For first-year forward Matthew Warren, the decision to join the Outaouais Senior A Hockey League has revamped a memorable career that was seemingly over more than a decade ago.

Having put up solid numbers almost everywhere he’s been, including a team-leading seven goals in as many games this season, Warren is an offensive threat with a scoring touch.

Growing up in Aylmer, Que., hockey was everything for Warren who played competitively – usually at the BB level throughout his minor hockey years.

“I was always gone to hockey tournaments or, if I wasn’t playing with my team, I was at the outdoor rink or playing in the street,” he added.

From a young age, he was confident in his potential to become an elite player and his ultimate goal was to receive an athletic scholarship.

“That’s what drove me to hockey,” he said. “I wanted to get a hockey scholarship to get into university.”

Despite his keen offensive instincts and prominent hockey IQ, he was very small compared to his peers.

Standing at around five feet until his mid-teens, getting noticed by teams was a challenge for Warren throughout most of his youth.

“It was just always difficult and kind of daunting at times, to wait for that growth spurt and wonder if it’s ever going to happen,” he said. “You never know how tall you’re going to be. It was a little frustrating.”

However, at age 15, Warren’s wish finally came true. By the time he was in Midget, his height was listed at 6 foot 1, which made it much more feasible for him to move up the hockey ranks.

After finishing off his minor hockey career, Warren moved on to play in Junior B for the Clarence Creek Beavers of the Eastern Ontario Junior Hockey League (EOJHL).

While many of his friends moved on to play at the Junior AAA level for the Aylmer Extremes, Warren believed that playing Junior B in Ontario would provide him more exposure to scouts and people who mattered in the hockey world.

“I felt, back then, that the only way for me to move on and get to the Junior ranks was to go to Ontario,” he said. “There are just more options. There’s more visibility for players and the thing for me was that I wanted to go to Junior and ultimately move up in the hockey ranks.”

After being discovered by a local scout named Steve Bossy, Warren was invited to the Hawkesbury Hawks’, from the Central Junior Hockey League (CJHL), Junior A training camp.

While he didn’t make the team out of camp, he ended up with Clarence Creek where he only played a single season, which was capped off in the best way possible – winning the league championship (2001-02).

“It was an awesome experience,” he said. “For my one and only year in Junior B, it was great to win a championship.”

Playing with highly skilled players who, at times were four and five years older than he was, Warren noted that playing in the EOJHL was instrumental to his development as a player and as a person.

“You start to learn how to play with guys that are more mature physically and mentally,” he said. “You learn how to play a little bit of a man’s game in that league.”

Following that season, Warren’s dedication to the game was rewarded when he was selected by the Hawkesbury Hawks with the first overall pick in the 2002 CJHL draft.

While the event wasn’t as big-time as the NHL’s draft, Warren remembers hearing his name called, pulling the Hawks jersey over his head and shaking the general manager’s hand as one of the proudest moments of his life.

“It kind of validated the hard work that I had been putting in and the hard work I had done the season previous in Clarence,” he said. “It was just kind of a ‘Alright you can do this kind of thing.’”

During his first season in Hawkesbury, Warren put up solid numbers, scoring 20 goals as a rookie while helping his team clinch a playoff berth before being eliminated in the first round.

Halfway through his second season, Warren received the most shocking news of his career, when he got traded to the Pembroke Lumber Kings.

“It was the first time I had ever experienced that,” he said. “You can’t help but think that you’re a problem or that something in your game is a problem.”

Although a hard pill to swallow, he understood that it was part of the business.

“That’s the nature of the beast,” he said.

A change of scenery ended up being fruitful for the Aylmer-native.

Forming a line with players that he grew up with – Neil Trimm and Stevie Gilchrist – his offensive production soared.

“It wasn’t like I was breaking into a brand-new team, not knowing anybody,” he said. “That kind of eased the transition for me.

With an offensive-minded coaching staff, Warren essentially had the freedom to do as he pleased with the puck on his stick.

During his first season with the Lumber Kings, Warren put up 45 points (26 goals, 19 assists) in 53 games, good for fourth on the team.

Plus, with family members in the stands for most of his home games, playing in Pembroke was an experience that he’ll never forget.

“’It really felt like home kind of thing based on the support that I had around me,” he said.

In his second and final season with the Lumber Kings, he ended up second on the team with 79 points (38 goals, 41 assists) in 51 games. However his team got unceremoniously bounced out of the first round of the playoffs.

Warren admitted that it was hard to see his junior career come to an end.

But with greater hockey on the horizon, he had something worth looking forward to.

During his last season in Pembroke, Warren received numerous scholarship offers from U.S. schools.

He received packages from Ivy league programs like Harvard and Yale, but with his less than stellar academic rating, he knew that his options were limited.

After visiting a few schools, he committed to Mercyhurst University in Erie, PA. – a small school with a well-reputed hockey tradition – to play NCAA Division I hockey.

With Mercyhurst, Warren struggled to find his place in a Lakers’ lineup filled with older, more seasoned players. During his first season, he put up 14 points (five goals, nine assists) in 34 games.

Facing off against NHLers in the making, Warren was astounded with the number of talented hockey players that played against and alongside him.

“Everyone there is a stud,” he said. “I remember my first year, we were in Wisconsin and I was facing off against Brian Elliott and Joe Pavelski and those guys are now mainstays in the NHL.”

“The guys that were good in junior, the guys that are good in NCAA are that much better,” he added.

In his final two years with the Lakers, Warren put up 16 points (seven goals, nine assists) in 28 games and 13 points (five goals, eight assists) in 26 games respectively.

Looking back on all the ups and downs of his college hockey experience, Warren mostly remembers the numerous life-long friendships that he forged over that time.

“I graduated from Mercyhurst 10 years ago and I still have buddies that I talk to on a daily or weekly basis because those are guys that you go through a lot of stuff together,” he said.

Coming out with a degree in International Business with a French-language specialization on top of that, enrolling at Mercyhurst was a great decision, Warren said.

After University – all done with hockey – Warren moved to Ottawa and spent a few years working for the federal government. He did a short stint at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and another at the Canada Border Services Agency where he did mostly financial work, looking over budgets among other things.

While he was happy to finally be making hard-earned money, after being forbidden to do so while on scholarship, Warren still struggled to find a permanent source of income.

Hockey opportunities came knocking every now and then, including calls from teams in the Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL).

But Warren was done with the game. He only played on Thursday nights with a group of ex-pros and former NCAA players, which fortunately kept his skillset intact despite not playing competitively for over a decade.

During that period, a couple of his long-time friends – Ger McNamee from Aylmer and Greg Kennedy from Ottawa, who had launched a hockey-themed clothing business called Gongshow back in 2002 – approached Warren with an interest in bringing him aboard.

“I was looking for a job and they knew that I knew a lot of people in the hockey world,” he said. “I was bilingual. So, they asked me to come work for them.”

Putting his university degree to good use, Warren has now been with the company for almost seven years. As the company’s retail sales manager, he runs operations relating to Gongshow products in North American and European stores.

“I have a couple of reps all over the country that I look after,” he said. “I handle everything as far as our custom work is concerned. I’m the one that looks after our European distributors.”

Warren noted that the brand has grown significantly, during his time with the company and that he’s confident that it has yet to achieve its full potential.

It’s a brand that I grew up with and it’s a brand that my friends have started and I want to help it succeed as much as I can,” he said. “Now, the focus is on really seeing where we can take the company.”

Travelling the globe while meeting all sorts of people involved in fashion and sports, Warren loves the freedom that comes with his current job.

Having been attached to hockey for his entire life, Warren feels grateful to be involved in a career that keeps him close to the game that he loves.

“I feel like this is kind of the way my life has always gone,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine not playing or not being involved in the game of hockey in some aspect.”

Last summer, while playing in a tournament in Low, Que., with Comets’ goaltender Danick Boisvert between the pipes, Warren was asked if he was interested in getting back to playing hockey that meant something.

Once he had that conversation, the itch to play competitive hockey came back.

“I thought, ‘Maybe I’m not as done with it as I thought I was.’” He said.

Although he hadn’t skated much during the summer, Warren rolled into Comets training camp last July excited to be playing meaningful hockey again.

While, at 3-4-0, his team hasn’t had the kind of success they’ve wanted this year, he’s hopeful that the Comets can find their rhythm and string a few wins.

Along with all the success and fun he’s had on the ice, Warren’s favorite part about his hockey career, from minor hockey to the collegiate ranks, is that they’ve allowed him to make a number of lifetime friendships.

“The guys that I met there and first played hockey with are still friends to this day,” he said. “Some of my best friends I met when I first moved here and started playing hockey. There were guys who helped me learn a new language and then have stuck with me for the last 20-30 years of my life.”

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