"Talk to Daymond Langkow about his return to the Calgary Flames from a broken neck, and you get the distinct impression this is a routine thing.

Ho hum. Business as usual. Nothing to see here.

Or is there?

"I get it,"says world aerials skiing champion Warren Shouldice. "I told myself it wasn't a big deal."

Over time, Shouldice has come to realize how a big of a deal it is to return to a sport that threatened to confine him to a wheelchair for life.

Shoudice, 28, fractured the C4 and C5 vertebrae at the base of his neck as an an 18-year-old on a water ramp in Lake Placid, N.Y.

As such, the Calgary native (and diehard Flames fan) knows better than most what Langkow must have felt like returning to action Friday in St. Louis some 376 days after a hockey puck fractured vertebrae at the base of his neck.

"The fact I broke my neck was such an eye-opener," Shouldice said. "It basically showed that terrible things could happen to me in my sport.

"It was kind of the end of my innocence as an athlete – the end of my thinking I was indestructible."

Like Langkow, Shouldice suffered the injury in a freak accident. On a routine jump, he soared some five stories in the air, only to over-rotate and land with his neck tucked in.

Snap!

"That was the worst 24 hours of my life- by a mile," Shouldice said. "Especially the first 12 hours. They weren't quite sure what was going to happen. I went to the hospital, and they put me in traction.

"I wouldn't wish that on anybody. I had no idea what it was going to happen to me. It was terrible."

The Langkow injury came on a routine play in Minnesota when he fell awkwardly in front of an Ian White point shot. The puck cranked him right at the base of the neck."