The Prince George Cougars are celebrating their silver anniversary, about to begin their 25th Western Hockey League season.
It all starts tonight in Victoria, where they take on the Royals in the first of a two-game set.
Trophies are made of silver and the Cougars over the years have earned some individual hardware but not once in their history has the whole team ever done the winners' waltz, sharing the spoils as champions.
Mark Lamb is aiming to change that.
Hired this summer as general manager of the Cougars, Lamb watched the Swift Current Broncos hold up the silver chalice known as the Ed Chynoweth Cup last spring as kings of the WHL. That was his team for seven seasons until the pros lured him away to coach an AHL team in Tucson. From 2009-2016, Lamb was the Broncos' primary mover and shaker - the guy who drafted or traded for many of the players who ended up getting their mitts on the trophy.
He had no formal ties to the team when it won the Cup, but he lived close to the rink all last season and made himself available when the Broncos' brass wanted a second opinion. He was there watching when they beat Lethbridge to end a 25-year championship drought.
Now Lamb has resurfaced in Prince George and he can't help but feel he's got some unfinished business as a WHL GM.
The Cougars' three-year plan to build a championship contender that started with the New Ice Age change in ownership in May 2014 festered into a disastrous first-round meltdown in 2017. Built to win it all that season, the Cougars were a top-10 team nationally until they took a chance on bringing in some high-priced veterans and those trade winds messed with their chemistry.
It became obvious last season, in what was GM Todd Harkins' final kick at the Cougar can, that the Cats were barely good enough to make the playoffs and the fire sale everybody anticipated did happen. Their sixth trade in nine days, the one that moved defenceman Dennis Cholowski to Portland, was probably the best deal Harkins made in his four-plus seasons at the helm. In return, the Cougars received forward Ilijah Colina, forward Connor Bowie, the Winterhawks' first- and third-round bantam draft picks in 2020, second-round picks in 2018 and 2019, and a conditional sixth-round choice in 2019.
Nine months later, Colina, 18, is the top-line centre, a smouldering star in the making, playing on a line with versatile 20-year-old RW Josh Curtis and 18-year-old LW Tyson Upper - who turned heads for all the right reasons as the biggest surprise in training camp. The 17-year-old Bowie is big and rambunctious and should emerge as a serviceable winger in his first WHL season.
Harkins and his trades left the Cougars in a position of strength, the kitty well-stocked with high bantam draft picks for this and the next two years. They had eight picks in the first five rounds this year, including first-rounders - F Craig Armstrong and G Tyler Brennan. Next year they will have six picks in the first five rounds, including two first-rounders - one from the Broncos, who could finish near the bottom of the overall standings this season. In 2020 they'll have seven picks in the first five rounds, including Portland's first-rounder and one of their own.
"Wherever you work you want to win a championship," said Lamb. "But before even saying that word there's so much to do to build and so many different factors. The draft has to be excellent and you have to have a group of real strong players to build around. To do all that you need all kinds of assets. Assets are draft picks and draft picks turn into players that are assets. You need to have players other teams want because when you do think you're good enough to make some noise, you need to have those assets to fill holes where you think you have needs.
"The draft picks are there and we have to do a good job of turning those assets into good players."
Goaltending could be a position of strength for years to come in Cougarville. Taylor Gauthier, who bailed Canada out with a shutout relief performance in the gold-medal game at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup in August, is showing no reason to doubt the Cougars made a wise choice when they picked him ninth overall in the 2016 draft.
Now 17, heading into his NHL draft year, this is Gauthier's team and the Cougars' fortunes will largely depend on how he fares between the pipes in his sophomore season. Isaiah DiLaura will get a lot more game action than he did last year when there were three goalies around. He's one of the most popular players among his teammates and has proven he belongs in the WHL, but he will be the backup unless Gauthier falters dramatically.
Brennan, 15, picked 21st overall, was acquired in the Josh Anderson trade from Swift Current. He's still too young for junior but was arguably the sharpest goalie in training camp, and his big body bodes well for next year.
Freshly back from the Tampa Bay Lightning, 19-year-old LW Jackson Leppard is going to be dynamite in his third WHL season. The eighth-overall bantam pick in the 2015 WHL draft has grown into a six-foot-two, 200-pound man who has already had a few weeks this summer of banging bodies with the pros. He's going out of his way to prove the NHL pundits were wrong when they left him undrafted in June and with his booming shot there's no reason to doubt he'll improve significantly on his 15-goal, 36-point totals of last season.
LW Josh Maser, 19, is a prototypical power forward with a big body, iron grip and nose for the net. He led the Cougars with 28 goals and was second in points with 49 and proved his durability despite being one of the most physical forwards in the league, playing 71 games. If he can keep improving his skating the pro scouts will be all over him.
The young prospects traded to the Cougars last season have had four months to get used to their new surroundings and they will be better for it. That group includes C Ethan Browne, 17, a tall rangy playmaker who was a first-rounder in Everett in 2016 and he'll get a chance to use his setup skills on the power play. LW Kjell Kjemhus, 17, followed the Jesse Gabrielle trade route from Regina, and the Kody McDonald deal with Prince Albert gave the Cougars the rights to defencemen Austin Crossley and 17-year-old Rhett Rhinehart, who will both get plenty of ice.
Max Kryski has a velvet touch around the net and should at least double the eight goals he scored last season. Vladimir Mikhalchuk, a 19-year-old from Belarus, had 14 goals and 33 points as a WHL rookie. Czech newcomer Matej Toman, just 17, has slick hockey habits and should reward the faith the Cougars put in him when they chose him fifth overall in the CHL import draft.
The forward group also includes six-foot-seven, 234-pound RW Mike MacLean, C Brendan Boyle, RW Reid Perepeluk, C Liam Ryan and C Mitch Kohner - all in a dogfight to make the Cats' roster.
Joel Lakusta, 20, made huge strides under Cholowski's tutelage and was good enough to get asked to pro camps by Calgary and St. Louis. He's an offensive instigator and the leader of the blueline brigade, along with multi-talented Ryan Schoettler, 19, who shares Lakusta's ability to lead the rush. They'll need help shoring up the d-zone from bruisers Cam MacPhee and Crossley, both 19, and 18-year-old sophomores Jack Sander and Cole Moberg.
Tyson Phare, a 16-year-old drafted in the first round as a forward, has looked more at ease since switching to defence a couple days into camp, but with only seven positions he could be the odd man out.
"We're a young team but I think people are going to underestimate us," said Lakusta.
"We have a lot of skill, especially the forwards, and we have an entire veteran d-corps coming back, so guys know the league, know the game. I think we're going to surprise a lot of people this year."
Now with a roster of 27, there won't be any cuts made to the defence corps until Crossley and Lakusta return from suspensions. Lakusta still has a game left in a three-game sentence for a checking-to-the-head penalty last March and Crossley will have to sit one game for his knee-on-knee hit on Kamloops winger Orrin Centazzo in Saturday's preseason finale.
"We're going to be a hardworking, energetic, fun team to watch," predicts head coach Richard Matvichuk, now in his third season with the Cougars. "We're going to pride ourselves on commitment, playing the system, how hard we can play, finishing our checks, and everyone is going to have a role. We're going to design a role for every player and if they do their roles to the best of their ability, this team's going to be pretty good.
"Our job is to get back in the playoffs. We get a young group here that we get to mold for the next three or four years to get to where we were two years ago. The communication we have between Mark, Steve (associate coach O'Rourke) and I is just fantastic. We talk about players every day, we talk about systems, and Mark has his input. He's coached at the highest level, so the more we work together as a group the better we'll be."
Prognosis: This will be an interesting group to watch develop. These Cats have an abundance of talented prospects in all positions. With the exception of goalie Gauthier, none is a superstar just yet but some could turn out that way by the time they're ready to leave junior hockey. As one of the youngest teams in the WHL, they will need time, and just making the playoffs this season is the best we can expect. That means, once again, the fans will have to be patient. But the cycle is trending in the right direction and within two or three years the Cougars might have to learn how to dance that elusive trophy tango.
