The Boards



As My Junior Career Comes to an End

5-27-2007 14:55:56


It was the end of August and the Burnaby Express training camp was starting up. Our team’s success the previous year had put significant pressure on us for the upcoming season. And despite having a solid group of returning players, we started slowly and by Christmas found ourselves in last place in our division. Our coach made a couple trades just after Christmas and it was as if we had a clean slate. In the second half of the season we had the best record in the league, and finished fourth of eight in our division.

Early in September I flew down to the University of Wisconsin for my “official visit”. Unfortunately, the game schedules for both the Wisconsin Badgers and the Burnaby Express overlapped every weekend during the year, so I chose to go before our season started so I wouldn’t miss any games. While I didn’t see the UW badgers play hockey, I was able to attend a football game. There were 82,000 screaming fans in attendance at Camp Randall stadium all dressed in cardinal and white watching their Badgers beat Western Illinois 34-10. I had a great time meeting most of UW hockey team and hanging out with them during my weekend visit.

Throughout the year our team battled injuries. We constantly had people out of the lineup that were valuable in our team’s success. Although there were several different line changes during the year, for the most part I played with Tyler McNeely, Jovan Matic and Chris Rengert. They were all veterans and helped me considerably throughout the year. I was fortunate enough to have played with Tyler and Jovan during our championship run the previous season.

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