Emily Matthewson
TEENAGE TRAGEDY: Devils prospect Myles Bell was behind the wheel in 2011 when his car, going 113 mph and carrying 17-year-old Emily Matthewson (inset), was in an accident, killing her. (Getty Images)
It was so dark it was almost purple, as it can be when you’re in places like the mountains of western Canada. Foot to the gas, Myles Bell was driving 113 mph when he hit a dip in Springbank Road, just outside the city limits of Calgary.
He lost control, and the car began to flip… and flip … and flip. Wearing no seat belt, the 17-year-old Bell was ejected from the car immediately. The girl secured next to him in the passenger seat, 18-year-old Emily Matthewson, was not so lucky. Bell hobbled on a broken leg to the nearest house, and by the time the ambulances arrived, Matthewson was dead.
“This crime has left me without one of the few things that truly mattered to me,” Bruce Matthewson, Emily’s father, told the court months later, according to the Calgary Sun. “At this point I live in hell on Earth and find it difficult to find a reason to keep on living.”
On Tuesday, Bell stood with his bare feet on a fluffy red carpet, his hockey shorts and shin guards still strapped on and the logo of the New Jersey Devils just steps away in the center of the room. That is the franchise that has gone out on a limb and taken a chance on Bell, drafting him in the sixth round just a month ago, two years and two months exactly after the crash that changed his life.
“I had to grow up, I had no other options,” Bell said in a quiet Prudential Center locker room on the second day of the team’s prospect camp. “I had to realize I wasn’t invincible, I wasn’t Superman, and live with it.”
The same year as the crash, 2011, was Bell’s first with his name in the NHL Draft. He was a standout defenseman for the Regina Pats of the Western Hockey League, but his monster right-handed slap shot was hard to see through the glaring light of his accident, along with court papers stating Bell and Matthewson were intoxicated at the time of the accident. The impaired driving charge was dropped, but Bell sent out a letter of apology and pled guilty to a charge of dangerous driving.
All 30 teams passed.
“It was a hard thing to go through,” Bell said. “But it made me better, personally and as a hockey player.”
Regina general manager Brent Parker had a daughter who was friends with Emily Matthewson, and he cried at the press conference explaining what happened. In September, he traded Bell to the Kelowna Rockets, with whom Bell had a good enough year to be ranked the 46th best skater by Central Scouting — and go undrafted yet again.
That fall, Rangers GM Glen Sather invited him to camp on a tryout basis, and Bell got his first taste of what the NHL and New York could be like, heading to the MSG Training Center in Westchester and being blown away.
“They were great to invite me, and they have such a wonderful facility,” Bell said. “But it just didn’t work out.”
Bell went back to Kelowna, where his coach Ryan Huska moved him from defense to wing so that booming shot could be better utilized. He led the team in goals (38) and assists (55) in 69 games, and Devils president and GM Lou Lamoriello took notice. The two spoke at the NHL combine in Toronto before the draft, and come the 160th overall pick, Lamoriello took a calculated chance.
“We would not have drafted him,” Lamoriello told The Post, “if we weren’t comfortable with where he’s at.”
Lamoriello has visions of Bell using what he called “an NHL shot” and his experience as a defenseman, to man the power-play point, though that may have to wait. Even with Ilya Kovalchuk now in Russia and the Devils looking for as many good right-wingers as possible, Bell knows he will have to be patient.
“It would be my wish to play here,” Bell said. “But I’ve learned I just have to keep working, and hopefully some good can come of it.”