Red Deer natives Jeff de Wit (right) and Ryan Vandervlis recently visited Concordia University in Montréal where they will play hockey together this fall. (Supplied)

By Josh Hall (Twitter: @Vancan19)

hockey bonds

Brothers Vandervlis and de Wit commit to each other and Concordia University for four years

May 12, 2019 | 1:51 PM

Two lifelong competitors who now call themselves brothers are preparing for at least four years living, studying and playing hockey together in Montréal.

Jeff de Wit, a former Red Deer Rebel, and Ryan Vandervlis, a former Lethbridge Hurricane, are both from the Red Deer area and each recently committed to Concordia University.

Both Red Deer Minor Hockey products, they played against each other for the most part growing up, plus one year together on the Bantam AAA Rebels squad.

But the pair wouldn’t be at this juncture without a few twists of fate along the way.

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Vandervlis, who will turn 21 on May 23, awoke last June from a medically-induced coma after suffering severe burns in a freak campfire accident involving fellow players.

Under sedation for 10 days and in the hospital for 11 weeks, including seven in the burn unit, Vandervlis returned to hockey as a dynamic part of the Red Deer Vipers Jr. B squad last January.

De Wit, meanwhile, had been put on waivers and was passed over by every WHL team. He would later receive his own second chance from Rebels coach Brent Sutter to play a second stint with the club, and wound up registering career numbers in 2018-19.

“I had three or four buddies who were at the hospital twice a week, Jeff being one of them,” Vandervlis shares. “He was driving down to come hang out with me and it took three hours of driving for a one-hour visit.”

Vandervlis and de Wit (blue) meet at centre ice in April 2017 after the Regina Pats knocked out the Lethbridge Hurricanes in game six of the third round of the WHL playoffs. Each had a goal in the game. The Pats went on to lose in six games to Seattle in the WHL final. (Supplied)

The two began getting closer in grade eight before both attending Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School in grade nine where they became even better chums.

Eventually, de Wit became part of the Rebels organization and Ryan found himself in Lethbridge.

“In the Eastern Conference Final one year in the Dub, I was playing with Lethbridge, he was with Regina, and we lost in six games,” recalls Vandervlis. “But Jeff and I, every time he’d score, I’d score. We had the exact same stats.”

“In game six, Ryan had scored, then I came back and got a goal,” adds de Wit, who’s tally happened to be the game-winner that night.

The two even went head to head in school sports when one was at Eastview Middle and the other at Central.

“Ryan was almost never on a team with me, but he was always the best player on the teams we’d play against. We thoroughly enjoyed playing against each other,” de Wit says.

Now headed to la belle province, de Wit is fortunate to have an aunt locally and to have taken French Immersion.

“I got a call from Marc-André Element, the coach, who called me about February while I was on the road in Saskatchewan with the Rebels. He said they’d love for me to come out and see the place. He asked if there would be anything that would hold me back from playing out east, and I said that I’d been talking to my best friend Ryan Vandervlis, ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard his story, but he’s back playing hockey now and ever since his accident, we’ve been talking about going to school together,’” de Wit recounts.

“We had talked about Calgary and other places, but I told him I probably wouldn’t come if they didn’t give Ryan a call or a chance. They had no idea he was back skating. They called him the next day.”

The Concordia University Stingers are losing a handful of their best forwards this off-season, as it turns out, which made it a best-case scenario for Vandervlis.

“At the end of the day, I wanted to get out of Red Deer and Alberta, see something different,” says Vandervlis, who describes the facilities and teammates he’s met already in Montréal as awesome.

He also expects the competition in U Sports to be stiffer than in the WHL because the players will be older and stronger for a change.

“When Ryan came back to Red Deer, if I wasn’t with my teammates, I was with him. We talked to a great extent all year about going to school together,” de Wit says, noting the pair were eventually flown out to Québec to see the operation.

“Ryan and I are really grateful for that. Words can’t explain how excited I am to go to school with him, and I always tell him he’s not my friend, he’s my brother. We keep each other honest and I know he’s going to do great. These next four years are about expanding and spreading our wings.”

Both will study business, while Ryan will minor in creative writing, and Jeff has his sights set on becoming a lawyer. As an added bonus, the pair’s years played in the WHL will cover their university tuition.

In the meantime, Ryan continues to heal and is working on paying his family members back with some of the approximately $80,000 that was raised through a GoFundMe campaign while he was in hospital.

Editor’s note: Ryan and Jeff felt compelled to thank a number of people who helped in summer 2018, including the Shybunkas, Zentners, Webers, Gibsons and de Wits, as well as Danita Kellough and other friends and family who ensured he didn’t have to eat a single hospital meal.

“To everyone who wrote me a card, a letter, came to visit, texted, called, prayed, made me a meal, or so much as had me in their thoughts last summer, thank you,” says Ryan. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”