WHERE ARE THEY NOW: Quitting WHL turned out well for Liam Liston

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This article was published 03/10/2017 (3105 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Liam Liston’s greatest stop may have been a tough decision he made as a 19-year-old netminder with the Western Hockey League’s Vancouver Giants.

Now 24 and set to graduate from law school at the University of Alberta next spring, the former Brandon Wheat King goalie chose to move on from the game as a teenager. He said giving up on his National Hockey League dreams wasn’t easy, but it was the right decision.

“I think the most difficult part for me was knowing that probably the reason I didn’t end up doing it was mostly a function of my own not working hard enough and not being prepared enough,” Liston said. “I had the talent to play beyond the Western (Hockey) League in some capacity. I don’t experience any regrets or bitterness about the decision I made because I was very confident that whatever I ended up doing, I was going to be successful at and contribute to society in some capacity.

“Just because it isn’t hockey doesn’t mean it isn’t meaningful.”

Liston, a product of St. Albert, Alta., started playing goal full time in atom around age 10. He had been a defenceman, but after he had a turn to try goal he immediately loved it.

He grew up well aware of the WHL because friends had been drafted, but said it wasn’t something that was real for him early in his hockey career.

“It wasn’t necessarily a huge possibility for me until my second year of bantam,” Liston said. “I had played AA the first year every year growing up. I was never really exposed to the top level in my first year in the age group I was playing in. It always took until the second year. But in between my first and second years of bantam I had gone to a couple of camps and started to get some attention and that’s probably when it started to become a more realistic goal for me.”

Liston spent that season with the St. Albert Sabres, appearing in 30 games, posting a 3.40 goals-against average and a save percentage of .903. Brandon was impressed, selecting him in the third round, 57th overall.

Liston said he had spoken to all but four teams at the draft table, and Brandon was one of them.

“I didn’t really have any inkling that was where I was going to end up,” Liston said. “I think there ended up being five guys from my bantam team that ended up being picked that day, so the four or five of us were paying close attention to it and tracking it at school. It was an exciting day.”

Liston attended a Wheat Kings prospects camp, and made other trips to the Wheat City to get comfortable. Growing up in St. Albert, which is located on the northwestern side of Edmonton, he was a big-city guy, but he quickly fell for Brandon.

“It’s one of the smaller junior towns in the CHL but I think the Wheat Kings being the main attractions sports-wise is pretty cool,” he said. “I just wanted to play hockey. I didn’t really care about the extra-curricular stuff. Once you got into the program and saw what their development history was like with guys playing pro and going on to do some cool things, it was apparent pretty quickly that you want to play there.”

After a terrific minor midget season as a 15-year-old, he came determined to win a spot in his 16-year-old year, an unlikely goal considering Brandon’s aversion to keeping goaltenders that age.

He was eventually sent back to play midget in St. Albert, although he joined the Wheat Kings several times during the 2009-10 season.

After his midget team was eliminated in the playoffs, Liston was called up for good, and joined the Wheat Kings for their playoff run and their ensuing role as Memorial Cup hosts.

He served as the team’s third goalie; the only action he saw was in practice.

“It was a pretty good experience when you’re 16 and you’ve got 10 or 11 guys in the room who are property of NHL teams and lots of guys who ended up having good pro careers,” Liston said. “It was an awesome time.”

Liston said the experience gave him a comfort level coming into camp the next season, and he used it to his advantage, seizing the No. 1 job. He would play 41 games as a rookie, posting a 3.77 goals-against average and an .880 save percentage on a team that had graduated a number of its stars after the Memorial Cup.

“The most memorable thing for me was the group of young guys we started with,” Liston said. “We had such a big rate of turnover from the team before with all the 19- and 20-year-old guys leaving.”

The newcomers included Jens Meilleur, Spencer Galbraith, Jason Swyripa, Corbin Boes and Ryan Pulock, and Liston said they tried to figure things out together. They developed lasting friendships that still remain.

Liston’s performance was good enough that he earned a spot in the Top Prospects Game, where he stopped all 18 shots for Team Orr in his half of their 7-1 win. He was ranked ninth among North American goalies going into the 2011 National Hockey League draft, and the thoughtful teenager was approached by Sportsnet to write a blog on its website.

It later proved to be the high-water mark of Liston’s hockey career.

He went unselected in the NHL draft, and after three games the next season, the Wheat Kings dealt him to the then-lowly Lethbridge Hurricanes on Oct. 17, 2011.

The trade hurt.

“I had always envisioned myself as being a five-year guy (in Brandon), coming in after I was drafted until I aged out of the league or left,” Liston said. “That was a bit of a shock to the system and the other reason was the friendships that I had developed with the guys. We were pretty close and we had obviously taken a big step as a team the year prior and were looking forward to continuing that.”

He and his friend Galbraith, who was also part of the deal for Brandon Anderson and two bantam draft picks, flew from Portland to Calgary and drove to Lethbridge for a game the next night.

Liston played 24 games with the Hurricanes, and then was dealt as a 19-year-old to the Vancouver Giants the following June. He would make the final 12 starts of his hockey career there.

He said he had been struggling with his game since Christmas of his first year in Brandon — something he blames on his own lack of physical and mental preparation — but found his game coming back together in Vancouver.

He had what he called his best night back in Lethbridge on Oct. 30, 2012, making 26 saves in a 4-3 overtime win, and then was injured a night later early in the second period of a game in Medicine Hat against the Tigers.

The high ankle sprain would require a long recovery, and the mentally exhausted Liston began to consider his options. His buddies were in their second year of university, and he felt like he was falling behind.

“If I was going to play pro hockey I was going in for a very long, arduous journey starting with a lower level pro tryout or something like that and I was going to have to be in it for the long haul,” Liston said. “The best decision was to get going on my school.”

Liston mulled over the decision until the day he flew back to Vancouver, and then let head coach Don Hay know. He drove back to St. Albert the next day.

“It’s tough,” he admitted. “A lot of people, especially in Western Canada, could never fathom why somebody would want to give up playing at that level, which I completely understand. I worked a long time to be able to play there, and it’s pretty hard to explain to people. Some people just don’t get it. But I’d like to say that it worked out well for me.”

Liston went home and got a job, working until he started school at the University of Alberta the next fall. He’s now in his final year of law school, and will article at the firm Bryan and Company in Edmonton.

He said he was fortunate to have four years of his education paid for through the WHL scholarship fund.

“It’s something you don’t really appreciate until you’re in school and listen to your friends or classmates talk about student loans or how tight their financial situations are,” Liston said. “It’s something I never had to experience.”

For some former players, all roads eventually lead back to the game, and it’s no different for Liston.

After his former assistant coach Darren Ritchie took over as director of scouting in the summer of 2016, he reached out to Liston about potentially doing some scouting with former Brandonite Mike Fraser in northern Alberta.

“Despite playing with other organizations, I always felt the strongest ties back here and I thought it was a good time to get back into the game and stay involved,” said Liston, who adds he’s lucky to have Fraser to show him the ropes.

He also speaks highly of Wheat Kings owner Kelly McCrimmon, who he said taught him many life lessons as a coach and general manager.

Liston landed an opportunity to work with the Vegas Golden Knights — McCrimmon’s current employer, where he serves as assistant GM — to spend the summer working with their legal team on contracts and other matters. He will continue to lend a hand from afar as they prepare for next year’s arbitration season.

“It’s just a good way to stay involved in the game and obviously a pretty special learning opportunity that presented itself to me because of my relationship with the Wheat King organization and Kelly,” he said.

Liston’s path may eventually lead to the NHL, but in a far different capacity than he might have imagined as a boy.

He’s fine with the change in plans.

“I get to live vicariously through Ryan Pulock and Mark Stone and Mike Ferland and those guys who I played with,” Liston said. “I get to watch them and potentially be involved in the game in another capacity at some point at the pro level. For me it’s worked out OK.”

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