James Neal hits a low point in his career.

The National Hockey League career of veteran forward James Neal may have reached a new low on Monday, and you genuinely have to wonder where the former 40 goal scorer will go from here.

As many of you reading this will already know, earlier this summer Neal agreed to join the Columbus Blue Jackets on a professional tryout offer. Neal has since been participating in training camp with the Blue Jackets, but it would appear that the Blue Jackets weren't impressed by what Neal had to show or simply just weren't impressed enough.

On Monday morning, Blue Jackets insider Aaron Portzline announced that Neal had been released from his professional tryout offer, meaning that there will be no NHL contract forthcoming from the Blue Jackets.

To be clear it is still possible that Neal could sign with another team before the start of the regular season, and there is even the possibility that he could be signed at some point later down the line if a team is dealing with a large number of injuries at the forward position. That being said, this has to feel like a low point for Neal in his NHL career.

Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly the fan reaction to the news has been quite harsh, with Neal not exactly being the most beloved of players in the National Hockey League. The response from fans of the Calgary Flames has been especially vitriolic, but you can hardly blame that fan base given some of the comments Neal made about their team last month.

“Not much, no, no,” said Neal on The Fan 97.1 in Columbus when asked if he had much experience playing with Johnny Gaudreau dating back to his time with the Flames. “Calgary was kind of the death of me when I went there. I was on the fourth line just trucking away. It’s been a battle since then."

Neal effectively laid much of his woes at the feet of the Calgary Flames, and it seems like that team's fan base has come out to celebrate today's news as a result of those comments.