December 23, 2011
Posted in BC Edition, Minor
By Mark Janzen /
For Los Angles Kings forward Colin Fraser, the spring of 2000 seems like a long time ago but at the same time, certainly a memorable time ago.
The year 2000 saw B.C. Hockey Now award its first ever Minor Hockey Player of the Year Award and the Bantam-aged Fraser was the first recipient.
“Of course I remember winning,” Fraser said. “It’s seems like so long ago. I feel like an old man talking about this award but obviously it was something special at the time and something I’ll never forget.”
Fraser was playing for Surrey’s top Bantam team at the time and while he says his team wasn’t particularly good at the time, individually, he had quite a year and one that ultimately launched his hockey-playing career.
Shortly after winning the award, Fraser was drafted ninth overall in the WHL Bantam Draft by Red Deer and, with that, was on his way to a career at hockey’s highest professional level.
“I think when I got drafted in the Bantam draft, that’s when my career really started getting serious,” Fraser said. “Moving away when I was 16 and living with a billet family and playing 72 games a year [with Red Deer], it became a reality that this is something I want to do for a job for as long as I can do it.”
Since getting selected in the Bantam draft, while it hasn’t all been hat tricks and howitzers, Fraser has accomplished a fair bit in his still burgeoning hockey career, including getting drafted 69th overall by Philadelphia in the 2003 NHL Draft, playing 240 NHL games and counting, winning a Stanley Cup with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2010 and a capturing World Junior Championship gold medal in 2005.
After playing the better part of two seasons with Chicago to start his career, last year, he played 67 games with Edmonton before being dealt to Los Angeles this past summer in the Ryan Smyth deal. And now, following complications with a foot injury that kept him out of the lineup early in the season, he is back in the league and hoping to continue living his dream in sunny California.
“I think right from when I can remember skating I was thinking about the NHL,” Fraser said. “I was watching Don Cherry all the time and the Rock’em Sock’em videos and always playing street hockey with friends. It was always a goal of mine to play in the NHL and now that I’m here I want to stay here as long as I can.”
Growing up playing for Surrey, he mentions his Atom and Peewee coach Bob McDonald and his spring coaches with the Pacific Vipers, ex-Vancouver Canucks Harold Snepts and John Grisdale as being particularly influential in his career.
“Obviously, those guys playing the game knew what it would take to get to where I am today,” Fraser said.
Through his 240 regular season games and five playoff games, Fraser has compiled 17 goals, 25 points and 184 penalty minutes. And if he’s being honest, which he is, those stats have all arrived thanks to hard work, hard work and more hard work.
“I’m not the most skilled guy or the player who is going to go end-to-end so for me a lot of it relies on my work ethic and being consistent every day,” Fraser said “You have to be as good as you can every day because there’s always someone there trying to take your spot.”
And you can bet 11 years ago, that mantra is what earned him lofty praise for Hockey Now.
Burton goes through bevy of ups and downs
In 2001, Langley Minor Hockey product Tyler Burton was Hockey Now’s Minor Hockey Player of the Year but since then it’s been a bit of an up and down career for the left-handed shooting centre and one that ended prematurely after the 2010/11 season.
After winning the award in 2001, Burton went on to a stellar BCHL career with the Chilliwack Chiefs in which he 60 goals and 129 assists in 126 games.
From there, he attended Colgate University for four years where he once again flourished offensively, collecting a total of 82 goals and 73 assists in 158 games.
But after his collegiate career, Burtons struggled to find a permanent home on the pro circuit. From 2007, when he graduated from Colgate, to 2011, when he retired as a professional, he played for six different minor pro teams in the AHL, ECHL, CHL and German Second Division.
After struggling with injuries, including a tear of his ACL, MCL, and meniscus during the 2008/09 season and a broken femur during the 2009/10 season, Burton signed with the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees for the 2010/11 season. He ended up only playing seven games with the Killer Bees of the CHL, collecting a goal and four assists, before he landed with the CHL’s Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs. He played three games with the Mudbugs and to date those are the last three professional games Burton has played.
From December 2011 to July 2012, Hockey Now will feature a past recipient of our Minor Hockey Player Achievement Award, leading up to the announcement of our next winner, in July.
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