How strong is this year’s John Reid Memorial Tournament?
When the host team is considered an underdog despite a sensational 24-1-1 season in the Alberta Major Bantam Hockey league, the 39th annual St. Albert tournament is shaping up to be ultra-competitive with arguably the largest talent pool of players in years.
“St. Albert is having an incredible year. It’s probably the strongest St. Albert team in a long, long time,” said Cam Wietzel, the selection committee chair, on the hometown bantam AAA Gregg Distributors Sabres.
“It adds a little bit of excitement. They’ve only lost one game in the league this year. It’s a good story because it’s a strong program.
“They’ve certainly earned the right to be one of the favourites but they’re also a bit of an underdog in that it’s a St. Albert and area group of kids. There is not kids coming from all parts of the country to play on the team so there is a lot to be proud of that way.”
Academy teams have won the last three tournaments.
“There is a lot more talent at an event such as ours when you bring some of the academy teams in. They’re very, very strong,” Wietzel said. “The academies tend to recruit the most talented kids or a lot of them. Some stay with their organizations, which is great, and for the most part that happened in St. Albert. A lot of those kids would have been recruited by the academies but chose to stay here, which frankly is great to see.”
Last year the Yale Hockey Academy of Abbotsford defeated the Delta Hockey Academy Wild, the defending champion, 4-1 in the final. Delta edged the Calgary Flames 2-1 for the 2015 title and the 2014 winner was the Okanagan Hockey Academy of Penticton, 6-3 over the Los Angeles Jr. Kings.
“It’s going to be hard eventually for I guess a community-based team to compete but the fact St. Albert is so good this year is great because I’m not sure how long we’ll see that if you start losing kids,” Wietzel said.
The only St. Albert team to win tournament honours was the 1983 Territorial Leasing Sabres.
“I’m crossing my fingers for them. The problem is there is so much pressure on these kids in this tournament,” Wietzel said of the heavily scouted tournament.
The tournament consists of 16 teams slotted into four divisions in two pools. All but one of the 42 games will be played at Servus Credit Union Place.
In the Kal-Tire division of the John Reid pool, the Sabres have games scheduled at Go Auto Arena on Jan. 19 against the Okanagan Hockey Academy of Edmonton at 10:45 a.m. and the Colorado T-Birds at 8 p.m. and Jan. 20 against Yale at 2:30 p.m.
The Skybox Grill division in the Reid pool features the Calgary Bisons, Fort Saskatchewan Rangers, Notre Dame Hounds and Toronto Marlboros.
In the Jarome Iginla pool, the C2 Homes division consists of the Pursuit of Excellence Academy of Kelowna, Red Deer Rebels, Rink Hockey Academy of Winnipeg and Rocky Mountain Roughriders of Colorado and the Remax-Brian Cyr division teams are the Burnaby Winter Club Bruins, Delta, Lethbridge Golden Hawks and Phoenix Jr. Coyotes.
The tournament schedule is listed in Scoreboard on page 50 and is also available at www.johnreidmemorial.com.
Every year difficult decisions are made to finalize the 16 teams.
“Absolutely. We’ve had more interest for example from the United States than ever. The word of how good of a job that (tournament chair) Trudy Kueber does with the tournament and the level of competition has gotten out. We’ve had interest from eight top bantam triple A teams in the United States, which is unprecedented, so we had to kind of whittle that list down,” Wietzel said. “In western Canada there is so many academy teams now that are strong and this year we’ve got only 12 teams from western Canada, which are all very strong. There are a lot of teams not in the tournament that applied for the tournament that certainly would be competitive so it’s always tough every year and frankly we want as many kids as we can to experience the John Reid tournament but at the end of the day we can only have 16 teams.”
The Pursuit of Excellence and Delta rank among the very top bantam teams in western Canada.
“There is actually a lot of Alberta kids playing on that Pursuit of Excellence team. They’re very strong,” Wietzel said of the academy squad that buffaloed the Sabres 11-3 at the Rocky Mountain Classic in November.
The tournament favourite is Toronto.
“The Marlies are the best team in eastern Canada and very likely the best team in North America right now. They’re approaching 40 wins already this year,” Wietzel said of the 39-6-5 Marlboros.
The 2002-born group of Marlies have won the Greater Toronto Hockey League championship the last four years while posting a remarkable 254-24-21 record during that span.
Connor McDavid, John Tavares, Rick Nash, Tyler Seguin, Jason Spezza and Sam Bennett are but a few of the many Marlies who have made their way to the NHL.
“The amount of the players they have develop is astounding,” Wietzel said. “They’re far and away the most prolific organization in the greater Toronto metropolitan area. They’re phenomenal.”
The Marlies are the first Ontario team to attend the tournament since the Thunder Bay Kings in 2002.
“Part of it was we didn’t really pursue Ontario teams because there is such a Western Hockey League-based focus on the tournament in terms of draft,” Wietzel said. “When they approached us we saw how strong a team they were and how much it would add another level of competition to the tournament. We just decided we absolutely had to have them in and we’re very happy that they are.”
The Toronto roster features Christian Coffey, a 2003-born forward and son of Hall of Fame defenceman Paul Coffey.
Phoenix forward Josh Doan is also the son of NHL veteran Shane Doan of the Coyotes.
