The end of our first week of the 2018 A to Z Challenge brings us to Matt Grennier.

Matt played for the Rangers from 2001-2003. They were his third OHL team and his last. He actually chose to skip his over-ager year and go to university. A decision that kind of baffled the teen girls at my school – the boy was fine, and he played great hockey too. But he went on to play for his university team, Wilfrid Laurier University, as you can see from the purple and gold uniform above. After he finished school, he played a year in the AHL for the Toronto Marlies and finished off his career the next season (2008-2009) in the ECHL playing for the Wheeling Nailers.

Matt was my *very first* Rangers crush. That sort of thing sticks with a girl. I remember seeing him at school all the time and I was smitten. Of course, he left at the end of my grade 10 year, right after winning Memorial Cup, and then all that smitten-ness switched to Clarkson if we can all remember back to C.

When Grennier left the OHL to play for his university team, I had no idea that it would also be my university team. I saw him a few times on campus when I first started going there. Because I had been around the same high school, and the rink on game days, and Tim Bit Days while he was a Ranger, I think he might have recognized me. My first year at WLU, I was in the bookstore and I saw him and I stopped dead in my tracks. So it might have been that he slightly recognized me, or that he thought it was weird that some random girl just stopped in the middle of walking to stare at him. Either way…we had “a moment”.