Former Guelph Storm player returns to prison for crime spree in the county
Former National Hockey League prospect Lucas Nehrling is back behind bars.
Nehrling, who was born in Peterborough and grew up in Marmora, was sentenced to two years and two months in federal prison for a string of break-ins that happened in Peterborough County in the summer of 2017.
Peterborough County OPP say officers were called to investigate break-ins to a number of homes in the area of County Road 2 and the Third Line in early September 2017.
Police were able to identify Nehrling from video surveillance at one of the homes. OPP officers located him after a stolen ATV he was riding ran out of fuel and he attempted to hide in a garage near Norwood.
Nehrling, a former Ontario Hockey League defenceman with the Guelph Storm, Sarnia Sting and Kingston Frontenacs, is no stranger to the penitentiary. In 2009, he was arrested for a spree of break-ins. While out on bail for the initial charges, he committed more break-ins.
In and out of jail, and while he was in North Bay attending an outpatient drug rehab program, Nehrling got high on cocaine and painkillers and went to a North Bay home looking to collect money and drugs. He ended up in a fight with the homeowner.
He pleaded guilty to assault and being unlawfully in a dwelling. He was given a 21-month prison term on top of two years he had been given for the entries.
In a 2012 interview with the Guelph Mercury, Nehrling spoke opening about his downward spiral, going from a New Jersey Devils prospect to a drug-addicted criminal.
“I know the statistics say that most inmates in a federal penitentiary reoffend. But I know this is it for me, without a doubt,” Nehrling told a reporter in a jailhouse interview in 2012.
“I’ve done a lot more good in my life than bad and I know I can do even more good. For the first time in a long time I feel good about myself.”
In June 2013, Nehrling was even granted day parole and applauded for his efforts while serving his time Collins Bay Institution in Kingston.
“You told the board today that you almost feel you should have paid to come to prison because you have learned so much and finally gotten clean,” the parole board’s written decision stated.
“Your federal incarceration appears to have had a sobering and deterrent effect. You have worked hard at addressing your addiction and immersing yourself in your native culture.”
In his 2012 interview, Nehrling said the loss of his mother in 2009 fuelled many of his bad decisions. Hockey also stopped being fun, as he bounced around five minor league teams, including four teams in the 1999-2000 season.
But the tipping point was in 2002 when the Ford Explorer he was driving along a rain-slicked road on the Curve Lake First Nation slid across the centre line and hit a school bus head on. Nehrling’s left leg was shattered, along with his dream of professional hockey career.
After the crash, Nehrling spent the next three months on a couch, popping prescription painkillers to mask the pain in his leg that was held together by four screws and a metal plate.
“I was feeling really sorry for myself and painkillers became my outlet to escape reality. Without hockey, I lost my identity so I turned to drugs,” Nehrling said in the interview.
The pills numbed both body and mind, he said.
“It’s crazy how fast it can happen and how it makes you just dull and not care about what’s going on around you. They took full control of my life. They controlled every thought.”