When an email from OHL media relations director Aaron Bell arrived in my inbox Monday afternoon, only part of the subject line was visible.
Curiously, I tried to make sense of it.
"Windsor Spitfires Regretfully Announce The Passing Of Team Capt..."
Surely, as much as it seemed like common sense at the time, that next word wasn't "Captain", was it? There's just no way.
Sadly, I was wrong. Those were indeed the missing letters.
In a story that transcends anything to do with the game, Windsor Spitfires' captain Mickey Renaud collapsed at his home and died Monday.
At 19 years of age.
For a moment, forget the hockey player, one who seemed destined to eventually make the jump to the Calgary Flames, the team that drafted him last summer.
This tragedy is more than that, hockey be damned.
Any time a kid collapses and drops dead before his 20th birthday, you try to make sense of it all. More often than not, you just can't.
So it's too simple, on this day, to discuss how Renaud could have made it to the big leagues, taking to the ice with Iginla and Phaneuf, that flaming ‘C' emblazoned across his chest. Or how he could have led the Spitfires to an OHL crown and perhaps carried his teammates down Highway 401 to Kitchener for the Memorial Cup later this spring.
None of that matters. Not right now.
Not when the kid was 19 years old.
Yes, the Windsor Spitfires, the OHL and the Calgary Flames, among others, lost one hell of a hockey player Monday around noon.
They'll never get a chance to see him lead again, never see what he could have become on the ice. So much promise, so unfulfilled, so suddenly.
And that isn't the saddest part of the story. Not even close.
You see, the Renaud family lost so much more. A son, a brother, a grandson. Gone before they could wish him a Happy 20th.
And that is the biggest tragedy of all.