Was there really any doubt?
The Prince George Citizen is proud to announce the winner of the 2010 Athlete of the Year Award: city-raised hockey player Brett Connolly.
The sports staff of The Citizen, including reporters Ted Clarke and Jason Peters, voted unanimously to give the honour to Connolly.
Even with hip problems nagging his every stride, the 18-year-old forward made history. No player from Prince George has been selected higher in the NHL draft. Connolly was taken sixth overall by the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The previous best? Mackenzie/ Prince George winger Turner Stevenson, nabbed 12th overall by the Montreal Canadiens in 1990.
After a season lost to injuries, issues that played a major role in his Prince George Cougars finishing last overall in the WHL and CHL, Connolly pulled on a Tampa Bay Lightning jersey on the Staples Center stage in Los Angeles in late June and put a tough winter behind him.
But the calendar year 2010 only got better from there, with strong showings at Tampa Bay's prospects camp, being named captain of his hometown WHL team, and then accomplishing a life-long dream by making Team Canada for the world junior hockey championship which is taking place currently in Buffalo, N.Y.
"I'm ecstatic. It's a great feeling," Connolly told Citizen sports reporter Ted Clarke the day he made the national junior team.
"Obviously, to represent your country at this magnitude is pretty cool. Every kid who has ever played hockey watches this tournament and to be chosen to be part of it is an honour and I'm definitely looking to make people proud and trying to win a gold medal."
So far, Canada is 3-0 at the tournament, and Connolly has two assists to show for ever-increasing icetime.
Connolly is the first city player to suit up for Team Canada since defenceman Stewart Malgunas helped Canada to gold some 20 years ago.
One year after being named WHL and CHL rookie of the year, Connolly scored 10 goals in 16 games but still stayed on the radar screens of pro scouts and Hockey Canada evaluators. This season, as captain of the Cougars, he leads his team in scoring and has the Cats in a place they've never been before, in first place in the B.C. Division this late in the season.
The draft was even more special for Connolly because longtime friend and fellow Prince Georgian Brett Bulmer, who plays for the WHL's Kelowna Rockets, was taken 39th overall by the Minnesota Wild. Both are products of the Cariboo Cougars major midget program. For the first time in this city's long, proud and storied hockey history, two Prince George players were taken in the top 40 of the same NHL draft.
No other local sport can claim such a beachhead at the pro level.
"It's very exciting for both our families and I'm excited to have the opportunity to make the NHL," Bulmer said in the afterglow of draft proceedings.
Duly noted as runner-up for The Citizen's athlete-of-the-year award is a deserving past winner of the annual sporting award -- biathlete Megan Tandy. All she did was post Canada's best biathlon results at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, a surprise result for one of the youngest competitors entered.
Past winners of the award include national-level baseball player Amanda Asay (2006), professional triathlete Angela Naeth (2008), and professional lacrosse player Jeff Moleski, who won last year's honours. Tandy was named top city athlete in 2007.
