What a difference a year can make

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/03/2011 (5499 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

From the cellar to the penthouse in one Manitoba AAA Midget Hockey League season, the Winnipeg Thrashers are league champions.

The Thrashers beat the Southwest Cougars 5-1 in Souris on Thursday night to win the best-of-five league championship series 3-1 after winning just 18 games last season. In 2010-11, the Thrashers earned the regular-season title with 37 wins in 44 games.

In the previous two years the Thrashers played in the Telus Cup national championship, winning silver in 2008 as Team West and losing in the 2009 bronze game as the host team.

Pride

“When Kevin Benson coached (prior to last year), he built a lot of pride into that program, playing out of Gateway arena. Last year, that pride kind of disappeared for a season,” said first-year head coach Dan Eliasson.

“From our first player meeting we talked about respect for the program, ourselves, the team and how we wanted to bring that respect level back to the Thrashers program so when other teams looked at us this year, they knew they’d be in for a good, competitive game, no one was going to do anything stupid during the course of that game.”

Eliasson was more interested in who his players were as people with his team than where they came from.

“First skate we had as a team, we all took a knee at centre and we all looked up and he (Eliasson) showed us the (championship) banners,” said forward Tyrenn Bauer, 17, who played for the Miles Macdonell Buckeyes of the Winnipeg High School Hockey League last season. “He said, ‘The Thrashers have finished at the top of the league a lot of the years, maybe not last year, but you know boys, maybe this is our year to win a banner again.’ It was pretty inspiring.”

Bauer played for Miles Mac after being Eliasson’s final cut from last year’s Sharks team in the city AAA midget league. He decided to make the most of his high school hockey experience.

“He (Eliasson) said I learned to play better defensively and that I gave a lot more effort this year, and he wanted a lot of hard-working guys on this team,” Bauer said. “When I look around the room, I see a lot of skill and a lot of guys who will go through the wall for each other.”

Having players with something to prove and a coaching staff they want to play for have been keys in the Thrashers’ turnaround.

With just three returning players — defencemen Ian Humphreys and Cody Danylchuk and forward Connor Lockhart — the rest of the team are in their first year at the AAA midget level.

“With Dan coming in here, he’s a very positive coach and the guys really like him and like playing for him, and our assistant coaches as well,” said Humphreys, the team’s captain. “Last year was a tough year but now, we’ve just got a good vibe. Everyone just wants to win night in, night out.”

Forward Corey Petrash, another late cut last year, was the Thrashers’ goal-scoring leader this season with 25 goals in 30 games. He has already been snapped up by Bemidji State University for the 2012-13 season and he’s only in Grade 11.

“Our coach Dan Eliasson picked a lot different team than the coach did last year. I played three games up with them last year and it just seemed there wasn’t enough depth with the team but Dan did a really good job with that this year,” said Petrash, 16, who missed the first 14 games of the season with an injury.

“There’s (city midget league) Sharks and Hawks coming together for the Thrashers. We were the two top teams last year and we meshed together really well. There’s a lot of pride, especially after the bad season they (Thrashers) had last year, and how just a really good group of guys has made this season so successful.”

Eliasson said that pride and respect factor established by the group has been the foundation for changing things around this year.

“This is one of those years, and they don’t come along every often and I’ve maybe only had maybe two of them in the 10 years I’ve been coaching, but all 20 kids on our roster are great kids but they’re just phenomenal people.”

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca