Thoughts on a young goaltender . . .

The amount of vitriol that oftentimes is spewed in the direction of teenage hockey players by anonymous people never ceases to amaze me.
Presumably the vast majority, if not all, of the venomous set are adults, which makes matters just that much worse.
One morning last week, I posted to this blog a short piece involving the decision by James Priestner, an 18-year-old goaltender, to leave the Prince George Cougars. Priestner referred to it as retiring. Hopefully, a few months away from the game will rekindle the fire. But only time will tell.
In the meantime, anonymous knuckleheads emerged from the woodwork, like a bunch of Halloween zombies, and hacked away at the kid. Some of the comments were nothing short of character assassination by those who will never have met Priestner and who would know next to nothing about his situation.
Sheesh, people, take a deep breath and consider that this is an 18-year-old who just two years ago was considered to be among the elite 16-year-old goaltenders in Western Canada. And now, today, he is out of hockey, confused and no doubt wondering what happened to what once was a promising career.
Priestner, from Edmonton, was a second-round selection by the Kamloops Blazers in the 2006 bantam draft. He was the 31st player taken in that draft. He stuck with the Blazers as a 16-year-old, going 6-12-1, with a 3.41 GAA and a .873 save percentage on a team that went 27-41-4.
Unfortunately, he was collateral damage to all that went on in Kamloops during the summer of 2007 and the season of 2007-08. While Tom Gaglardi, Shane Doan, Jarome Iginla, Mark Recchi and Darryl Sydor were in the process of buying the Kamloops franchise from the non-profit Kamloops Blazers Sports Society and taking it private, Priestner’s father, Mike, made an ill-fated attempt at purchasing part of the organization.
Early in the 2008-09 season, James Priestner left Kamloops and returned home to Edmonton. He subsequently was traded to the Brandon Wheat Kings, where he went 17-7-2, 3.08, .883 while backing up Andrew Hayes.
The Wheat Kings, the host team for the 2010 Memorial Cup, turned around in August and traded him to the Prince George Cougars, who have the WHL’s worst record. With them, Priestner was 2-8-0, 4.76, .872.
As it turns out, he had spent the summer trying to rediscover his passion for the game. By early in the season, though, he realized it wasn’t there and that it was time to go, time to get away from the game.
In mid-October, Priestner told Dean Clark, the Cougars‘ head coach, that he was finished, that he would be leaving as soon as the team could find a replacement. Clark, who had been the general manager and head coach in Kamloops when Priestner was drafted, tried to talk the kid out of it.
But once the Cougars landed Hudson Stremmel, 18, who left the NCAA Division 1 Colorado College Tigers to join them, Priestner was out of there. He left Prince George early last week and headed for Edmonton.
Here is a young man with a sunny disposition who is always quick to say "Hello," and even quicker with a smile. He went from a mediocre team to a Memorial Cup team to the poorest team in the league. Once seen as a fine, young goaltender, he wasn’t selected in the NHL draft.
And now he feels, at least today, that his career is over.
Maybe one day he will be able to put it all together and figure out what happened, what, if anything, went wrong.
In the meantime, here’s an email I received on this very subject:
“I read your article on James Priestner and think it’s really unfortunate to see a person like that walk away from the game at such a young age. There must have been some strong inner compulsion on his part to abandon the game and I really do wish him well in his future endeavours because I¹m sure he’ll be successful in whatever he chooses to do.
“I’m really disappointed in the comments left by some of the readers who fail to see the larger picture and simply toss insults in his direction. He is an 18-year-old young man who made a very difficult life decision. It would have been nice to see more encouraging comments.
“I think people forget these are kids for all intents and purposes . . . people think nothing of throwing them under the bus from a distance and I think it’s just awful.”