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Curtis Bell has one of the more interesting resumes in the NHL.
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Published Aug 17, 2024 • 5 minute read
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Curtis Bell, formerly of the Pittsburgh Penguins, has been hired by the Vancouver Canucks as an athletic therapist Photo by Pittsburgh Penguins /prv
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When it comes to staffing up your hockey team, the resumes tend to be pretty homogeneous.
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The men and women who get hired to fill out a team’s staff tend to follow a common pattern: previous experience in sports, a strong work ethic, sometimes a connection to someone else on staff.
But every once in a while, a staffer will have some nuance to their story, an extra thread or two that reveals a fascinating backstory.
And one of the Vancouver Canucks’ newest athletic therapists very much fits the “fascinating backstory” bill.
On Friday, the Canucks announced three new members of the team’s medical staff: Chris Trivieri as assistant athletic therapist, Curtis Bell as athletic therapist and Gerry Ramogida as performance therapist. Triveri is a promotion from the Abbotsford Canucks, while Bell, who also has a master’s in applied clinical nutrition, joins the Canucks from the Pittsburgh Penguins. He was most recently an athletic trainer with the Penguins, but he also spent many seasons with the Pens as the director of performance. Ramogida is a Whistler-based chiropractor with a long list of experience in professional sport, working in the past with the Seattle Seahawks, U.K. Athletics, Athletics Canada, the Golden State Warriors, the Sacramento Kings and the Vancouver Whitecaps.
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Impressive people — but Bell’s path stands apart.
Bell dropped out of high school when he was 17, he told the Leave Your Mark podcast in 2022.
He wasn’t getting into trouble or anything, he revealed, just that he’d moved to Los Angeles the summer before grade 12 to live with his father; his parents had divorced several years before and he wasn’t jiving with his mom’s new living situation with his stepfather and his new step-siblings in Arizona.
The thing was his dad didn’t really say “OK time for you to go back to school.” And when teenage Bell realized that his dad wasn’t forcing him back, he said “awesome.”
Instead, he went to work. He worked at grocery stores and other places, doing what he called “odd jobs.” He got a job at Dodger Stadium, hawking drinks in the stands.
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“So it wasn’t as if I did nothing. I wasn’t like a total loser dropout. I was actually just trying to find myself,” he explained on the podcast.
After a few years of working, he went back to school and eventually played a little baseball in junior college.
Then he decided he wanted to be a pilot and figured he should enlist in the navy, where he could train to be a naval aviator.
But during the intake physical, he found out his vision wasn’t 20/20, so the pilot idea went out the window, but he was still enlisted in the navy. And he figured out that if he signed up for sonar technician training, he’d be assigned to San Diego, so he could stay close to home.
Sonar techs become so adept at their jobs, they can tell amazing details about the submarines they’re trying to track, just from the noises they pick up
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“We knew when a Russian sub actually flushed the toilet,” he said.
When his time in the navy came to an end a friend suggested he go back to his long-standing interest in sports and enrol in the athletic training program at Cal State Dominguez Hills. He later transferred to the University of Southern California and graduated in 1992.
He got his start in pro hockey with the Flint Generals of the old Colonial Hockey League in 1995, then was hired by the Tampa Bay Lightning in 1997 … because he’d been working for Tampa’s professional roller hockey team, which was owned by Mark Messier and his family.
He’s been in pro hockey pretty much ever since. He joined the New Jersey Devils organization in 1999, working with their AHL team in Albany for four years, then spent a year in the NHL with the Devils.
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Curtis Bell in his days as athletic trainer of the Florida Panthers. Photo by Andre Ringuette /Getty Images
After the 2004-05 lockout, he was head athletic trainer for the Florida Panthers for three seasons. Then he was out of the NHL for four years.
The first year, he went with Ed Belfour, who he’d got to know with the Panthers, to Sweden, when Belfour had a final pro season playing for Leksands. Then he went back to the U.S. and worked in an orthopedic clinic for a year or so.
Then a fateful call brought him back to hockey: Andy O’Brien, who had been a strength coach with the Panthers, was now working at the Edge School in Calgary and convinced Bell to try working at the private hockey academy for a while. On the side, they worked with NHLers in the off-season, including Sidney Crosby.
As the 2012-13 season was approaching, Bell was planning to go back to school to become a chiropractor when he got a call from the Penguins: would you come work for us — when the lockout is over.
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The rest is history. He worked in Pittsburgh for 12 seasons, first as an assistant trainer, then as director of conditioning and director of performance, then finally as athletic trainer. Obviously he knows the Canucks’ current management staff very well from when the likes of Patrik Allvin, Jim Rutherford, Rick Tocchet and Alex Trinca worked in Pittsburgh.
Biomechanics and nutrition are two of his passions. He’s looked a lot at the mechanics of skating, which hasn’t been studied as closely over the years as, say, a runner’s stride.
“There are so many factors that make a difference in how we individualize our idea of biomechanical optimization,” Bell told America’s Health Leader, an online magazine of New York Chiropractic College, in 2020. “We try to generalize it to a degree and have some sort of foundational system that focuses on strengthening everybody, but then it becomes an individualized program for guys that have different strengths, weaknesses, or flexibility levels. In essence, there is no exact science.”
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And he’s very focused on removing as much of what he calls “inflammatory aspects of our food” from players’ diets.
So no gluten, no dairy, no soy, and preferably meats that are grass-fed, wild-caught and organic.
He and his staff in Pittsburgh worked hard to look ahead at food options in road cities, while also recognizing their athletes deserve monthly cheat meals — and also that at the end of the day, they recognize reality.
“These guys are adults,” Bell said. “If they want to have a beer, or glass of wine, or a couple cookies, we also provide those options for them.”
He’s an interesting hire, there’s little doubt.
pjohnston@postmedia.com
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Courtesy : https://theprovince.com/sports/hockey/nhl/vancouver-canucks/canucks-hire-high-school-dropout-curtis-bell-as-a-trainer