She faces a charge of "felony harassment", which carries a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment and a fine of $10,000, said Brendan Siefken, deputy prosecuting attorney in Benton County, Wash. He added that if prosecutors decide to proceed with charges, she would not be facing the maximum penalty, given her background and history.

Friends and acquaintances in Kitchener describe MacLaughlin as a "sports fanatic" who was determined to have a career as a sports reporter.

Bill Pegg, the president of the Kitchener Panthers baseball team, said he was shocked and saddened by news of MacLaughlin's arrest.

"I had tons of contact with her," Pegg said, who had met her parents and ate lunch with her shortly before she headed to B.C. He and several other Panthers staffers and team members have kept in touch with MacLaughlin through social media since she moved to Kelowna to take a job at a golf club.

"She was always easy to get along with, very thorough, always looking to do more," Pegg said. "She's got lots of talent."

Pegg wondered if Playfair "overreacted" by calling police about the alleged threat. MacLaughlin is described in police documents as five feet, four inches tall and weighing 120 pounds, while the Tri-City Americans website says Playfair is six-foot-one and 210 pounds.

But Bryn Ossington, the executive director of Wilfrid Laurier Student Publications, said MacLaughlin could be "intimidating." Ossington stressed he only knew MacLaughlin through their work on the Cord and Radio Laurier.

"She knows what she wants and does what she can to get it," he said. "Forceful is probably the wrong word. She's determined."

He said she was very knowledgeable about a number of sports, knew the players and could readily quote statistics about them.

"I hope this doesn't drag down her career," Pegg said. "My hope is that they (the police) just say, 'Smarten up and go on home.' "

MacLaughlin worked with the golf club for five months after arriving in Kelowna, worked for two months as a paid intern covering general news at Castanet Media, a Kelowna media website, did freelance work with Shaw TV Okanagan, and covered four or five Kelowna Rockets hockey games for the Daily Courier, the Kelowna paper, as a freelancer.

She was Sportsnet's Canadian Hockey League social media co-ordinator for the network's Friday Night Hockey, and her LinkedIn resumé also says she writes feature articles for Hockey Canada's website.

Playfair, who is from Fort St. James, B.C., is a right winger with the Western Hockey League's Tri-City Americans who played with the Spokane Chiefs in 2012-13. He is the son of former NHL player and current Phoenix Coyotes associate coach Jim Playfair and the nephew of former NHL player Larry Playfair.

cthompson@therecord.com

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