another devil of yesteryear
After NJ he played in Vancouver, which led to him playing in Utica with the Comets.
2017-18 25G/46 Pts/45GP
2018-19 31G/ 64 Pts/56GP
2019-20 34G/67 Pts/53GP and then the season was canceled.
The following year he opted for the KHL and a bigger paycheck. He has become a star in his 4 years in Russia. This season he currently has 38G/ 67Pts/51GP projected to score 48G/85 Pts/65GP.
He is still only 30-yrs-old. Won't be 31 until next September.
He was a teenage dirtbag. In January/2022, his 3rd KHL season, he pleaded guilty to "sexually assaulting a minor" in 2011 when he was 17. The girl was 12 at the time.
Obviously the KHL sees sex offenders a lot differently than the US and Canada. If he was still playing in North America at the time, I don't think he would have managed to stay on any team. The public furor would have made him a pariah. The guilty plea came when he was 28, 11 years after the fact when he was a minor.
I taught in a Jr/Sr High School for 35 years. I saw many a relationship between Jr. and Sr. boys with 8th and 9th grade girls. Like many kids based upon brithdays I too was younger than most kids in my grade. I started the 8th grade at 12 years old and thus, my senior year at 16. So, there were quite a few early developing 12 year old 8th grade girls when I was teaching and the 16 and later to be 17-yr-old boys who were later developing and younger than the average 11th or 12th grade boy. These 2 age groups were often attracted to each other. These boys were also shunned by the girls 2 years older than them in their own class. Those girls wouldn't normally date a boy 2 yrs younger than them. They were much more attracted to the guys who drove cars, had muscles, and grew beards or staches, had part time jobs and money. They could take a girl out without having to be driven to and from by a parent.
It was an issue I tried to steer my athletes , as well as the rest of the kids, clear of. It wasn't easy. A little dating was one thing, but serious teenage romances could become real dangerous when two teens think they are in love and you know what that can lead to, especially if their parents haven't done a lot to deal with sexual issues up front and personal.
Teenage pregnancies were never uncommon. It was never a good thing, but pregnant 12 and 13-yr-old girls was just the worst. Tough to try and be an adult with no actual connection to these kids and try to offer sound guidance. Again it's not easy, but I did everything I could with all of them grades 8-12. I taught Health so sex, drugs, and rock and roll were all parts of my curriculum. So, I could broach the subject head on in the classroom.
A whole bunch of those kids, now somewhere in their mid thirties to retirement age, have run into me at various places and during a short discussion thanked me for my direct delivery. "You told us like it is and it registered for a whole lot of us. We wish our kids had someone who cared as much as you did and did all you could to help us find the right path and let us believe it was we who came to the right decisions." The conversations go something like that. It does a person good to hear stuff like that. It's good to know I got through to a lot of them without the lecturing, preaching, or browbeating that so many adults do with kids. You have to treat them like they have a brain and can understand if you tell them directly, clearly, and don't pull punches. Honesty is the best approach.
I don't know what Reid's situation was, but I understand how some of these things happen with 2 immature kids who have not been properly educated. They can allow emotions and physical feelings to overpower their brains and lead to behaviors that can have devastating results.
