Game On Magazine 2017 Game On Magazine - Regular Season Edition | Page 26

PROFILE
BRADEN
PURTILL
Making it
Fun Again
B Y S C O T T TAY L O R
Photos by James Carey Lauder
2 6 | G AME ON | R EGU L A R SEASON ED ITION 2018
STEINBACH – Braden Purtill is
having a blast. He’s the captain
of a first place team, he’s been
Manitoba Junior Hockey League
player of the week twice this
season, he’s second in the league
in scoring and he’s playing on a
first-place team that came out
of the Christmas break with a
sparkling record of 30-7-1.
It’s a far cry from where
he was midway through
the 2015-16 season.
After a little more than 2 ½
seasons in the Western Hockey
League, Purtill was done.
Hockey just wasn’t any fun
anymore and he was tired of
it all. After struggling through
nearly three years of injuries and
disappointment in the WHL,
Purtill told his coaches in Red
Deer that he was calling it quits
and heading home to Winnipeg.
“I spent three years in the
Western League but I had a
lot of injury problems and a
couple of concussions in one
year,” said Purtill, just outside
the team’s locker room in the
T.G. Smith Centre in Steinbach.
“It just wasn’t going very well
for me and it reached a point
where hockey wasn’t fun and
wasn’t that important to me
so I thought, ‘Well I’m just
going to go home and focus
on the rest of my life.’
“I was done. But sure enough,
I got a call from Paul (Dyck)
and we chatted for a couple of
hours one evening and now
that I’m here , I love the game
again. It’s been great ever
since I got the call from Paul.
And that’s all it took. Just one
good conversation with Paul
and the game is fun again.”