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Delainey’s speed unparalleled

Feb 6, 2017 | 4:37 PM

While growing up in Edam, Sask., Reed Delainey’s father Brent was often away for work.

The result for Delainey was simply more time spent with his grandparents, Pat and Elaine.

“[My grandfather] was a big influence on me,” Delainey, now 20 and in his fourth season with the North Stars, said. “He taught me a lot of life lessons growing up. My dad was away for work most of the time so he was almost another father for me.”

The two still go golfing about twice a week in the summertime.

“He’s a down to earth man that knows all the little ways to be successful in life,” Delainey said.

Delainey played his minor hockey in Edam all the way until his bantam year, when he moved to Battlefords to play for the Barons. After that, he played for the Midwest Red Wings midget team for two years, as a 15 and 16-year-old.

He is one of the rare North Stars to have made the jump straight from midget AA to Junior A, first cracking the team in 2013-14.

“I came in being the best player on a AA team to come in to being a role player on a junior A team, [so] you’ve got a little bit of a learning curve,” he said. “I grew a lot. I think I came in a little arrogant and learned pretty quickly what you’ve got to do to be a team player.

“It was a good group of guys to get brought in to, to know what junior A was about. There are some guys that were pretty influential. Guys like [Dillon] Forbes, [Ben] Greenaway, [Tanner] Quinn, [Ryne] Keller, [Jake] McMillen. All of those guys had the right mindset going into Junior A.”

And of course, Delainey owes a lot of his maturation to former coach and general manager Kevin Hasselberg.

“I think he took a pretty big risk taking a AA kid and putting him on a Junior A team that was supposed to be a winning team that year,” Delainey said. “I owe him that. He also worked hard for my scholarship when I got it. He did a lot of work with that. He was a good first coach for me to have. He taught me the right things.”

Hasselberg not only helped Delainey get a hockey scholarship to Rochester Institute of Technology, a Div. I school in Rochester, N.Y., but he also showed how important it was to be active in the community.

“He knew what it took to build, not only a good team, but a franchise,” Delainey said. “You want to have the community’s support and have fans. I know if you come here for any weekend game, there’s close to 1,000 people here, which is pretty special for any Junior A club to have.”

After last season ended, Delainey was supposed to be all set to go to R.I.T. for his first college season.

But injuries had paid a toll on the 6’1”, 165 lbs forward, who has missed 58 games over the course of his SJHL career. Last season was particularly tough, when he missed six of the team’s last 13 regular season games and the entire first round playoff series against Kindersley because of a knee injury.

So Delainey deferred his college scholarship one year, and returned for his final junior season.

“Last year at the end of the year I tore my MCL pretty bad,” he said. “When you’re going into your first year of college, I feel like you want to have confidence going into it.

“I didn’t feel prepared. At the time Kevin [Hasselberg] was our coach so we talked it out and he said ‘if you come back, we’re going to have a good team again and you’ll have a chance to win,’ which was another big reason I decided to stay.”

Hasselberg is now thousands of kilometres away coaching the pro ranks for the Pensacola Flyers of the Southern Professional Hockey League, but this team has kept on winning.

With Nate Bedford behind the bench, the North Stars are actually on pace to top last year’s franchise best .776 win percentage. This year, they have an .823 mark, thanks to their 39-8-1-0 record with 10 games to go.

Delainey has been a significant part of the team’s success, with 33 points in 40 games, fifth on the team.

When Bedford came in in August, Delainey’s speed blew him away.

“If he’s not the fastest in the league, I’m not sure who is,” Bedford said. “He can get going with two steps. It’s remarkable. His speed is fantastic; he’s got a great shot. He’s one of those kids that is so dangerous every time he’s on the ice offensively. Any time he has the puck he can score. It’s fun to watch. When he’s on, he’s on.”

The playoffs are clearly the focus for Delainey right now, but he also already has plans this summer to bulk up for college.

His current roommate, North Stars forward Connor McIntosh, is from Spokane and told him about a trainer from his hometown who trains with NHLer Tyler Johnson and other Div. I NCAA athletes.

McIntosh and his parents were nice enough to offer to host Delainey this summer for a month while he trains.

“I’m just going to try to put on 10 pounds, not too much,” Delainey said. “Otherwise I’ll lose my speed. Just hopefully gain some strength and a little bit of size and go down there prepared to help [R.I.T.].

“There’s not much around North Battleford for specific hockey trainers. If I’m going to go down there, I might as well give 110 per cent and see what happens.”

As far as academics goes, Delainey is currently majoring in business, but may switch to kinesiology. Because of his uncertainty, he will likely go undeclared in his first year and take it from there.

“I didn’t really pick the school for any specific [academic] reason,” he said. “I just picked it for hockey.”

 

Nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca

@NathanKanter11