Eddie Olczyk was ready to give up.

The NHL player turned broadcaster was on his second round of chemotherapy for stage 3 colon cancer, and the effects were so severe that he told his wife, Diana, he couldn’t do it anymore. Diana told her husband to fight for her, their kids and everyone who loved him.

“We had a moment, which probably lasted 30 minutes where all we did was cry,” Eddie Olczyk said. “I needed that. I’ve never quit or bailed on anything in my life. Even if I knew what the end result was going to be, you play to the end. You’re down 7-1 late in the third, you play to the end. ”

After playing more than 1,100 NHL games, Olczyk only figured out how tough he really was after battling and beating cancer. Now more than 24 months since being declared free of the disease, Olczyk is the NHL’s 2019 Hockey Fights Cancer ambassador and released a book, “Beating the Odds in Hockey and in Life” to tell his story.

Olczyk, now 53, hopes to be a cautionary tale about early detection and an inspiration to those fighting cancer that, “If that old broken down hockey player can do it, well, I can do it, too.”