Wade Belak, a former NHL player who most recently played for the Nashville Predators before retiring in the middle of the 2010-11 season, was found dead in a Toronto hotel room earlier today.

LFPress.com reports suicide as the cause of death, but nothing has been officially announced.

Belak is the third NHL player to die in the offseason. In May New York Rangers' Derek Boorgaard died from an accidentally lethal mix of alcohol and oxycodone, and just over two weeks ago Winnipeg's Rick Rypien committed suicide. All three men were enforcers, a very physical position that can cause a lot of head trauma and concussions, injuries which have recently been linked to a degenerative brain disease.

Very sad.