Lakers Hero Recalls Winner:

This is in todays Morning Star Newspaper:

Lakers hero recalls winner

Published: April 29, 2010

Calgary’s Cam Sylven was probably not the player Vernon Lakers head coach Eddie Johnstone wanted to see with an overtime breakaway and a national championship on the line.

It’s not that the likeable Sylven couldn’t score – he had 15 goals in 60 regular season games that year – but of the 15, only a few were scored on breakaways.

“Yeh, I was in a bit of a breakaway drought, to put it bluntly,” laughed Sylven from his office in Calgary, where he works today as a sales rep for a land-based real estate investment firm.

But there he was, almost 20 years ago, in alone on New Westminster Royals goalie Corey Cadden, four minutes into sudden death overtime of the 1990 Centennial Cup tournament final in front of an absolute sell-out, shoulder-to-shoulder crowd at the Vernon Civic Arena on May 12.

After plucking the puck from Royals defenceman Darwin McClelland at centre ice, Sylven, the most sportsmanlike player of the 1989 Centennial Cup tournament in Summerside, P.E.I., was home free on Cadden.

“I remember he gave me a ton of space top shelf on the glove side, and he kept backing into his net, I think that handcuffed him a bit,” said Sylven, whose shot beat Cadden cleanly and gave Vernon its first of two Centennials Cup titles as the Lakers (the franchise has won three Royal Bank Cup titles as the Vipers, and, of course, are now going after their sixth national championship in Dauphin, Man. starting Saturday).

The Lakers were only in the Centennial Cup 20 years ago because they were the hosts. New West, easily the best team in the country, went 52-3-4 in the BCHL regular season, beat the Interior Conference champion Lakers (who were 33-20-5) 4-2 in the league final, then won 12 straight games (including a 5-3 decision over Vernon in the round robin) to reach the Centennial Cup final.

The Lakers, who had 28 days off before the tournament, went 3-1 in the round robin (the first year the tournament went to five teams), and eliminated the Nipiwin Hawks of Saskatchewan 11-5 in their semifinal, setting up a rematch with the Royals and a showdown of, arguably, Canada’s top-two junior A squads.

In the last game, New West built up a 5-2 lead after 40 minutes, chasing Vernon starting goalie Dean Kuntz in favour of Murray Caton, and began the third period on a power play.

However, Lakers forward Garth Geddes scored shorthanded early to make it 5-3. Midway through the period, Vernon native Duane Dennis made it 5-4, setting the stage for the Lakers’ version of Paul Henderson, Sylven, who scored the tying goal – not on a breakaway – with three minutes to go.

“Garth (Geddes) drove wide and I cut to the middle of the net, he threw the puck on my stick and it went in,” said Sylven, whose two-year Lakers career ended with the overtime winner and the national championship.

After a year in the Maritimes, Sylven returned home to Calgary, playing two years and winning an Alberta Colleges championship with Mt. Royal, then two more years at the University of Calgary. Married to Jennifer with one son, Jack, seven (who Cam coaches), Sylven plays hockey three times a week and keeps in touch with several of his Lakers’ teammates.

“I’m in Duane’s (Dennis’s) hockey pool,” laughed Sylven, still a follower of Vernon junior hockey, thanks to newspaper scores, and guys he plays with whose kids play in places like Nanaimo and Penticton, telling him how tough Vernon is every year.

“It’s quite a tradition they have,” he said. “I have such fond, amazing memories of Vernon. The billeting system, Mel Lis and his ownership was second to none. I look back on that 1990 team and the thing that sticks out is, everybody put their differences aside and we really gelled.

“Everybody was like brothers.”