Teen from Alexandria recovering after breaking his neck during hockey game [Video]

ST PAUL, Minn. — A hockey player from Alexandria is fighting to breathe on his own. 

Over the weekend, Jackson Drum was severely injured in a hockey game in Vancouver, Canada. The 17-year-old currently plays for Idaho’s Coeur D’Alene Hockey Academy. He used to play for the Alexandria Area Boys High School Hockey before he earned a spot at the academy last fall.

Drum’s aunt, Emily Haeg Nguyen, said her nephew worked hard to get into the academy and is heartbroken his dream of playing hockey at the college level is over.

“During the game, he went into the boards, and he broke his neck and actually on the ice he stopped breathing, and they had to resuscitate him,” Haeg Nguyen said.

The next day, he had spinal cord surgery to fuse his C1 and C2 vertebrae. She said he …