Moose out, but not down

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This article was published 14/05/2018 (2931 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As exit days go, this one was anything but routine for members of the Manitoba Moose.

Less than 48 hours after their season ended in Rockford, the AHL club gathered for one final time at Bell MTS Iceplex on Sunday for final meetings with coaches, handshakes and hugs with teammates and interviews with the media.

It was hard not to be distracted by the surreal scene taking place all around them.

Don Cherry and Ron MacLean passed them in the hallway, with Moose forward Brendan Lemieux stopping to chat with Cherry for a few minutes about his own childhood memories of watching him on Coach’s Corner.

Members of the Winnipeg Jets — including Moose alumni such as Connor Hellebuyck, Kyle Connor, Jack Roslovic and Brandon Tanev — caught up with former teammates as they headed to their own off-ice workouts and video reviews of their Game 1 Western Conference Final victory over the Vegas Golden Knights.

Dustin Byfuglien and Toby Enstrom inadvertently crashed an interview with Moose coach Pascal Vincent when they emerged from an elevator, right into the middle of his scrum.

And the Moose media gathering paled in comparison to the crowd of at least 100 local, national and international print and broadcast journalists who were crowded into the room next door waiting for members of the Jets and Vegas Golden Knights to hold court.

Vincent, who was an assistant coach with the Jets for their first five seasons in Winnipeg before being given the reins of the Moose for the past two, couldn’t help but smile at the chaos. He recalled a conversation he had with Jets co-owner Mark Chipman the night before at Bell MTS Place, as he took in the Jets game just hours after returning from Illinois, where his team was swept in four straight by Rockford in their second-round playoff series.

“The way I could explain it to him, how I felt personally, is after the game against Rockford, you pour everything into your team, you’re invested 100 per cent. And all of a sudden, it’s like you hit the wall. This is it. The season is over. I felt like I lost my best friend, that’s how I felt. I was empty,” Vincent said.

“But, for me to go to the rink, and be re-energized by what I’ve seen with the Jets — I’ve been part of that organization since Day 1. I’ve been through, with those guys, the building blocks and what we see today. This organization, one thing we do well, is we’re inclusive. I really feel like the Moose and the Jets are one big organization. We’re separated, we go with our own business. But there’s no walls between the two organizations. We’re one big family. And we’re all in this together.”

And so, with that in mind, it’s hard to label this year’s Moose season anything but a huge success. Sure, they really fell off after jumping to the top of the AHL standings near the midway point, then struggling down the stretch. They knocked out defending-champion Grand Rapids in five games in their first-round series before falling to a powerful and much more experienced Rockford crew.

But winning takes a backseat to development. And the fact that Kyle Connor began the year with the Moose, and is now very much an impact player at the NHL level, underlines the importance. Players like Roslovic and Lemieux, forward Nic Petan, defencemen Tucker Poolman and Sami Niku and goalie Eric Comrie all had stints with the Jets this season as well.

“I think we have unbelievable coaches and great development staff here. I feel like every single player here only gets better. Look at it. We have so many guys in the NHL now that came from this team. And we have so many guys on our team that I feel could play there. It’s unbelievable how well we’ve been developed,” Comrie said Sunday.

The cupboards, once considered pretty bare in this organization, are now well-stocked. Niku was named the AHL’s defenceman of the year in his rookie season, only the second player in AHL history to do so. Rookie forward Mason Appleton led the team in scoring, only to be knocked out early in the playoffs with a concussion.

“From an organizational standpoint, the ultimate goal is a Stanley Cup. When you’re playing in the AHL and you’re one of those guys who’s been up and down, you understand that. You want to win wherever you are, and you always want to help your team. But you know, that’s the ultimate goal. It’s definitely serving its purpose when both teams are doing well. It’s hard to do,” Lemieux said Sunday.

His game took a big step this season and included his NHL debut and first-ever NHL goal. He’ll head into his off-season now even more determined to find a way to become a permanent fixture with the Jets as early as this fall.

“A lot of guys took a big step forward, so it was a good year,” Lemieux said.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @mikemcintyrewpg