Moose captain preps for new season

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This article was published 23/09/2019 (2298 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ask any young hockey player and chances are they’ll tell you it would be a dream come true to play for their hometown NHL team.

For 27-year-old Winnipeg-native Peter Stoykewych, that dream is something he hasn’t been able to fulfil as yet. Stoykewych, who played for the Winnipeg Blues in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League before playing the next four years at Colorado College, was the last draft pick ever made by the Atlanta Thrashers. Atlanta picked the defenceman in the seventh round, 199th overall, of the 2010 NHL draft.

Most seventh-round picks never come close to seeing the ice in the NHL. They usually don’t even stick around in a team’s minor league system for very long either. But Stoykewych has been a mainstay for the Winnipeg Jets’ AHL affiliate, entering his sixth season with the Manitoba Moose and his second as the team’s captain.

“Gotta take some perspective on it,” Stoykewych said Monday as the Moose kicked off their training camp at Bell MTS Iceplex. “I love where I am, love this spot, love our team and obviously love this city being from here. I take a lot of pride in that, take a lot of pride in being the captain of this team and want us as a group to put our best foot forward here every night for both the team, the guys in the room and the city.”

Moose head coach Pascal Vincent was asked what he saw from Stoykewych in his first season as the team’s leader.

“He’s a real smart guy. A hard-working person. Hard work at this level is just not enough. You need to work and be smart about what you do, learning from your experiences. He’s a guy that leads by, yes for sure by example, but his consistency in the way he prepares and the way he plays the game. His consistency and his compete level, that’s how he leads,” Vincent said.

“He’s also very inclusive. When there’s a new player or a player is struggling, he can read it very quickly. He’s going to reach out to people. We have some players, some people in the organization that are ultimate teammates and Peter is one of them. He’s from here. He understands the importance of the Winnipeg Jets and Manitoba Moose.”

Stoykewych will try to lead the Moose back into the playoffs this year. The Moose finished the 2018-19 season with a 39-30-5-2 record for 85 points, which ended up being two points out of the final playoff spot. The team was in last place in the AHL at the Christmas break, but they turned things around and went 28-14-3-2 down the stretch to make things interesting.

“You know what, that fuels us. Missing the playoffs, that’s something you kind of sit on all summer here and kind of the mindset we’re taking into camp here as well. You realize that the games in October count just as much as the games in February, March, April there and we learned that the hard way last year. Everybody makes mistakes and you have to learn from it. So, that’s something we’re trying to learn from and take into this year and get going on the right foot,” Stoykewych said.

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31