Hometown Cougar bounces back after injury
Hockey skates are designed to absorb the impact of a six-ounce piece of rubber moving at bullet velocity but sometimes there’s not enough protection in that molded plastic boot to prevent things from breaking.
Aiden Reeves knows that all too painfully well. He spent nearly two months on the Prince George Cougars’ injured list after breaking the top of his foot blocking a shot against the Kamloops Blazers, Dec. 17. Coming in the second-last game before the holiday break, that was an unexpected lump of coal in his Christmas stocking and he missed 19 games waiting for his foot to heal.
There’s much more emphasis on blocking shots at the higher levels of hockey and to help prevent injuries, some players use shot-blockers, a piece of molded plastic that sits over the tongue of the skate and under the laces. Reeves wasn’t wearing one at the time he broke his foot.
“Guys shoot so hard now and it can do damage pretty easily,” Reeves said.
Reeves was on crutches for five weeks and couldn’t get close to the rink, but worked with trainer Mike Mathies on his upper-body strength in the gym and maintained a high level of fitness. Once he was able to resume skating, he spent about a week doing one-on-one drills with Steve O’Rourke, the Cougars’ director of player development, while the Cougars embarked on their U.S. Division tour.
Reeves finally got back into the lineup this month, not at his more familiar position on defence, but as a right winger, an experiment that started just before he got hurt. With seven other defenceman vying for ice time, the Cougars moved the 19-year-old Reeves up to a forward position to complete a fourth line.
“Lots of guys might not be happy about that but I’m just happy be able to contribute any way I can. If it’s on the back end, I love shutting guys down, and if it’s on the front end I like disrupting on the forecheck. I’m working on it. There’s lots of thing you don’t realize about forwards who have been doing it six or seven years
at a high level that they get good at, so it’s a lot of catch-up.”
The middle son of Andrea and Steve Reeves has gotten in the habit of always trying to bust his butt, and the Cougars are rewarding that trait and his familiarity with playing in the defensive zone by giving him penalty-killing duties.
“Whatever you ask him to do, he’s going to do to his absolute best,” he said. “It’s not easy to come back from an injury like that but he worked so hard. He was supposed to be off eight weeks and came back in seven. He’s a kid you want to see succeed because he works hard, he’s polite and he’s just really well-raised.
Reeves played minor hockey in Prince George until 2015, when he moved to Kelowna to join the Pursuit of Excellence U-15 varsity team. The following season
he moved up to the BC Elite Hockey League with the Okanagan Rockets U-18 triple-As. He returned to P.G. in 2019-20 for his 17-year-old season and played 20 games with the Cariboo Cougars, seven with the Spruce Kings and 12 with the WHL Cougars. He returned to the WHL pod season in the spring of 2021 and was in the lineup for 17 of the 22 games.
“He’s just all character and I like his work ethic, he comes to the rink happy, a great guy in the dressing room and he does everything right,” said Cougars head coach and general manager Mark Lamb. “You give a lot of respect to a kid like that. We’re pretty packed at the back end and he can really skate and really shoot. He’s a big body that can hit and we need that. He’s a valuable guy, and if we get in trouble on the backend, he can go there,
but I think he’s really found himself a spot on the wing.”
Reeves and forward Fisher O’Brien were born and raised in Prince George and playing for the team they grew up idolizing is not lost on Reeves.
“It’s definitely tough sometimes, when you’re going through tough times,” said Reeves. “But at the end of the day, every hockey player wishes to play in their hometown. Every player wishes to play for the WHL team they grew up watching since they can remember hockey. I just ty to remember that every day and think what my younger self would have thought about this opportunity and what I’ve been able to accomplish. ”
The Cougars are back on the ice at CN Centre Friday and Saturday (7 p.m.) against Portland.