Winners combine hockey, academic excellence
Guy Lafleur admits he wasn’t a very good student while growing up in Thurso.
“I hated school,” Lafleur said Tuesday after presenting the annual Guy Lafleur Awards of Excellence and Merit to three players in Quebec at the amateur level who best combine hockey and academic excellence.
The winners were Carl Neill, a defenceman with the Concordia Stingers of Quebec Interuniversity Sports, Alexandre Alain, a forward with the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, and William Lemay, a forward with the CÉGEP de Saint-Hyacinthe Lauréats of the Collegiate Hockey League.
“It’s great because they have all the tools today to succeed in hockey and school,” Lafleur said about the winners. “I’m impressed to see them because it’s not easy. My dad always said: ‘Make sure you get your 12th grade.’ I didn’t go to the 12th grade ... I stopped at 11. I had to take summer courses to catch up. It’s tough.
“Some guys it’s easy, but for me it was really, really tough,” Lafleur added about school. “I was lucky enough to have a hockey career in the NHL. But a lot of guys who are playing today, it’s their dream to play in the NHL. But I would say if they get a scholarship or they go to school and get a diploma and they become a dentist, a doctor, whatever, they have a longer career. It’s not maybe as much money, but the career is longer.”
Neill’s dream of playing in the NHL appeared to be getting closer when he attended the Calgary Flames’ rookie camp in 2014 as a member of the QMJHL’s Sherbrooke Phoenix. While at the camp, Flames doctors detected a heart problem called Wolff-ParkinsonWhyte ( WPW ) syndrome, meaning he had an extra electrical pathway between his heart’s upper and lower chambers that can cause a rapid heartbeat. The extra pathway is present at birth and considered fairly rare. Neill returned to Sherbrooke to have surgery and continued to play three more seasons in the QMJHL with the Phoenix and the Charlottetown Islanders.
After attending the Buffalo Sabres’ rookie camp last September, Neill joined the Stingers and posted five goals and 26 assists in 28 games as a rookie, helping Concordia reach the national championship tournament for the first time since 1984 while earning a 3.06 GPA toward a Certificate in Arts and Sciences.
Alain had 44 goals and 43 assists in 65 games with the Armada, advancing to the QMJHL’s President’s Cup final. Alain won the Marcel Robert Award as the QMJHL’s top student/athlete with a 93 per cent grade average at CÉGEP Saint-Jérôme.
Lemay won the CÉGEP league scoring championship with 23 goals and 73 points in 35 games while also distinguishing himself academically in the Nature Sciences program at CÉGEP de Saint-Hyacinthe.