Morweena meteor

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/05/2011 (5511 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

James REIMER is on the telephone, half a world away.

Or maybe even further, given Reimer’s humble upbringing in a tiny Manitoba hamlet, cutting his teeth on an outdoor rink, and pushed to tend the net by his older brother who now playfully describes his sibling’s meteoric rise in professional hockey as “my fault.”

These heady days, the 23-year-old wunderkind from Morweena — a small Mennonite community near Arborg consisting of a church and school houses — is the No. 1 goaltender for the iconic Toronto Maple Leafs. Currently, Reimer is the starting goaltender for Team Canada at the World championships in Kosice, Slovakia.

Prior to the Worlds, the team practiced in Paris, France. They played exhibition games in Prague, Czech Republic.

It’s a long way from Morweena.

“I wouldn’t have thought it could really happen,” Reimer told the Free Press, only moments after his first start last week in a Team Canada jersey, a 4-2 exhibition victory over the Czech Republic. “Every time I’ve been close (to playing for Canada), some circumstances have come up that haven’t allowed me to play. Going into this year, I wouldn’t have had a chance playing in the minors, but things turned around. But that’s the whirlwind that it’s been in the last few months.”

Indeed, Reimer began last season starting for the AHL’s Toronto Marlies. By February, however, he had earned the Leafs starting job. He stuck, excelled beyond expectations, almost backstopping the moribund Leafs into a playoff spot.

Now Reimer is Team Canada’s starting netminder at the Worlds, undefeated into the qualifying round of the championship.

Reimer is now at the apex of the game. Yet to describe his journey from Morweena to Slovakia as unlikely is a gross understatement.

“Some people have called it a miracle,” offered Reimer’s mother, Marlene. “I’m a little hesitant to use that word. But it’s definitely not the usual path, put it that way. It’s amazing.”

How amazing?

Consider: In 2011, Reimer was selected for Team Canada by the team’s general manager, Dave Nonis, the assistant GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs. In 2001, Reimer was selected by his older brother, Mark, to play goal for a church team in a recreational tournament in Steinbach.

Reimer was just 13, and had only begun to play organized hockey. He was wearing braces and second-hand goalie pads. He was playing for a Morweena team that, to put it politely, didn’t have a prayer.

As fate would have it, one Steinbach local recruited to play for the Morweena team was a 27-year-old aspiring agent named Ray Petkau.

“The first thing I noticed was, ‘This team wasn’t any good, but the goalie was tremendous,'” Petkau recalled. “He was very raw, but he didn’t give up. There were times when he was down and out and he somehow managed to make the saves. Even at that age and that kind of setting. I just thought, ‘Wow, this kid is a gem.'”

First, some history. Morweena was founded in the early 1960s by a handful of Mennonite families who relocated to the Interlake. They are known in the community, fittingly, as ‘The Original Six.’

Reimer’s parents, Harold and Marlene, raised four children and own a home moving business. Their youngest son didn’t begin playing organized hockey until he was 12.

The boys would play pick-up hockey on outdoor rinks during intermissions of Hockey Night in Canada. How did James end up in net? “He was goalie because he was smaller than me,” explained brother Mark, “and I didn’t want to play goal.”

After a junior career with the Red Deer Rebels, Reimer backstopped the ECHL’s Reading Royals to the 2009 Kelly Cup championship. Last fall, the Leafs’ 99th pick in the 2006 NHL draft was promoted to the AHL’s Toronto Marlies.

Marlene came out to the big city to help her son settle. On Oct. 12, Reimer came back to an empty apartment (the furniture had yet to arrive) and asked his mother, “Do you want to go to a Toronto Maple Leafs game?”

Sure, Marlene replied. “Did you get tickets?”

“Yes,” James said, and his mother recognized immediately the unmistakable gleam in her son’s eyes. “But you’ll be watching, I’ll be playing.”

The next night, Marlene Reimer sat in the stands at Air Canada Centre and watched James take pre-game warm-up. He didn’t start against the Colorado Avalanche, but it was his NHL debut.

“And all I could see was this little kid with braces and the little pads that we had to get second-hand,” Marlene recalled. “From there to the Air Canada Centre is unbelievable. I was thinking, ‘This can’t be true.'”

Sometimes, James Reimer has the same sentiments.

“That’s obviously more than I could have asked to start the season,” he said. “Your goal is to get to the NHL…. Then the coach had the faith in me, and the manager had the faith, to keep putting me out there. It’s all you could ask for. I consider myself blessed.”

The words “faith” and “blessed” aren’t lost on Reimer. Faith is his foundation. His goalie mask has a depiction of Jesus pulling Peter out of the water. (Oh, and there’s also a drawing on the mask of Don Cherry, one of the game’s most hard core, old school preachers.)

Friends and family describe Reimer as “gentle.”

“He wouldn’t hurt a fly,” said uncle Tim Reimer, Morweena’s school principle and community pastor.

“I think that’s a strength,” said Petkau, Reimer’s longtime agent and advisor. “He knows (pressure and expectations) are there and he’s going to have to go through some hard times. But just because he’s a ‘Nice Guy’ from a small community… he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Maybe until he puts his Toronto Maple Leafs or Team Canada jersey on. That’s where he’ll have everything it takes to compete at the highest level and succeed.”

Besides, it could be argued that if any earthly soul required uncommon faith, it would be the starting netminder for the Toronto Maple Leafs. After less than a season, Reimer has already become a star in Toronto. In Winnipeg, he can’t sit at a restaurant without being approached by fans.

“It kind of takes you by surprise and he’s just chatting with them and signing autographs,” noted Reimer’s cousin, Jason, a childhood friend. “He handles it so well.”

Just this past February, in fact, Reimer came home to Morweena for the NHL all-star break. He met with family and friends until about midnight.

Then the boys went out to play some hockey. They skated and skated until five or six in the morning.

“That’s what we do,” Jason said. “That just brings it back. Then he (Reimer) is definitely not an NHLer.”

Just childhood friends playing hockey under the stars.

A very long way from Paris and Prague.

But home.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca