Flames cut Howse after receiving no contact from once-promising prospect
Forward indicated before camp that he’d lost his passion for hockey and didn’t report
“Ryan had indicated to us through Craig Conroy a few days before he was scheduled to come in for rookie camp and had indicated he wasn’t sure he wanted to play,” Feaster said in Saskatoon on Monday prior to the Flames’ pre-season clash against the Ottawa Senators. “Craig talked to him and tried to convince him his heart should be in it. (Conroy) said, ‘Are you sure you want me to go to Jay? Because if I tell Jay this is what you’re thinking, it’s in the stream and kind of out of your control.’
“He said, ‘Yeah. I don’t want to play, my heart isn’t in it.’ He went home, thinking he’d get his passion rekindled being around his former teammates and buddies. But he hadn’t.”
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However, Feaster said they still encouraged him to come to Calgary to have a face-to-face meeting.
And, still, no word from the player.
“We had a flight booked for him,” Feaster said. “He didn’t come to Calgary. We went to Penticton and sent him a letter that gave him five days to report. That deadline was noon Monday. He didn’t report. He didn’t communicate.
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Feaster expressed his disappointment on many levels.
“Because of the time we invested in him,” he said. “Last year in Abbotsford, not only Troy Ward but Mike Thompson our strength and conditioning coach. Mike basically not only worked on him in the gym, trying to help him get in shape. But Mike took him to the grocery store and said, ‘Here are the aisles you avoid and here’s where you shop. Here’s how you fix a meal and here’s how you eat healthy.’ Mike took him to restaurants and said, ‘Here is the area of the menu you order from and here’s where you avoid.’ Even talking to Ryan’s agent, he made that comment; that he’s never seen an organization go out of his way with a player the way we did with Ryan.”
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Their efforts aside, Feaster is also disappointed that he doesn’t see a plan in place for Howse’s future.
“When I was in Tampa, I had a player that wanted to go be a carpenter and wanted to build houses,” Feaster said. “That was his passion, it’s what he loved to do. There was a plan. In the conversations that Craig had with Ryan and we had with his agent, I’m not aware of a clear cut plan. So, that’s disappointing.”
There was an option to suspend the player, opting to keep him on Flames’ reserve list with the option of extending a qualifying offer at the season’s end.
But Feaster said this wasn’t the first time he’d expressed “a malaise about continuing to play.”
“Again, doing everything we’ve done the last couple years to reach out to him and try and get him on the right path, it’s time for us to cut bait,” he said.