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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Sexton wants to repay Moose now
'Right from the start they believed in me,' he says
Dan Sexton: ‘A long year... but great’ (RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ARCHIVES)
HAMILTON -- The kid owes us a solid, he knows it, and there will never be a better time to collect than right now.
The Manitoba Moose helped launch Dan Sexton on a path this season that saw the diminutive winger go all the way from the ECHL's Bakersfield Condors to the NHL's Anaheim Ducks, with a pair of crucial stops in Manitoba in between.
It wasn't the stuff of a Disney movie like the one the Anaheim club is named after, mostly because the formerly Mighty Ducks and Sexton missed the playoffs and Sexton wasn't playing much by season's end. But it was still a pretty good storyline -- undrafted 5-foot-8 kid goes from the low minors to Hollywood's team, where he plays for a time on the top line and averages a point every two games.
It's a tale for which the 22-year-old undrafted Apple Valley, Minn., native admits he owes a big debt of gratitude to the Moose.
"This is obviously my good-luck charm here," Sexton said at Hamilton's Copps Coliseum Thursday prior to Game 1. "I got called up (by the Moose) for five games and was obviously able to do well (in the NHL). It definitely gave me some confidence to get five games under my belt here. It felt like I belonged in the NHL a little more than if I'd just come up from the East Coast league.
"They definitely gave me the opportunity, and right from the start they believed in me. I'd definitely like to pay them back, because that would be a win for both of us."
The Moose actually gave Sexton a pair of opportunities this season -- the initial assignment back in November and then a second posting to Winnipeg in February when he got demoted by the Ducks because of a temporary salary crunch in Anaheim. Both times, the Moose gave Sexton what he calls the "opportunity to succeed." And both times the kid did just that, averaging just under a point a game through 13 games with the Moose.
If Sexton had played with Manitoba all season and continued scoring at that pace, he would have finished the season as the leading Manitoba scorer by about 25 points and cracked the top five in the entire AHL.
Instead, he got the ride of his life in the big league. "It's been a long year," he said, "but it's been great. It's been a nice ride."
And it's a ride that's not over yet. Like he did twice before, Moose head coach Scott Arniel has given Sexton every opportunity to succeed once again. Returned by Anaheim on Monday after the Ducks missed the playoffs, Arniel had Sexton playing on the club's top line in Game 1 of the opening round of the playoffs against the Hamilton Bulldogs Thursday night.
He's partnered with the Moose's two leading scorers, right-winger Sergei Shirokov and centre Marco Rosa. The line failed to click on a night that saw the Moose shut out 2-0. Sexton didn't register a shot, his entire line mustered just two pucks against Bulldogs goaltender Cedrick Desjardins and they were on the ice for Hamilton's first goal.
It wasn't much of a playoff debut. In a season of firsts for Sexton, last night was another one -- his first-ever pro playoff game.
"That's not the way I need to play," Sexton said afterward. "I need to take a lot more shots. There was a few times where I didn't take a shot and should have."
He says it is entirely up to him whether he succeeds on the ice. The Moose, again, have seen to that.
"They've put me in another position to succeed, just like they have since the start. Even when I'd just come up from the East Coast league, they put me with good players. I can't thank the coaches enough for thinking that highly of me. But also I have to go out there and prove them right and work really hard to play my best and play my role in this series."
That role is to score goals. Last night he failed at that -- but so did the entire Moose team.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 16, 2010 C2
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