Rangers captain Jacob Trouba and wife, Kelly, both chasing big dreams in NYC

On the day the Rangers named Jacob Trouba captain, he spoke and wrote about how much his wife, Kelly, has helped him get to this point in his life and his career. The 28-year-old defenseman posted an open letter to Rangers fans on Twitter and made sure to point out, as he has often, that coming to New York wasn’t just a way out of Winnipeg for him.

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“Coming to New York three years ago was not just a great opportunity for me,” he wrote, “but it was also a place my wife could chase her dreams and her career as a physician. There isn’t a moment of this journey that we take for granted.”

It’s a privilege and an honor to be your captain New York. pic.twitter.com/slnp2qKb1o

— Jacob Trouba (@JacobTrouba) August 9, 2022

Dr. Kelly Tyson-Trouba got to be at Madison Square Garden late on the morning of Aug. 9, when the Rangers rolled out Trouba’s captaincy. A few hundred season-ticket holders were also on hand, and husband and wife watched on the Garden big board as messages were delivered from Rangers teammates to Trouba.

She was working on an hour of sleep, having finished her 7 p.m.-to-7 a.m. shift at Lenox Hill Hospital on Manhattan’s upper east side a few hours earlier. When Trouba headed up to the MSG Training Center an hour north of the city for media interviews, Tyson-Trouba went back to their lower-Manhattan apartment to rest up for her shift that night.

“We call it our 90-10,” Tyson-Trouba said. “We both knew for a long time because of our careers that things would never be 50-50 in terms of supporting each other and doing things to help each other out. During the playoffs it was, I don’t know, 98-2 in my direction. He was exhausted all the time, I hadn’t started my residency yet and I just wanted to make sure he didn’t have to think about a single thing except playing the games.

“We had maybe a week between the end of the playoffs and my residency starting. Now it’s 98-2 in the other direction. He’s with the dogs. He’s getting meals ready. In our relationship, he’s become so good at figuring out when I need a little more support, just listening and understanding what makes people tick. It’s something I really think he’s done in hockey as well, and that played a part in him becoming captain.”

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They are a couple of months shy of 10 years since Trouba and Tyson-Trouba met at a party in Ann Arbor, where Trouba was a freshman at Michigan and Tyson-Trouba was a senior. It was Halloween. He was dressed as Superman, she as Supergirl.

“Enchanted is the right word, I’d say,” said Andrew Copp, Trouba’s closest friend in hockey. “The stars were aligning.”

Trouba and Tyson-Trouba were together, then they weren’t. He was off to Winnipeg after one college year, the ninth pick of the 2012 draft, and she was off to Sydney to do a post-graduate fellowship. When she returned from Australia they were together again in Winnipeg for a time, then she moved to Fort Lauderdale to go to medical school at Nova Southeastern.

Trouba already had a home there so Florida became their offseason base, but the time they spent together during the hockey season was minimal. “I feel like communication has always been the biggest thing for us,” Trouba said. “We both have our own goals in our careers. We talk about them. We know what they are. During the seasons (in Winnipeg), it was tough. During the offseason, she’d be studying, so I do the dishes or whatever needs to be done.”

“It was just about trying to make it work,” Tyson-Trouba said. “My first year of med school, I was so stressed that I barely had time to talk to him. He just isn’t going to have that type of partnership where the other person is available all the time, which a lot of pro athletes have. He’s adapted really well to it.”

Trouba’s trade to the Rangers three summers ago brought them closer together, even though Tyson-Trouba was still in Florida in her final year of med school. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the couple’s attention turned from squeezing in time together during the hockey season and hospital rotations to worrying entirely about Tyson-Trouba and what she was encountering at the South Florida hospital where she was working as the pandemic overran the country.

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“They pulled all the med students out to work in the hospital,” she said. “It was tough as a student on the cusp of graduating to lose some of that education, but it pales in comparison to what I saw in the ER. The incredible amount of loss, it’s hard to put into words.”

“The first few weeks, we were terrified,” Trouba said. “She’s getting changed outside our house after coming home from the hospital, I’m cooking dinner … It’s not exactly what she signed up for but I wasn’t going to say anything.”

When Trouba returned to New York for the start of the 2020-21 season, there were some big changes. They were married in June of 2020, so that was the biggest one. Another was not so welcome: Tyson-Trouba has epilepsy and her seizures became more frequent as she finished medical school. She came to New York with Trouba, but instead of applying for residencies, she was trying to figure out how to manage her condition while Trouba tried to find his footing in Year 2 with the Rangers after a difficult first season.

“(The seizures) started late in high school for me,” Tyson-Trouba said. “I’d had them occasionally in college, on and off. I saw a ton of doctors, and the reality is women with epilepsy end up getting misdiagnosed quite a bit. Things started to get worse around Year 2 of med school; the seizures were more frequent. I saw a neurologist at the University of Miami who told me, ‘I’m surprised you made it to me before you had a grand mal seizure.’ The lack of sleep, stress, it can have an effect.

“And I’m sure it had an effect on Jacob, even though he’d never tell you if it did. He was up in Winnipeg and I was in Florida and that’s hard enough, but with (the possibility of a seizure) out there too, I’m sure it was tough on him. In hockey, you have to be able to block a lot of other things out to be successful. I think it weighs on him a little more than he’d admit.”

This past season was the closest to what you find with most pro athletes: Tyson-Trouba at home with their dog, Trouba commuting to practices and games with a partner at home. She decided to take a year off from the residency process to get her health in order and get settled in New York, which in turn might help Trouba feel more settled in New York in Year 3 of his Rangers tenure.

Tyson-Trouba found a neurologist and medication that has kept her seizures at bay. She sees her doctor while doing her own rounds at Lenox Hill sometimes, and the couple found a new gear in their relationship in their new home.

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“Now that I have a break, I’ve kind of been able to give back to him all the emotional energy and time that he’s given to me in the last year in a half,” Tyson-Trouba said during the season. “In medicine and sports you never really know what’s going on at home. It was a hard year outside of school with my health, and he was giving and giving and giving. I hoped it never affected him playing. You always wonder if you’re a burden on someone else. I know he spent a lot of time thinking about it. People think of him as someone who hits hard, is very sarcastic, but he’s very kind and quiet, really there for the people who need him.”

Perhaps the opposite happened this past season. Trouba was nearly named Rangers captain last September, but the front office decided to wait, going with a committee of alternates. A bit more settled in and relaxed after a rough first Rangers season and a decent second season, Trouba established himself as the team’s leader without a “C” on his sweater. And maybe it was no coincidence that the Rangers had the third-most points of any team in franchise history, followed by a run to the Eastern Conference final.

“That team’s not short on leadership, so maybe that says even more about Jacob, that out of all those guys, he’s wearing the C now,” said Copp, who was GM Chris Drury’s big trade-deadline acquisition and signed with the Red Wings this offseason. “Whatever needs to be said to Turk (coach Gerard Gallant) or Dru, he’s going to speak his mind. He’s authentically himself, sticks to his principles and has the trust of the guys around him. When I got there, it was obvious.”

Tyson-Trouba knows the question about her husband’s penchant for big hits is coming. She’s a doctor; her life’s passion is helping people. Her epilepsy makes her keenly aware of the brain and what can happen when it’s damaged. Trouba drew plenty of attention this season for a handful of massive hits. The one in Chicago that sent Jujhar Khaira off on a stretcher was particularly tough to see, but fans of several teams have Trouba on the top of their enemies list now.

“It’s complicated,” she said. “I get Instagram messages from people asking me how I feel about his play, what my moral stance is. … It’s a physical sport. It’s not my place to judge what goes on there.”

“It’s never been a situation that’s weighed on him,” Copp said. “I think that helps his standing with the team, with management. Sure, we talked a little about the outrageous things people get to say on social media without repercussions. We’ve all had that at one time or another. He’s going to do what he thinks his team needs from him. That’s a great quality for a leader to have — not caring about who’s going to say what, if you’re hurting any feelings. You’re doing what’s right for your team. He’s willing to do whatever it takes.”

Trouba hosted Copp for a couple of weeks after the trade that brought him from Winnipeg to New York. He did the same for Frank Vatrano, Trouba’s teammate from the U.S. National Team Development Program. The little things that peeked out during the season and the playoff run that showed Trouba as the right choice for captain all added up, even his “We love you, Lindsay, get better!” shout-out from the postgame podium one night at the Garden after media relations manager Lindsay Hayes was hit in the head by a puck during a game.

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“He really cares a lot,” Tyson-Trouba said. “He has a really good way of being able to care about things but not let that level of investment interfere with outcomes. Seeing him (become captain), I’m so proud of him, seeing him develop and flourish as a person. He’s from the suburbs and he didn’t necessarily think a big city would be for him. And this is home now. We sold our place in Florida. This is where we want to be.”

Tyson-Trouba was speaking on the phone from a break room at Lenox Hill, barely six weeks into her residency. The twists and turns of her and Trouba’s decade have, finally, come together in an extraordinary way, Dr. Kelly Tyson-Trouba and Rangers captain Jacob Trouba, doing what they love in the same place at the same time.

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