{"id":521114,"date":"2026-03-07T20:32:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T20:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/521114\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T20:32:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T20:32:07","slug":"james-reimers-road-back-to-the-nhl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/521114\/","title":{"rendered":"James Reimer\u2019s road back to the NHL"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Reimer is enjoying life in the NHL.<\/p>\n

Two months ago, it wasn\u2019t a guarantee that he could ever say that again.<\/p>\n

Before signing with Ottawa as a free agent on Jan. 12, the soon-to-be 38-year-old Reimer was back home in Kelowna, practicing with two junior teams and working out on his own in hopes of finding the right fit, a team in the NHL that needed his services.<\/p>\n

His summer goaltending coach, Lyle Mast, works with the goaltenders of the Salmon Arm Silverbacks during the hockey season. He worked with Mast,\u00a0goaltending consultant Adam Francilia<\/a>, and also skated with the West Kelowna Warriors and Vernon Vipers of the BCHL, British Columbia\u2019s Junior A loop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said he\u2019s very grateful for the coaches of all of those teams for being so accommodating during the first half of the season. \u201cI felt like I really stayed in it as best I could with what I had available,\u201d said Reimer.<\/p>\n

Along with the junior teams, he had a couple of friends, \u2018Cal\u2019 and \u2018Patty\u2019, who were always game to help him get back to game shape. \u2018Patty\u2019 is former Senators defenceman Patrick Wiercioch.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Wiercioch] is obviously done playing, and both those guys were awesome, I\u2019d rent some ice and they always made themselves available to help me out, so I had a lot of people that helped me stay ready,\u201d said Reimer. \u201cI felt like I still had a good support system around me.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Olympic break coming just over three weeks after Reimer left British Columbia to join the Sens, his first trip to Ontario was short-lived. He returned home to Kelowna to continue working on his game during the pause.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what [was] nice about this break is you got some time to work on some things that maybe you couldn\u2019t\u2019ve leading up to it,\u201d said Reimer. \u201cI think [the week of practices afterwards] really did give an opportunity to shore up any of the little areas where you felt you needed to improve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in Ottawa again, that work is now done with a new crew, goaltending coach Justin Peters and Senators starter Linus Ullmark. \u201cYou\u2019re hard pressed to find a goalie that you don\u2019t get along with, and same with a goalie coach,\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth Ully and Petey have been great to work with. I like the way Petey sees the game and his demeanor, and even just his work ethic. He always has a plan every day and he\u2019s serious about his goalies and wanting his goalies to be in the best place possible to help the team and whatnot. He really cares about us as humans, first and foremost, but about our games. It\u2019s really nice to have a coach that\u2019s invested and cares so much.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Ully\u2019s been great, the way he plays the game and the way he stops pucks is really impressive. And obviously he has a good heart, so it\u2019s been really fun to get to know him and watch him play.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Ottawa, Reimer has been what the team needed. He hasn\u2019t been exceptionally busy \u2014 the Senators allow the second fewest number of shots in the NHL \u2014 but his goals-against average of 2.90 is more than adequate in a league where that would rank 11th amongst all teams.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a testament to Reimer\u2019s dedication that he\u2019s even in this position at all. He\u2019s the third-oldest goaltender in the league, and earlier this season, there were moments when he wasn\u2019t sure if he\u2019d ever play another game in the NHL.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of times when you’re excited and you believe that something’s going to happen. Then there\u2019s days when you’re a little down and you don\u2019t know if maybe you\u2019ve played your last game,\u201d\u00a0said Reimer after he joined the Sens.<\/a><\/p>\n

Reimer hasn\u2019t made a start since NHL play resumed after the break \u2014 Ullmark has played to a 2-0-2 record, and the Sens haven\u2019t had a back-to-back \u2014 but the veteran netminder has plenty to enjoy about their current western road trip.<\/p>\n

His wife, April, is from Vancouver, and still has family there. Originally from Manitoba, Reimer also has family out west.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great, it\u2019s not ideal necessarily family-wise [in Ottawa], so it is nice to be going back out west just to see my wife and my kiddos. That\u2019s definitely one plus to going back out west,\u201d said Reimer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe western road swing is always a whole lot of fun, because you get to see siblings, and parents, and in-laws, and whatnot. That\u2019s the biggest plus for me, for my whole career, is just more family time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Reimer is enjoying life in the NHL. Two months ago, it wasn\u2019t a guarantee that he could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-521114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}