NEUGSIE’S AROUND THE SJHL: SHOWCASE TIME!
By: Jamie Neugebauer
Voice of the ND Hounds
1. Time To Talk About Joe – If you haven’t heard of Joe Young, it’s time you found out. The Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League’s goals-against average leader, its save-percentage leader, and its shutout leader is none other than the Weyburn Red Wings’ rookie 2001-born puck stopper. Want another crazy stat about the Regina native? He has seven wins on the year, completely due to Weyburn’s lack of run support, but four (yes, 4!) of them have been shutouts. That this kind of talent got overlooked out of midget mostly has to do with the fact that he was part of a struggling Battlefords Stars AAA club, but if you ask those around the Wings, they’ve felt he’s been Weyburn’s dog to run with for a while now (sorry Noah Decottignies and Aaron De Kok, aka, the other guys). He will replace Kindersley’s injured Matt Sankner at the Showcase, though he should have been there all along.
2. The ND Tweeners – Who has the second most shutouts in the SJ, you ask? Well, my favourite and yours, Notre Dame’s Riley Kohonick. Logan Dyck has been fantastic in net for the Hounds too, mind you. So where does that leave ND right now? Well, I have to be honest, I have to call them a bit of a tweener club. They didn’t unload their vets before the deadline like the other non-playoff teams at time of writing, but the gap between them and eighth place grows with every frustrating loss (Phil Roy’s team sits in 10th, six points behind No. 8 Estevan, while the Bruins also have two games in hand with 15 games remaining in the ND schedule). The element keeping ND alive right now is their ability to beat the teams directly ahead of them in the standings, the aforementioned Bruins and the Kindersley Klippers. A loss this Friday in Estevan would be a real gut shot. Do the Hounds want the playoffs? It’s been playoff time for awhile now.
3. Roaring Like Lyon – On the other end of the standings, Battlefords North Stars bench boss Brayden Klimosko is thrilled with his newest acquisition, goaltender Kristian Lyon. Two games in, two wins, a shutout, and only three goals allowed on 82 shots. It’s early days for Lyon’s time in Saskatchewan (he was acquired at the deadline from Langley in the BCHL), but a great start if he wants to be the No. 1 of a three-headed goaltending monster playing in front of a team almost sure to have say at the business end of the SJHL playoffs.
4. Showcase Replacements – A couple roster moves to note regarding the Showcase as injuries, inevitably, take their course. La Ronge’s Jake Gudjonson, who is having a great year but wasn’t initially picked, was supposed to replace the injured Battlefords forward Rylan Nivon, but I am hearing he is out too, to be replaced by Nipawin’s Carson Erhardt. Sankner hurt himself against Humboldt recently, so in comes Young. I’m sure I’ll hear of more tomorrow when I get there!
5. Nice Year Liam – How about the quietly brilliant season Kindersley’s Liam Fraser is having? I thought he was outstanding at the Warman Showcase when I saw him, and he’s routinely been the most dangerous Klipper every time I see them play. The guy had three goals last year, he already has 23, he’s so slippery with the puck, and smart without it. I’ve seen a lot of kids never get better in junior, but it’s great to see a guy who clearly put in the work, got an opportunity, and is running with it. He also shares a name with a Toronto FC soccer player, which is cool to me because I am a big TFC fan.
6. The Ross Exception? – Speaking of Joe Young, his addition to the young guns team at the Showcase will mean that the SJ will make a ‘Ross Exception’ for Nipawin’s star young goaltender Ross Hawryluk. The Hawk, who is also a 2001 birth year, will move up to a veterans team, to let Young play on the youngsters team. I made up the Ross Exception wording, by the way. Man, so many good goalies in the SJHL this year! Good stuff.
7. Kudos for the Pink & White – Speaking of good stuff, if you can only come to one game at the Showcase, come Wednesday morning. The ‘Pink and White game’ will be “Sponsored by SaskTel’s long running cyber-bullying prevention program, the game set for broadcast on January 22, at 10:15 a.m. will be attended by over 600 special guests. Students from seven Regina area schools have been invited to attend the game which will be followed by a Be Kind Online lunch and the initiative’s annual bullying prevention rally.”, according to the league website. The full press release can be found here: https://www.sjhl.ca/sasktel-be-kind-online-pink-and-white-game-to-feature-at-sjhl-mjhl-showcase. Pretty cool.
8. Mini Showcase Handicap – I don’t watch the Manitoba league much, so I don’t feel qualified to comment as much as a guy like my colleague Benny Walchuk might, but I expect the event to be incredibly hotly contested. If I had to pick one team to watch, or to say would beat any squad at the event based on its talent, I would very quickly go with Team SJHL Kunitz. The team has the four best defencemen in the league, in my opinion, in Battlefords’ Seth Summers and Matthew Fletcher, and Melfort’s Nolan Kadachuk, and Alex Rondeau, awesome goaltending, and plenty of chemistry with four North Stars up front. The team also has my boys in Hounds Jared Hamm and Jarrett Penner, who both have Showcase experience, and are tremendous hockey players (and people!). Every team is good though, obviously.
9. Keep Your Greyeyes Fixed – Pun intended, but if there were two perhaps not obvious guys to watch at the event, I would pick the two 2001 birthyears with the last name Greyeyes. Dauphin Kings forward Nakodan Greyeyes has been outstanding all season, putting up well-over 1.5 points-per-game, while La Ronge rookie Aaron Greyeyes has done a bit of everything for the resurgent Wovles. Nakodan will play on a vets team, MJHL Zajac, despite being a 2001-birth year, while Aaron will be on the SJ young guns squad. I haven’t heard if they are related, but I understand the Greyeyes last name is pretty common.
10. How Bout Them Cougs? (bonus) – How about that University of Regina women’s hockey team? A six-game win streak, two impressive wins over Mount Royal University last weekend, and Sarah Hodges’ squad sits in a home-ice advantage playoff spot in fourth with only six contests left. The cellar-dwelling Manitoba Bisons come to Regina next weekend, and UofR living legend Jaycee Magwood is on some sort of fire. The men’s team are only three points behind UBC for the final playoff spot too, but picked up only one point in Calgary last weekend. Either way, it does look like the UofR hockey programs are finally going in a really good direction.
(Follow Jamie on Twitter at @Neugsie)
