The captain of the most-storied Junior A franchise in the province is now headed to the State of Hockey.
Okotoks native Joel Paiement has officially graduated from the captaincy of the Alberta Junior Hockey League’s Calgary Canucks after signing pen to paper on a commitment to attend the Minnesota-based College of St. Scholastica for Division III NCAA hockey starting in the fall of 2012.
“A week before I committed my dad and I went down to Minnesota and Wisconsin I narrowed it down to three schools so we checked out Scholastics, St. Thomas and Marian (University) and we drove around and that kind of helped me out,” Paiement said of the process of finding the right college home. “The interest they showed was probably higher than the other two.”
Paiement said he was fond of the make-up of the St. Scholastica Saints, a Division III school competing in the NCAA’s Northern Collegiate Hockey Association (NCHA).
“They have a very young team, an up-and-coming team with tons of skill. It was a place I could see myself go and enjoy being (there) and get into the lineup right away and start contributing.”
Fellow-Okotokian Dave Williams, a friend of Paiement’s dating back to their Bantam lacrosse days with the Okotoks Mustangs, had nothing but good things to say about his freshman season with the Saints
in 2011-12.
“He was filling me on how the lifestyle is,” Paiement said of Williams. “They have 13 to 14 guys that are Canadians and they act like a family down there and just being on campus having the atmosphere at the school and being in Duluth, it’s a hockey town.”
At the forefront of Paiement’s decision were the academics of St. Scholastica, an independent private college in its 100th year of existence.
“I wanted to go to a place that had very good schooling because with the amount of colleges they have in the States you never know,” he said. “I made sure the schooling was going to be good because that’s my number one reason for going down.”
Paiement, a graduate of Holy Trinity Academy in 2009, said his dalliance with St. Scholastica started at the Alberta Junior Hockey League (AJHL) Showcase in Spruce Grove at the end of September. He said his versatility on the ice made him an attractive prospect for the Minnesota school.
“I can be a big, strong guy to play physical and bump and grind minutes, be an energy guy for their team and also my defensive abilities on the penalty kill and blocking shots,” he said. “They were interested in my offensive ability, what little it might be for me, but at times I can put the puck in the net and I’ve got that skill for being a big guy.”
Paiement started his Junior career with the Camrose Kodiaks followed by a brief stint with the Calgary Mustangs before joining the Canucks mid-way through the 2010-11 season. All told, Paiement registered 20 goals and 53 points in 159 games in the AJHL. Statistics don’t tell the whole story.
The Okotokian’s leadership during the 2011-12 season on a youthful Canucks club, in his final season of Junior, was something the St. Scholastica brass admired.
“They said being a captain especially in Calgary with all the distractions that come around with playing in Calgary they said that was very impressive and kind of tells them who I am as a character,” he said.
Division III schools can’t offer athletic scholarships, a luxury Division I programs have, and instead give its student-athletes financial aid packages.
“It’s mostly based of my parents’ finances and my school grades from high school and they come out to a number and for me it was a number that made it very affordable,” he said.
“It made it kind of a no-brainer to go down there.”
