Moving forward

Hockey Huskies have turned the page on heartbreaking setback at national tourney

By GLENN MacDONALD Sports Reporter

October 15, 2009

THE SAINT MARY’S Huskies won’t let one game dictate their season.

Unfortunately that one game just happened to be the most important of the 2008-09 university men’s hockey campaign.

At last spring’s CIS University Cup in Thunder Bay, the heavily favoured Huskies were one win away from advancing to their first national hockey championship final since 1973. They headed into their Saturday matchup with the Western Mustangs needing a win or a loss by no more than two goals to reach Sunday’s final.

With the score tied 2-2 after two periods, the advantage was squarely on SMU’s side. But a monumental collapse in the third, triggered by three early Western goals in a span of 6:23, left the Huskies stunned and the Mustangs with a 7-2 victory in the final round-robin game.

It was a bitter setback. But, with a new Atlantic university conference season looming, SMU head coach Trevor Stienburg said he would rather look at the 20-7-1 record the team posted or the AUS banner that the Huskies won when reminiscing about last season.

"We can’t be bitter over one bad game," said Stienburg, who’s entering his 13th season as SMU bench boss.

"Our guys want to win. They aren’t a bunch of guys who sit around and play only as good as they have to. You don’t win 20 games in this league because you pick your spots. Our guys play hard all year.

"We could use the CIS as a reminder but at the same time you can’t dwell on it. I don’t want guys going into the season or into the playoffs thinking that could happen. Just go out and play."

The Huskies will enter the season with another lineup that should contend for a national title.

CIS player of the year Marc Rancourt returns for a fifth and final season, as do forwards Cam Fergus and Cody Thornton, who each tallied 22 goals last season, and Andrew Hotham, who led all defenceman in the country in scoring with 43 points.

Five-year OHL veteran forward Cory Tanaka, who has been nagged by a pre-season groin injury, defenceman Patrick O’Keefe and former Oshawa Generals goalie Neil Conway are the top recruits.

Scott Hotham, who, like his brother Andrew, was an all-Canadian blue-liner, and two-way forward Colin Power are among the Huskies’ key losses.

"Losing them is hard; they were a big force for us in the playoffs," Stienburg said. "Hotham especially speaks for himself. But we’re very happy with our newcomers."

The AUHC season opens Friday on four fronts, with the Dalhousie Tigers hosting Saint Mary’s, the St. Francis Xavier X-Men visiting the Acadia Axemen, the UPEI Panthers at the UNB Varsity Reds and the Moncton Aigles Bleus at home against the St. Thomas Tommies.

Here’s a look at the other three Nova Scotia teams (in order of last season’s finish):

St. Francis Xavier X-Men (15-11-2, fourth place, lost 2-0 to Acadia in quarter-final) — St. F.X. will be young on the back end; both goalies and four blue-liners are in their freshman year.

"We’ll have a young D and two first-year goalies," X-Men head coach Brad Peddle said. "We’ll have to get these guys baptized with the level of play in the AUS."

The recruiting class includes goalies Joey Perricone and Bryan Gillis. Perricone played five seasons with the WHL’s Moose Jaw Warriors. Gillis was named the MJAHL rookie of the year in 2006 with the Antigonish Bulldogs and played the last two seasons with the Salmon Arm Silverbacks of the British Columbia Hockey League.

The two Brett’s — Morrison and Robertson — were 1-2 in team scoring and are expected to lead the offence this season.

Acadia Axemen (15-12-1, fifth place, lost 3-0 to UNB in semifinal) — Much like the start of last season, the youthful Axemen will have three players with three or more seasons of university experience.

But Acadia played above its head and allowed only 88 goals against, second-lowest in the conference.

"As good as we’ll be defensively, that’s how successful we will be," Acadia bench boss Darren Burns said.

But the Axemen didn’t stick to that defensive game plan during the pre-season and that has Burns concerned.

"If we’re going to have success, we’ll have to pay a lot more attention to detail and play a lot better defensively," Burns said. "If we want to be successful this year and be an upper echelon team, we better be a lot stingier than we were in the pre-season."

The team’s top five scorers — Jonathan Laberge, Philippe Bertrand, Chris Bruton, Ryan Graham and Nathan Welton — return. They will be bolstered by the addition of Andrew Clark, a crafty centre who scored 40 goals in his final season with the Brandon Wheat Kings, and former Acadie-Bathurst Titan power forward Spenser Jezegou.

Graham Bona, last season’s captain of the Halifax Mooseheads, adds size to the blue-line.

Dalhousie Tigers (4-23-1, last place, out of playoffs) — It was a challenging year for Pete Belliveau in his first season behind the Dalhousie bench.

The Tigers finished an abysmal 20 points out of a playoff spot and lost their final 13 games of the 2008-09 campaign. It was the team’s fourth consecutive last-place finish.

But Belliveau’s mandate was a three-year process for the program to regain respectability.

"We figured it would take three years to turn around and we’re pretty well on schedule," Belliveau said.

Dal could get there sooner with the addition of 11 newcomers, including goalie Bobby Nadeau and defenceman Benoit Gervais.

Nadeau played four QMJHL seasons, with stints in P.E.I., Val-d’Or and Chicoutimi. Dal allowed a league-worst 5.43 goals against average. Gervais finished second overall among QMJHL blue-liners in points last season with Val-d’Or.

"Nadeau is what I thought he would be; he’ll be a good goaltender for us," Belliveau said. "And Gervais will be an impact player. He’s such a good skater, he can handle the puck and has a great shot.

"We’re a different team, with a different dynamic."

Belliveau had recruited forward Maxime Tanguay, the younger brother of former Mooseheads star Alex Tanguay, during the summer. But he signed with the AHL’s Rockford IceHogs earlier this month and has been reassigned to the Toledo Walleye of the East Coast league.

( gmacdonald@herald.ca)