NEUGSIE’S AROUND THE SJHL
By: Jamie Neugebaur
Voice of the ND Hounds
Mid-July is here, and Rider nation bye-week hysteria is in full throttle! Take a break from worrying about the QB situation with my Around The SJHL for this week!
1. New faces on the bench – With a couple new head coaches coming into the league these past couple seasons, I thought it would make sense to list the league’s bench bosses for 2019-2020, for your easy access. Those hired this off-season are in bold.
1) Nipawin Hawks: Doug Johnson
2) Battlefords North Stars: Brayden Klimosko
3) Estevan Bruins: Chris Lewgood
4) Melfort Mustangs: Trevor Blevins
5) Kindersley Klippers: Gary Childerhose
6) Humboldt Broncos: Scott Barney * interim tag removed
7) Flin Flon Bombers: Mike Reagan
8) Yorkton Terriers: Matt Hehr
9) Notre Dame Hounds: Phil Roy
10) Weyburn Red Wings: Rich Pilon
11) Melville Millionaires: Kyle Adams * interm tag removed
12) La Ronge Ice Wolves: Kevin Kaminski
2. The OA debate rages – The league’s confirmation of the eight overager-per-team rule has flared a debate, on and off social media, over whether a move to make that number lower is actually desirable, and what it would accomplish. I should say that I personally cut my junior hockey teeth in the very young (though very, very good) Ontario Junior Hockey League, where teams rarely have more than five 20-year-olds, but are committing players to the NCAA Division I level on the very regular. I like to see a situation where the development of the young players, to make them as desirable to those who can hand out as big scholarships as possible, should be the No. 1 priority for a junior hockey league, but I know that’s only a tiny part of what Commissioner Bill Chow and the league’s Board of Governors, who are trying to run their businesses to the best of their respective abilities, have on their plates. Fair enough. If a player is good enough, for the most part, the right people will find them; I’ve found that to be pretty often the case anywhere you go in Canada.
3. The great BC exodus…to Saskatchewan – How about all those B.C. Junior B kids heading east to the SJHL this off-season? I have counted at least 14 Kootenay International and Vancouver Island Leaguers that are heading to Sask Junior A next year, and probably more are coming down the pipeline. I’ve heard it’s a good league, and there have been a steady trickle of players, often guys who just missed out on British Columbia Hockey League spots, coming to the prairies over the last few years; but this looks like a real exodus. Keep an eye on a couple of them who put up big numbers, including the VIJHL’s first and third-leading scorers, wearing Notre Dame’s red and white in the year coming up.
4. Buziak lands – I love when the team I work for wins, but it’s maybe an even bigger thrill for me when I see players commit and/or get scholarships to post-secondary institutions. Have to send a shout out to Braydon Buziak, the one-time Regina Pat, who ended his junior career at home with a championship with his hometown Battlefords North Stars, and who will be heading to Toronto to play for the York University Lions! A very good friend of mine (and a heck of a player) Sal Filice plays there, and he has been picking my brain a bit about SJHL players lately, so I’m definitely going to tell Sal they have a really really good one in Braydon! My enduring memory of Buziak is the overtime winner he scored at the Gull Lake neutral-site game this past year when blew past everyone on the ice, on both ND and the Stars, and cooly slid the puck into Hounds’ net. What an ideal bottom six-with-upward-mobility for a Canadian University team to add at this point in the game! Well done York!
5. Goodbye Survivor Series – In my discussion about the league meetings, I forgot to mention that they have done away with the so-called ‘Survivor Series’ in the post-season. If you are unaware, the way the league worked in past years is that the Nos. 7-10 teams at the end of the year played best-of-three ‘Wild Card’ series to play the Nos 1 or 2 seeds in the first round. It was a bit silly for a 12-team league to have the Top 10 make the playoffs in some form or another, so good on the SJHL for this! The replacement will be the classic Top 8 make it in, with 1v8, 2v7, and so forth. They also did away with the rule that the respective division winners automatically received the 1-3 seeds, which is also the right call in my opinion. Good stuff. It will be a real dogfight for those playoff spots this coming up year, as league parity keeps getting more and more intense. Love it!
6. Barney to represent Canada – Have to a send full-hearted congrats to a good guy in Humboldt Broncos head coach Scott Barney, who will assist Alberni Valley (BCHL) head coach Joe Martin on the bench of Team Canada West at the 2019 World Junior A Challenge. Barney did a very nice job after taking over for Nathan Oystrick mid-season a year ago, and only lightly teases me for my brutal National Anthem performance at the SJHL/MJHL Showcase last January. In all seriousness, this is a great feather in the league’s cap, and I know Scott will do a great job. Former Kindersley head coach Clayton Jardine, who has accepted the job as the head coach of the Alberta league’s Camrose Kodiaks, will be the team’s video coach. Great to see the SJ represented at that level! Now let’s see some of our players get a shot there too!
7. Kudos to the Klips! – I keep seeing tweets with pictures of Kindersley Klippers plays and staff going around the province cleaning up garbage. Love that stuff! Well done to Gary, Larry, Orrsy, and the organization out there prioritizing simple acts of giving back. In all my dealings with the Klips, I’ve found the club to be nothing but class.
8. Estevan gets their goalie, La Ronge loses theirs – With Grant Boldt bolting (pun intended) to the Chippewa Steel of the North American Hockey League, the Estevan Bruins were clearly on the hunt to find someone to either play alongside, or ahead of incumbent Kadin Kilpatrick. It looks like they found their guy in Keenan Rancier, the 2000-born Victoria native who was the backup for the BCHL champion (and National Championship runners-up) Prince George Spruce Kings by the end of last year. It appears to be another nice get for Chris Lewgood, though he will quickly have to shake that classic asterisk on the names of goalies who played behind great, dominant clubs. He only has 13 games of junior experience to his name, but I’m not saying he won’t be great, I’m just saying I cannot say! At the same time Jordan Frey, La Ronge’s fine workhorse from last campaign, is off to Sherwood Park in the AJHL. The new-look Wolves got a D-man back in the big-bodied Michael Bentz, and I expect that Calgary minor hockey alum Ryan Baker will get plenty of rubber in the La Ronge net in the season up-coming as Frey’s replacement. I really liked Frey, and I think he’ll do really well in the Edmonton suburb!
9. Commish Bill speaks – Pretty good chat with commissioner Bill Chow on Guy Flaming’s great junior hockey podcast The Pipeline Show this past week, where, among other things, they discuss the state of the league, these new rules, and others. Check it out here: https://soundcloud.com/pipeline-show/bill-chow-july11
10. I’ve taken another mini job! (Bonus) – Just reporting that I have accepted a mini position as the new play-by-play voice of the University of Regina’s women’s soccer club on Canadawest.tv starting next month! I have called UofR’s women’s hockey the past two seasons (and the occasional men’s hockey, and basketball games), so I’m excited to broadcast a little more!
(Follow Jamie on Twitter at @neugsie)
