Coming Full Circle

Reporters and sports writers everywhere are using the cliché of writing the September standard essay on summer activities and I'm no better as I used it to tee up my interview with RJay Berra earlier today. Catching up with the Prince George Minor Hockey product in a rink in the Lower Mainland, Berra was heard chuckling about what he has gone through this summer.

The chuckle wasn't to mask nerves, but could only be characterized as relieve ... relieve that a whirlwind tour of the BCHL had come to an end. The tour is an interesting one with Berra showing up on three team rosters before coming full circle and ending up on the roster of the team he last played for. This is one of those stories that can only happen if all the cards fall in just a certain way.

It has now been learned that the Merritt Centennials, with Al Glendenning filling the roles of general manager and head coach, were very impressed with Berra. So much so in fact that they decided they were going to take Berra as their pick for the future considerations in the Alex Goodship trade. Now part of the rules of this poker game is that the future considerations can't be executed until the end of the season.

Just days after the Vernon Vipers hoisted the RBC Royal Bank Cup, the Merritt Centennials went through a shakeup in the hockey operations office that saw a new general manager come in. Shortly after arriving in Merritt, Joey Bouchard contacted the Spruce Kings informing them that Berra was now property of the Centennials. Despite an attempt to keep Berra in Prince George, the Spruce Kings had to concede and the first roster move for RJay was completed.

For whatever reason, it became apparent that Berra was not going to fit in to the plans of the new Merritt Centennials and almost as quickly as Berra showed up on their roster, he was off it. On June 1st, less than two weeks after acquiring him, the Merritt Centennials struck a deal with the Burnaby Express that saw the Cents get a younger player and Berra a spot on his third team.

Through all of this RJay remained upbeat and focused on the task at hand of using the summer to prepare for a new season of the game he loves. While in Vancouver Berra worked out and also skated with Andrew Pickering and Adam Baldassare not realizing that Ed Dempsey had begun talks with the Burnaby Express to bring him back. Talking with Ed after the trade, he told me that summer holidays were probably as much to blame as anything as to why the proceedings took so long to finalize.

But finalize it is exactly what the Spruce Kings hockey operations office was able to do late last week. RJay told me that the Burnaby Express head coach and general manager Dave McLelland used the words persistent when telling him that he was going back to the Spruce Kings. Berra was in Prince George at the time playing tennis with his brother and says he couldn't be happier; although his exuberance may have left the younger sibling hoping for a trade to New Zealand.