One of the Flames' top prospects, nineteen-year-old Mickey Renaud, collapsed in his home today and was pronounced dead around noon ET. He was a centre and the captain of the Windsor Spitfires in the OHL.
The cause of his death is not known, but one of his teammates was on TSN tonight and said that 'they' are saying that it may have been a brain aneurysm. An autopsy will be performed tomorrow.
''This is the biggest tragedy in Spitfire history,'' said team vice-president and general manager Warren Rychel. ''Words alone cannot describe our pain at this time.''
Thoughts and prayers are with the Renaud family and the Spitfires' organization.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Sad day in the OHL
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7 comments:
Prayers and thoughts are with the Renaud family and the Windsor Spitfires. This is just terrible.
Windsor's coach is Bobby Bougher, who was a class act when he played here in Pittsburgh not all that long ago. Boughs played with his heart on his sleeve and if he coaches like he played, he's got to be having a tough time with this.
It was a tough day for the Nolan family too. Ted Nolan's son Jordan plays on the Spitfires, and Nolan missed the first period of today's game against the Sharks so that he could comfort his son.
Just horrible to see a young, healthy kid die like that. Absolutely horrible.
I put something up on Faceoff Factor about this. Hope you don't mind.
No worries, Stoosh.
What a terrible, terrible tragedy :(
I meant to mention this earlier, too.
Jordan Nolan played for a year in Erie before moving on to Windsor. By all accounts, he was a hell of a kid who got a raw deal because he didn't get along with a few teammates.
Apparently, Jordan - then an OHL rookie - wasn't afraid to speak him mind in the locker room from time to time about the team's uninspired play. He spoke his mind a few times, and some of the older (and ironically, lesser-talented) players on the team took it as a challenge to their authority. This, obviously, rubbed some veterans the wrong way and consequently drew the ire of the coaching staff because Nolan didn't "know his place", so to speak.
It got to the point that Nolan was run off the team because he was in the unfortunate position of being a rookie who gave a damn.
This has been Erie's biggest problem the last several seasons. They were so blessed with leadership and good character guys when they went to the Memorial Cup back in 2001-02 (Brad Boyes, Chris Campoli, Cory Pecker, Carlo Coloaiacovo), and they've never been able to recapture that (not that it's that easy to do).
Instead, they've been spending the last few years with teams who are run by a handful of lower-talent junior vets who thought simply skating a regular shift was enough for them. Unfortunately, too many of these players controlled the locker room and the franchise has suffered for it and good kids like Nolan were shown the door.
Wow. It's too bad that Jordan had a hard time in Erie, but I hope things are better in Windsor. I don't follow the CHL very much, so I'm not sure how talented he is, but I'll take your word for it. I'm glad that he spoke his mind if the team wasn't playing to its potential, even if he did get shown the door. There's no reason to just sit back and coast along.
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