Resilient Raymond hopes to light it up for Flames this season
CALGARY — There is nothing soft about the way Mason Raymond rescued his National Hockey League career.
Set adrift by the Vancouver Canucks 15 months ago and unwanted by 28 other teams, the winger from Cochrane, Alta., went to the Toronto Maple Leafs on a tryout and was unsure a year ago if his career in North America would continue.
Derided by many Canuck fans near the end of his six years in Vancouver, Raymond was perhaps thought by teams to be too small or too peripheral or too often injured to again make an impact in the NHL. Even when Raymond was still Canuck property, management became so frustrated with him they took the extraordinary step in 2012 of filing for arbitration against their player to get his salary lowered.
And this was the season after Raymond returned from a devastating back injury suffered in the 2011 Stanley Cup Final.
No wonder other teams viewed him skeptically when he came calling as a free agent last summer.
But Raymond didn’t fade away or go to Europe for easy money, didn’t give up on the NHL or himself.
On Wednesday night he opened his eighth season, playing for his hometown Calgary Flames against the Canucks.
It was the first game of a three- year, $ 9.45- million US contract he signed after scoring 19 goals last season for the Maple Leafs.
Say what you like about the six- foot winger, but he didn’t run when things got tough.
“Actually, the last year and bit has been pretty good,” Raymond said before facing the Canucks.
“It’s satisfying for me coming off a good season and playing well and proving you still deserve to be in this league and play in this league. I always believed that. I proved it to myself first and foremost, but also proved to others that I deserve to be here. In general, I look back on my past year with nothing but good things.”
But he didn’t feel that way last summer when, three years removed from a 25- goal season with the Canucks, Raymond couldn’t get an NHL contract. After making the Maple Leafs on a tryout offered him by general manager Dave Nonis, who had drafted him in Vancouver in 2005, Raymond eventually signed a one- year, $ 1 million deal to stay in the league.
He appeared in all 82 games for Toronto, contributing 26 assists in addition to his 19 goals. The Flames grabbed him as a free agent on July 1.
“Truth be told, I couldn’t get a contract,” Raymond said of the summer of ’ 13. “That was a full year ago and now I’m here. I’m proud of what I’ve done. This is a competitive league. Don’t ever be satisfied with anything, as far as I’m concerned.”
Raymond said he has lots of friends on the Canucks and he will always think fondly of Vancouver, where his career and son were born.
As a 22- year- old rookie out of the University of MinnesotaDuluth, Raymond was befriended and mentored by Trevor Linden, who in April became the Canucks’ president of hockey operations.
“I’d go to his house for dinner,” Raymond recalled.
“Simple, little things. I would meet with Trev for coffee and just chit- chat. I’d joke, ‘ You’re the mayor of the town.’ He taught me how to be a pro.”
A resilient one, it turns out.