Jason King won’t be able to sneak home for Hockey Day in Canada, but his heart will be in Corner Brook when the game of hockey is celebrated coast to coast with a beehive of hockey events planned for young and old alike.
King, a Corner Brook native who had a 10-year professional hockey career that included 55 games with the Vancouver Canucks and four with the Anaheim Ducks, is one of only three Corner Brook natives to play in the National Hockey League.
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King’s career brought him around the world with stops in Sweden and Germany after scoring 111 goals over three seasons with the Halifax Mooseheads of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
King was invited to participate in Hockey Day in Canada festivities take place in Corner Brook next week, but he was disappointed to find out his job as an assistant coach with the Utica Comets of the American Hockey League was too hectic for him to get away.
He has watched Hockey Day in Canada unfold on television before and knows it’s a great event for the community to embrace so he knows people in Corner Brook and surrounding areas are in for a treat.
King’s career could have been longer, many people feel, if it wasn’t for his ongoing issues with concussions. Be that as it may, King prefers to look at the bright side of it all, realizing he was very fortunate to be one of a few who had a chance to play in the best hockey league in the world.
“When you’re in the moment, you kind of get caught up in it and you don’t realize how special it is, I think. But now that time has gone by you realize how much fun it was and how much of a privilege it was to play in the NHL,” he said. “To be one of only three players out of Corner Brook to play there it tells you hard and tough it is to get there, not just make it but stay as well.”
King has had a great life that allowed him to play with some great players and see a big world that a kid from Corner Brook may never had the chance if it wasn’t for his hockey career.
Now, he gets to pass on his wisdom to fresh faces who have the same dream he once had as a boy and that’s something he takes pride in because he had believers when he was the young boy dreaming.
