BCHL News & Trades:
Harris Commits To Trail Smoke Eaters:
The Trail Smoke Eaters are pleased to announce the commitment of Logan Harris from Anaheim, California. Harris is a 6’5” 200 lb forward who has skated the past three seasons for the Anaheim Junior Ducks of the United States Tier 1 Elite Hockey League. In 2017-2018 Harris played for a Jr Ducks U18 team, recording 11 goals, 20 assists and 74 penalty minutes in 34 games. This past weekend the Ducks were one of 16 teams competing in the U18 US Nationals, Harris contributed three points in the Ducks three games. The Smoke Eaters were impressed with Harris after seeing him play this past season. “Logan adds size and skill to our forward group coming back next season. Logan really enjoyed Trail and fit in with the organization when he visited the area earlier in the year.” noted Director of Hockey and Business Operations, Craig Clare. Harris looks forward to having an opportunity to make an impact with the Smoke Eaters next season, saying “Words can’t describe how excited I am to be a part of such a great organization. It’s going to be a tough transition from AAA to junior hockey but I’m confident I’ll grow in many aspects of my game over the off season. I can’t wait to get started.” The Smoke Eaters are excited to welcome Logan and his family to our organization and look forward to seeing him develop over the next few seasons in Trail.
McIntyre Commits To Eagles For 2018-19 Season:
The Surrey Eagles hockey club is pleased to announce that 2000-born defenceman Evan McIntyre has committed to the team for the 2018-19 season. McIntyre has spent the last two years with St. Andrew’s College, one of the most highly-respected preparatory schools based out of Aurora, Ontario. McIntyre led all defencemen on his team this past season with 51 points in 49 games, as well as an additional 5 points in 4 playoff games. “[Coming to Surrey] is a dream come true,” said McIntyre in an interview with SurreyEagles.ca “It has been my goal to play in the BCHL since I first learned about the league. I’m really excited to get started and meet my teammates.” Originally born in Calgary, Alberta, McIntyre grew up in Oakville, Ontario – about 45 minutes south of Toronto. Coming to British Columbia will be a big step in his career, as he looks to earn himself a NCAA scholarship. He was drafted by the Hamilton Bulldogs of the OHL, but has chosen to play in the BCHL because of the importance he places on getting an education. “I definitely want to go the school route,” McIntyre explained. “Our coach at St. Andrew’s, David Manning, really stresses academics first then hockey.” With the Eagles receiving the news that their top-scoring defenceman Owen Norton would be attending Mercyhurst University next season and wouldn’t be returning, bringing in a defenceman with similar puck-moving and skating abilities was a necessity. “We’re thrilled to bring in Evan,” Eagles GM Blaine Neufeld commented. “He’s a fantastic skater that sees the ice very well. We feel that his game will translate to the BCHL very quickly.” Neufeld also noted that his confidence in the program at St. Andrew’s was another factor when bringing McIntyre. “He comes from a terrific program. His coach David Manning has done a terrific job, which is why St. Andrews is seen as one of the nation’s top programs.” One of the deciding factors for McIntyre choosing Surrey was that he was able to check out the facility and see the ice surface during a visit this past season. After talking to the players and staff, he knew that the Eagles were the right fit for him. “I’ve talked to a lot of Eagles players,” said McIntyre. “They all have nothing but great things to say about the rink, the program, the coaching staff. It just seemed like a really good team environment.” And as for playing on the large, Olympic-sized ice surface at South Surrey Arena? McIntyre expects his skill-set to carry over quite well to his new home rink. “I like to jump into the play and skate with the puck. My game plan is to move pucks up the ice as quick as I can by using a good first pass out of the zone.” “They’re expecting me to be a top defenceman on the team, and I’m taking that role very seriously. I have a couple things to improve this offseason, and I’m going to work really hard at it. I want to win a championship. That’s the mindset I have going into next year.”
Wenatchee Wild Acquire Koch From NAHL:
The Wenatchee Wild are five days away from competing in the Royal Bank Cup Tournament for the National Championship, but they already have an eye on building for next season. To that end, the Wild are pleased to announce they have acquired defenseman Brandon Koch, formerly of the Coulee Region Chill (NAHL). He will join the team to begin the 2018-19 BCHL season. Koch, who checks in at 5’11” and 176 lbs. is a native of Hastings, MN and played two years of midget prep hockey at the prestigious Shattuck – St. Mary’s program before joining the Coulee Region Chill last season where he collected 44 points in 59 games, second most on his team. A very offensive-minded defenseman who is committed to play Division I college hockey for the Air Force Academy, Koch is thrilled to be headed to Wenatchee. “I look forward to finishing my junior career in Wenatchee in the BCHL, and I can’t wait to get started”, he said. Wild Head Coach / GM Bliss Littler is excited about Koch’s impending arrival. ““We feel he is a very dynamic and offensive d-man who should fit in to our style of play very well.”
Harbinson Gets Contract Extension-Vees Name Rizzo Captain:
The Penticton Vees held a press conference inside The Vault restaurant at the South Okanagan Events Centre Tuesday, May 15 to wrap up the 2017-18 season. Multiple topics were covered on both the hockey and business side of the Vees for last season and the upcoming 2018-19 campaign. On the hockey side, a new contract extension for Vees head coach, general manager and president Fred Harbinson was announced which runs through to the end of the 2023-24 BCHL season. Harbinson had one year remaining on his current contract. The 2018-19 season will mark Harbinson’s 12th with the organization, a run that has seen unprecedented success. Since 2007-08, the Vees have captured four Fred Page Cups, one Doyle Cup, one Western Canada Cup, had three National Championship appearances and won the 2012 RBC Cup in Humboldt, Saskatchewan. Overall Penticton has posted a record of 481-144-14-40 under Harbinson’s watch and has also seen 10 players drafted into the NHL, with at least one more to come in the 2018 NHL Draft in June. Continuing with hockey announcements, the Vees are incredibly proud to announce their leadership group for the 2018-19 BCHL season. Massimo Rizzo, who turns 17 June 13, will serve as the Vees full-time captain after Owen Sillinger and Grant Cruikshank were named as co-captains last season. Rizzo is coming off his first full season of junior hockey in which he scored 13 goals and 26 assists in 50 games. In the playoffs Rizzo took his game a step further recording 10 points in 11 games. Rizzo also represented Canada at the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge in Fort St. John and Dawson Creek, BC, scoring once and adding three assists in five games for Team Canada Black. He will be joined by Ryan Sandelin and Cassidy Bowes as assistant captains, along with two more assistants to be named at a later date. Sandelin, 18, begins his second season with the Vees after missing just three games in the 2017-18 regular season. The native of Hermantown, Minnesota scored eight goals with 13 assists last season and his committed to attend the University of Minnesota State Mankato for 2019-20. Bowes, 18, is also about to start his second full season with the Vees, though he burst onto the scene during the 2017 playoffs with five points in eight games. From Grand Prairie, Alberta, Bowes scored 16 goals and 17 assists last season and could regularly be found throwing his body into opposing players. He appeared in just three playoff games after suffering a season-ending injury in practice.
Drazner Commits To Nanaimo Clippers:
18-year-old defenceman Robby Drazner has committed to play for the 2018-2019 season. Robby, a native of Chicago, Illinois, has just completed the 2017-2018 season with the Chicago Mission U18 AAA. He played in 72 games, scoring 7 goals and having 29 assists. In the 2016-2017 season, Robbie played for the Milwaukee Jr. Admirals U16 AAA. Playing in 62 games he had 3 goals and 26 assists. Coach Darren Naylor remarked that Robbie was a quick skater who likes to join the rush and also has the ability to quarterback the power play.
Poisson Commits To Prince George For 2018-19 Season:
The Prince George Spruce Kings would like to announce that they have committed to forward Nick Poisson (01) from the Burnaby Winter Club for the 2018/2019 season. The younger brother of 2-year Spruce Kings forward Ben Poisson, Nick scored 17 goals and added 25 assists during last year’s Midget Prep Season in the Canadian Sport School Hockey League. He is listed at 5’10”. “We are thrilled to add Nick Poisson to our roster for next season. We identified Nick throughout this season as an affiliate player, in his time with our team, Nick impressed our staff. He a very intelligent player who plays the game the right way with a high compete level and strong work ethic. Nick’s development, especially over this year, has been phenomenal and we are excited have such a quality individual apart of our team next season”. Said Spruce Kings Head Coach Adam Maglio. A number of Burnaby Winter Club Alumni played for the Spruce Kings last season. Liam Watson-Brawn, Nolan Welsh, Ethan de Jong, Ben Poisson, and Bradley Cooper all played together in 2015-2016. Nick will join current Burnaby Winter Club Midget Prep players Nick Bochen and Tyler Schleppe on the Spruce Kings in 2018-2019.
Former Surrey Eagles Reflect On 20-Year Anniversary Of Royal Bank Cup Title:
Just a few months removed from a heartbreaking loss in the championship game of the 1997 Royal Bank Cup, the South Surrey Eagles entered the next season as something of a wild card. They had just seven returning players from the previous year’s team and were without not only their former head coach, Rick Lanz, who had left to join the staff of the Western Hockey League’s Tri-City Americans, but also their entire first line, which the year prior has arguably been the best in the entire country, as Shane Kuss, Scott Gomez and Rodney Bowers combined for an astounding 377 points. Their new coach was former Lanz assistant Mark Holick, and the team’s roster, according to captain Kris Wilson, “was basically just a band of gypsies.” Though lacking in star power with the departure of Gomez, who followed Lanz to the WHL, and Kuss and Bowers, who aged out of the league, the team still featured a strong contingent of forwards. There was Wilson – or “Freight Train Willy” as former owner Cliff Annable still calls him – as well as Mike Bishai, Lyle Steenburgen, Brian Herbert and John McNabb, who joined the team from the WHL. The team’s defence was also impressive, led by Czech import Jakub Ficenec, a 1997-holdover who scored 91 points in 55 games, Joe Vandermeer and Aaron Schneekloth. This week marks the 20th anniversary’s of that team’s crowning achievement – a Royal Bank Cup national championship win, which came in Nanaimo on May 10, 1998. And though Holick, who had assistant coach John Short with him on the bench that year, called the group “incredibly tight-knit,” no one outside of the team likely would have batted an eye had the defending BC Hockey League champs finished the 1997/98 season as a middle-of-the-pack team, maybe making the playoffs, maybe winning a round or two. Instead, the Eagles – who a few years later would drop the ‘South’ from their name – finished as the best team in the entire country, capturing the elusive trophy that had slipped from their grasp the season before in P.E.I., when they lost the final 4-3 to the Summerside Capitals. “They were very confident, very close… it was a special group,” Holick said. This year’s RBC Cup is also back on B.C. soil and is currently being held in Chilliwack. It wraps up Sunday. And though two decades have passed since the final buzzer of a 4-1 victory over the Weyburn Red Wings, that ‘98 Eagles team still holds a special place in the hearts of those who were a part of it. “It seems like it was yesterday sometimes,” said Wilson, a Seattle-area resident who captained that year’s team and ended up playing four years with the Birds. “There’s just so many memories I have with that team – and especially that year, because of that success we had that season, and really, weren’t supposed to have, I guess… in the preseason polls, I want to say we were ranked like third in our own division. “On our part, we felt that was kind of a slight.” In the BCJHL regular season, the Eagles weren’t able to quite match the win-loss record of the high-powered 1996/97 squad, winning 43 games and losing 15, compared to the 47-win, seven-loss record the season before, but they picked up their play in the playoffs, rolling through their own league with what, to Holick’s recollection, was a 12-1 win-loss playoff record. They defeated the Penticton Panthers in the league final. The team had to play an extra playoff round that year – against the Cranbrook Colts of the now-defunct Rocky Mountain Junior Hockey League – just to be crowned provincial champs. And though the Rocky Mountain loop was thought at the time to be a step below BCJHL competition – which proved true, as the Birds won with relative ease – that series with the Colts was a memorable one for those involved. “I remember that rink – we had to walk through the crowd to get to our dressing room, and that wasn’t much fun when you’re the visiting team,” laughed Bishai, an Alberta native who scored 100 points in 57 games for the Eagles that season, and went on to a long pro career that wrapped up in 2013. After dispatching Cranbrook, the Eagles went north to the Edmonton-area to square off against the Alberta-champion St. Albert Saints, who were led by future NHLer Mike Comrie. It was in Alberta where the Eagles experienced what Bishai, now a midget AAA coach in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta, called “a big wake-up call for us.” The Eagles lost each of the first two games of the best-of-seven series, which under the rules of the day, meant the two teams would head back to South Surrey for four straight. And while the B.C. champs were shell-shocked, the Saints were heading south with plenty of confidence – perhaps too much, as Annable recalled. After Game 2, Annable said the team saw a handful of celebratory Saints players – in various states of undress – wandering the arena carrying brooms, signifying that they expected to sweep the series in four straight games. “I remember (Eagles defenceman) Jake Ficenec saying ‘They’ll pay the price for that,’” Annable recalled this week. He referred to that moment as the key moment for the team, which to that point had not faced much adversity in the post-season. As Ficenec predicted, the Saints did indeed pay the price, as the Eagles rolled to four consecutive wins at home to clinch a spot in the Royal Bank Cup national tournament. From there, the Eagles – whose mantra all season long was “unfinished business” – cruised undefeated all the way to the final against Weyburn, where goaltender Peter Wishloff backstopped to the team to victory, earning player-of-the-game honours for the effort. According to a Peace Arch News story from May 13, 1998, Ficenec went into the dressing room after the win and tore a large “Unfinished Business” poster down off the wall, and in an expletive-sprinkled tirade, said he “was sick of this (poster).” “We were on a mission… we were on a mission all year long,” he told PAN at the time. Speaking with PAN last week, Wilson – who now works in youth hockey in Seattle – heaped credit upon both Holick and Short for molding them into a championship team. “We all bought in to their system… and Shorty was a damn fine coach. He wasn’t a big Xs and Os guy, but he’s a guy you always wanted in your corner.” Looking back, the individual talent that was assembled that year was undeniable – as evidenced by the long careers many had after graduating junior. Bishai, for example, moved on to play four years at Western Michigan University, followed by more than a decade of pro hockey in the American Hockey League, ECHL, Europe and, in 2003/04, the NHL, when he earned a 14 game call-up from the Edmonton Oilers. Others had equally impressive careers – Ficenec played three seasons in the AHL himself, before embarking on a 14-year career in Europe that ended in 2015 and included, after obtaining dual-citizenship, a spot on Germany’s Olympic team that played in Vancouver in 2010; Vandermeer played pro, as did Herbert, Schneekloth and a host of others. Schneekloth has since got into coaching, and is currently the head coach of the ECHL’s Colorado Eagles. The team’s enforcer, Jeff Nabseth, sadly passed away in 1999 after being hit by a vehicle while cycling on Vancouver Island. Annable, who has no shortage of stories about any of his former players, called ‘Nabber’ one of the toughest people he ever met – on or off the ice. Wilson, meanwhile, went on to play four years of NCAA Div. 3 hockey at University of Wisconsin-Superior. He credits his playing career – and in many ways, the life he’s made since – to the success of that 1998 team. “I went from a seldom-used player who only played 40 games a year and (they) gave me an opportunity to play… and I got an opportunity to further my education, I got a small role in the movie, Miracle – it really changed my entire life,” he explained. “It’s the same for the other guys – the skill that they had brought them to those places, but I really believe a lot of it had to do with that team and what we accomplished.” Holick, too, parlayed that national title run into a long, successful coaching career that’s taken him everywhere from Prince George to Italy. He has now moved back to South Surrey and is involved with the Yale Hockey Academy. He called Annable “one of the best people I’ve ever worked for.” Annable, too, has nothing but good memories of his former coach. In particular, two conversations stick out. The first came over coffee in Blaine, Wash. shortly after Lanz had announced he was leaving for the WHL. Annable had been inundated with job applications, he explained, but when Holick asked who was going to coach the team, his reply was quick. “You are.” “I took a little bit of ribbing for that… a lot of people said, ‘Mark Holick? What does he know about hockey?” Annable recalled, adding that Holick had been working as a car salesman while also serving as an assistant coach under Lanz. “Then there we are a year later, on Mother’s Day, after winning 4-1, and we’re shaking hands with the team from Weyburn and I said to Mark, ‘I guess we showed them, didn’t we?’”
