"From the moment he met Colby Cave in 2011, Mark Lamb knew he had found a kindred spirit. Not as a hockey player, though. Lamb had already enjoyed a 400-game NHL career and, truth be told, was a much more talented player than Colby Cave could ever hope to be.
https://www.giantsonlinefans.com/blackhawks-adam-boqvist-jersey Where they found their common ground was in their backgrounds. Cave had grown up on a ranch in North Battleford, Sask., about four hours north of where Lamb and his family farmed in Pontiex, population 605.
“We had a lot in common because I was brought up the same way,” said Lamb, who was the coach-GM of the Swift Current Broncos, the junior team for which Cave played for four seasons. “We used to make jokes about how we would try to get out of doing chores for hockey. I used to do it all the time and he did, too. What a person. What a player. Gone way, way too soon.”
The hockey world was shocked and stunned to learn that Cave – a 25-year-old who had spent the past five seasons shuttling between the NHL and the American League, most recently for the Edmonton Oilers – died Saturday morning at a Toronto hospital after surgery to heal a brain bleed that occurred while he was sleeping in nearby Barrie, Ont.,
https://www.giantsonlinefans.com/blackhawks-alex-debrincat-jersey Monday night. Cave’s wife, Emily, found him unresponsive Tuesday morning and later that day, he underwent surgery was to remove a colloid cyst that was causing pressure on his brain.
Even at a time like this, with so much death and uncertainty in the world, the last thing you expect is for a 25-year-old kid to be randomly struck down in the prime of his life and his career. Everything Colby Cave got in hockey, he earned with an extraordinary work ethic and an unceasingly positive attitude. A first-round pick of the Kootenay Ice in 2009, Cave was acquired by Lamb in Swift Current in January, 2011 as the centerpiece of a trade which sent WHL star and future NHLer Cody Eakin the other way. “Cody Eakin is the best player to come to this team since Joe Sakic,”
https://www.giantsonlinefans.com/blackhawks-alexander-nylander-jersey Lamb said at the time. And still he traded Eakin, who had just won a silver medal at the World Junior Championship. That’s how much he thought of the unproven Cave, who captained the Broncos in his last two seasons of junior hockey.
“He was a total buy-in guy, totally coachable,” said Lamb, who is now GM-coach of the Prince George Cougars. “Great teammate. He worked for everything he got. The last two years he was our best player and our leader. He treated everybody the way you want people to treat people. People gravitated to him and he had an infectious smile that he brought into the room. He wanted to be a hockey player and he bought into being a hockey player.”
Cave’s agent, Jason Davidson,
https://www.giantsonlinefans.com/blackhawks-alexandre-fortin-jersey remembers one day earlier this season when Cave received a call-up from the Oilers and texted him in an Uber en route to the airport in Los Angeles. Not long after, he received another text from his client, saying the Oilers had called back and informed him that they didn’t need him after all and he was to report back to Bakersfield.
“He texted me back and he was like, ‘Yeah, sh–, I was in the car and I was ready to go.’ ” Davidson said. “Then he just said, ‘I guess I just have to go back to work and play harder tomorrow.’ That’s the kind of person he was. I don’t think people realize how hard it is on a guy who gets called up and sent down. But I was looking through my texts with him the past couple of years and he never complained about it. Not once. It didn’t matter what day it was or what the circumstances were, you would always see Colby Cave with a smile on his face.”"