Brian Reznikov loves playing hockey so much, he gave up part of his senior year at Lawrence High School to play the sport in another country.
Reznikov, a former standout on the LHS hockey team, just spent his first season playing away from home with the Greater Metro Junior A Hockey League’s Shelburne Sharks, based in Shelburne, Ontario, Canada.
Playing with the Sharks provided Reznikov a chance to live and breathe hockey seven days a week. Hockey is clearly on a different level in Canada, and Reznikov was glad to live it for a few months. He said he enjoyed being immersed in his passion 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Reznikov, 17, reflecting on the differences between high school and juniors, said that the pace, skill-level and overall hours spent playing the sport are all heightened.
“The amount of hockey steps up and being sore and stuff,” Reznikov said. “But, I think I’ve taken it well, and I think I’ve had pretty good success.”
Reznikov is right. The Shelburne Sharks are close to last in the GMHL, with a 5-24 record this season. But Reznikov had 19 points through 29 games, tied for third on the team.
With Shelburne, Reznikov lived in a dorm-style residence in Ontario. The facility features a cafeteria, TV lounges, a training field, a locker room, a gym and puck shooting lanes. Players have access to the gym 24 hours a day.
The chance to live and play in another country gave Reznikov a chance to grow.
Reznikov couldn’t have been better suited for that lifestyle, said LHS hockey coach John Ritchie. Hockey is “the center of his life,” and he has a genuine love for the game.
“I think it’s just more of an everyday commitment,” Reznikov said. “Basically, life revolves around it rather than it being part of your life. It was cool [to have constant access to hockey], but you had to kind of push yourself to go to the gym sometimes.”
Sharks’ head coach Jeff Oliver said the Reznikov has done a lot of maturing during his stint with the squad. He was already at a disadvantage when he got to Shelburne—not only did Reznikov come from a different country, he was also one of the team’s youngest athletes.
“When Brian first came here, you could tell his age,” he said. “For being as young as he is, being away from home, I think he’s grown up a lot. He really became a leader on this team. Being able to lead guys that are up to 21 years of age, I think that says a lot about the person.”
Oliver said Reznikov came through — he was Shelburne’s youngest leading scorer on a team comprising older players.
But after holding his own against college-aged kids for the last four months, Reznikov has decided to return home to Lawrence. Since there are just 12 games left on Shelburne’s schedule, he opted to come back to New Jersey for the rest of the year and play for the Cardinals’ hockey team.
“I told him, ‘You can always go back to juniors next year,’ which I think is his plan,” said Lawrence coach John Ritchie.
Reznikov confirms that this is his plan. He can always go back to juniors, but this is his last chance to play with the Cardinals. The decision, he added, was “exciting,” and he’s looking forward to rejoining his Lawrence teammates.
“I’m never going to get another chance to play high school hockey, while I can still play juniors for a couple of years,” he said.
He expects his juniors experience to carry over onto the high school ice—he feels a tangible difference in his play, but after consuming hockey for four months, improvement was almost expected.
For Reznikov’s family, especially his mother, Jennifer, it’s a relief to see her son come home. Reznikov also has two 15-year-old twin sisters, Grace and Victoria, who attend Lawrence High School. Both girls play soccer and lacrosse at the high school, and outside of school, they play club soccer with NLSA out of Pennington.
His father, Anthony, immigated to the United States from Russia in middle school. Anthony, who works in sales, played lacrosse in college and currently plays hockey in a men’s league.
Jennifer, a business development manager with Johnson & Johnson, said that one of the scariest parts about being a hockey mom has been watching her son get hurt while he plays — and as a hockey player, it happens more often than his she would like.
But when it happens while she’s watching him play via an internet livestream in another country, the anxiety is even more intense.
“I watched two players help him off the ice,” Jennifer said. “He was a country away. I was dialing his cell phone, but he was in the locker room, I guess, with the medic. Of course he turned out to be fine and he did play the next day, but not knowing, that was probably the hardest part. I’d seen him get in fights before and I’d seen him be pulled off, but being that far away was hard.”
The family first started thinking of junior hockey prior to Reznikov’s junior year, when a couple of teams contacted him for tryouts. Reznikov was too young to make any team at the time, but it allowed him to gain contacts and experience the culture of junior hockey.
After his third season with the Cardinals wrapped up, coaches began calling Reznikov, and he was recruited by the Sharks.
“It was always a conversation, and Brian came to us and said he thought that this would be a pivotal year for him to see what it’s like to play junior hockey,” Jennifer said. “It would really help guide his future for what he wanted to do. He had to kind of go and say, ‘Am I going to be good enough? Or am I just the best kid that’s local?’”
Turns out, he was one of the best players abroad, too.
Reznikov, who began playing hockey when he was four years old, was a standout at Lawrence. He tallied 115 points in three years. He also finished the 2014-15 season as one of the state’s top scorers, with a career-high 47 points and 37 goals. His totals climbed each season.
But adapting to juniors was tough, at first, Reznikov said. “Yeah, it was hard. I think I adjusted well to a new environment, but it was hard leaving home.”
Reznikov also needed to get his academics in order. He spent much of his summer taking online courses approved by his high school. He is currently taking one elective, and then he will continue electives when he returns home.
Reznikov is now re-enrolled at Lawrence High School and has been medically cleared to play for the hockey team.
Ritchie said Reznikov’s size—5-foot-11, 205 lbs.—and shot are his biggest assets. He added that Reznikov has a nose for the net and a knack for scoring when the team needs it most. Playing in Canada only strengthened his skills.
“I think playing against the older guys is also going to make [Brian] realize the small parts of the game,” Ritchie said. “He said to me, ‘There’s no easy points playing against older guys. They’re faster, they’re bigger, they’re stronger.’ … Where down here, he can kind of score against some of these teams at will. It’s just providing him a new challenge, and playing against the older guys was a big step for him.”
Ritchie said he’s happy to have Reznikov back for another half season, as he is one of two players who are Ritchie’s first four-year players.
Watching Reznikov skate at the junior level, Ritchie also noticed some defensive improvements in his game.
“His backchecking was a thing that stood out to me, something that Brian and I kind of always butted heads on while he was in high school,” Ritchie said. “That stood out to me right away when I was watching a couple of his games.”
According to Oliver, Reznikov’s biggest improvement was skating.
While playing juniors gave Reznikov a chance to live hockey every second of every day, there was an added bonus, as he also felt it gave him a better chance to be noticed by NCAA scouts. He is still applying to colleges, though Reznikov said he’s keeping his options open for what he wants to do next year.
For now, though, his Lawrence teammates are glad to have him back.
“We’ve all missed him terribly. We all cried when he left. …. There’s definitely a space at the kitchen table that we miss every night, so can’t wait to have him back,” Jennifer Reznikov said.
Brian Reznikov, 17, one of the top scorers in the state last season, spent the first half of this school year playing hockey in Canada.,
