Â鶹ÊÓƵ

It might be a bit early to think about this, but it seems like once every eight years I’m covering a junior A hockey team from a major energy city on its way to the league final.

In 2010, I covered the run of the Fort McMurray Oil Barons en route to their Enerflex Cup final against the Spruce Grove Saints. Not that I had anything to do with the makeup of the Power Dodge Estevan Bruins team that is currently leading their Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League final against the Battlefords North Stars, but it’s a bit of a coincidence.

For some Bruins fans, I’m sure they’re getting ready to party like it’s 1999 – the last year the Bruins won the SJHL playoff championship, following that up with an Anavet Cup win over the OCN Blizzard. But that was the last time the Bruins made it to the league final and although it doesn’t seem like that long ago in some ways, it’s now 19 years ago. 

Back in 2010, the Spruce Grove Saints were a well oiled machine from opening day of the season to the last, They lost only four games in regulation during the regular season and accumulated 108 points in 60 regular season games.  After the Oil Barons scored a couple of upsets, it set up a league final against the Saints, who went 8-1 in their nine games leading to the final.

The MOB earned a split in their first two games in Spruce Grove, bringing the final to McMurray, where a whopping 1,788 people filled the Casman Centre. The next two games were split, sending the series back to Spruce Grove for Game 5 tied 2-2.

When I got there for the Good Friday game, ‘standing room only’ had a new meaning, even in the press box in the upper corner of Spruce Grove’s Grant Fuhr Arena. Bewildered as to how I was going to set up the laptop to send photos in time for their deadline to the Edmonton Sun (a semi-freelance thing I’d picked up when they were part of the chain I was working with), I inadvertently knocked off the Oil Barons’ radio broadcast. I’m still sorry about that, Kenny Trenton. The Oil Barons lost a raucous 7-5 decision to the Saints that night.

As exhilarating as it was to watch that scene and to cover that game, it still meant packing the family up again and taking the five hour drive up back north to our Fort McMurray home to go back to work for a Sunday night Game 6 that happened to be on my birthday. Hometown McMurray kid Dylan Seymour scored a natural hat trick in the second to lead the MOB to a 4-2 win and force a Game 7.

If I’d thought Game 5 was nuts, Game 7 was even nuts-er. There was simply no gas left in the tank for the MOB once Spruce Grove scored a couple of goals early. A Grant Fuhr Area crowd that was extremely loud and incredibly close roared each time the Saints scored. Going on the ice at the end of the game to shoot the handshakes and trophy presentation, I looked at the MOB players lined up and they looked like they lost a friend. It was a long ride back that night on the bus organized for fans and parents (I had a good long chat with the dad of one of the defencemen) and I was dropped off at the office to write the story for the early afternoon paper, walking back home and in bed at 7 a.m.

There will never be another 2010. But if we put the Nipawin Hawks in the role of the Saints, the pieces fall a bit more into place. The Oil Barons were fourth overall in the AJHL that year. The upsets that the MOB had to do in order to get to the final (Grande Prairie and Okotoks) are kind of like beating the Battlefords Stars in the semifinal. And what SJHL fan wouldn’t want to see a seven game final series?

Neither semifinal series is over and both could be turned around by some stellar goaltending by the netminders on the two teams that are currently down.

But this playoff run does cast memories for me back to 2010, and I’m sure for some in this city, 1999.