from the last treatment. He didn't want to be sick again.

"You've got to be vulnerable about it and honest about it," he said. "But I wonder sometimes, are people coming to my content, whether it's on social media or podcasts or whatever it is that I do, as an escape and they don't want to hear it? Sports is an escape.

"But I know I'm doing the right thing because I've gotten so many direct messages, emails and Facebook messages that people just support [me], which is so awesome and helps me in moments of weakness."

It's not just that, though.

It's the other messages.

It's the messages from people asking about his symptoms, comparing them to what they're experiencing, allowing him to walk them through it. It's the messages from people in treatment now for cancer, whether it's colon or otherwise.

"I've made this connection with people that I don't know, but is incredibly impactful and humbling to me," Myrtetus said.

As Myrtetus knows, only too well, it's so easy to ignore the symptoms, to avoid the gut feelings and the truths. It's so easy to excuse and explain it away. His message to them always is the same. Go get checked. Go get the colonoscopy.

Maybe, he said, it's nothing. Maybe not.

"Because I denied it," said Myrtetus, whose cancer has some proximity to his lymph nodes, but which has not metastasized. "There were neon signs blinking in my face that something was wrong and I should have gone sooner. And I am beyond lucky because I did push it off and didn't want to hear it, that I got it still before it spread.

"So I am insanely lucky. So with that luck I've got to do something with that. And if that's to try and get somebody else in there to get checked out if they feel something's not right before it develops into something more significant, then that's a win."

Since his treatment started, the blockage has lessened, leading to Myrtetus' belief that the chemotherapy is working, that the tumor has shrunk. He now can sleep through the night, something that wasn't the case for the 18 months prior to treatment.

It is a relief.

Now he is working to ensure that others don't wait. He reminds that, at age 45, everyone should be getting colonoscopies, whether something is amiss or not.

"I hope it helps one, two, 10, however many people," he said. "It's all worth it. The support people have given me has been incredible and I plan to pay that forward too. I've met a lot of cancer buddies through this, and we can all help each other as we go through it.

"Because it's obviously extremely prevalent and unpleasant and horrible to go through, but we've got to keep our heads down and support each other and we'll get through it."

If you'd like to make a donation to help the Myrtetus family, you can do so here.

NHL.com deputy managing editor Adam Kimelman contributed to this report