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Probert autopsy shows “no foul play”

Windsor Regional Hospital in Ontario have found out that no foul play affected the death of former NHL enforcer Bob Probert. Mlive.com’s George Malik has been all over everything about what’s going on with the death of Probert, and I can tip my cap to him for virtually every thing that’s been said or found out about what happened yesterday.

One note that Malik does pass along is that Detroit’s WXYZ had a report stating there was something telling about the possible cause of death.

Per the evening news: WXYZ’s Don Shane confirms Probert had 90% blockage on left side of his heart and that caused a heart attack.

The catch with anyone in the media reporting this, as Malik notes in his update, is that the hospital won’t release the actual cause of death themselves and it’s up to the family if they want to release the information. A toxicology report will be run on Probert as well, but that will take up to a month to return results. That said, if it’s true that Probert’s heart was in such shape, death via heart attack is not at all surprising.

What makes this report even sadder still is that heart problems ran in Probert’s family as his father passed away at the age of 41 from a heart attack as the National Post finds out from Glen Schofield, a childhood friend of Probert’s.

“His dad passed away at about the same age,” he remembered. “Bob was 17. He buried him the day before he left for training camp in (Brantford of the Ontario Hockey League). ... But his father knew he had been drafted that summer.”

That’s a tough thing for any kid and makes me recall the stories told about legendary Yankees slugger Mickey Mantle who also had his father die at an early age. The affect it had on Mantle was that he lived his life very hard as a borderline alcoholic while living as a baseball icon in New York City. The parallels that can be drawn with how Probert lived his life are almost too easy to make. The difference being here that Mantle outlived his father and every male in his family while Probert seemingly succumbed to the same fate.

Probert’s funeral will be on Friday morning in Windsor, Ontario.