Underdogs of the Great North
Gone is the stacked team that blew through the Great North Under 18 Hockey League regular season with a record of 26-2-0 and then won its first four games of the playoff tournament only to lose in the championship match. While the 2022-2023 Soo Jr. Greyhounds were top dogs, the 2023-2024 edition is already being cast as underdogs.
With good reason, perhaps.
Only two holdovers from the ’22-23 U18 Jr. Greyhounds have signed up to play for the ’23-24 team — forwards Griffen Albert and Lucas DiBerardino. As for the others with U18 eligibility remaining, nine or 10 of them will play in the Northern Ontario Jr. Hockey League in ’23-24 while four more have opted to sign with the Soo Indians of the USA Tier 1 Hockey Federation. Meanwhile, a few others from the ’22-23 team have yet to determine where they will play in ’23-24.
And while, in addition to Albert and DiBerardino, the Jr. Greyhounds have signed three other locals who played in the Great North with the Sudbury Nickel Capitals in ’22-23 — goalies A.J. Borrelli and Nick Marson and forward Coulson Bell — the Soo program is one that is clearly in transition. Which is absolutely and genuinely just fine to a lot of folks, including incoming head coach Sean Gagnon.
Gagnon, to be sure, knows what it is like to be the underdog. Not only did he make it to the Ontario Hockey League as a player — and become a Memorial Cup champion — despite being a lowly 16th round draft pick, he also had a lengthy pro career and skated in the National Hockey League as an un-drafted defenseman. Thus, it would seem, no mountain is high enough for Gagnon — or his players — to climb.
“It is a daunting task for sure,” Gagnon relayed to Hockey News North relative to taking over the U18 Jr. Hounds program ahead of the ’23-24 season and basically starting from scratch. “But I believe in my ability to make the players aware of the task at hand and fully prepare them to grow and develop as determined young athletes who accept the challenges and embrace a chance to prove to themselves and others how undervalued they have been perceived as. Not only that, I love being the underdog.”
At any rate, the Great North U18HL could well be as balanced a league in ’23-24 as it has been in a number of years. Among the six U18 teams, reigning playoff champion North Bay Trappers figure to be very much in the mix while the Timmins Majors and New Liskeard Cubs are both in position to return a good number of top players. Kapuskasing Flyers are annually competitive and both Sudbury with Brian Dickinson in charge, and the Soo with Gagnon in command, have coaches who are known to get a lot out of their players. And who knows what is in store from the U16 teams of North Bay and Sudbury?
Not to sugar coat it as far as the Jr. Hounds are concerned.
Their five veterans of the Great North need to be high performance players. Albert and DiBerardino both have to be productive top six forwards after being third and fourth liners with the Jr. Hounds last season. As for the local lads who are back home after a good year in Sudbury — Borrelli and Marson simply have to be among the top goalies in the Great North and Bell needs to combine the “hard work, skill and great athleticism” that Jr. Hounds general manager Darrin Thomsen says he possesses to become a truly elite player in the Great North.
And the many newcomers on the Jr. Hounds who are moving up from either the U18 AA or U16 AA or U15 AAA levels of the game not only have to show that they belong at the U18 AAA level that the Great North is but they all need to step up their game in the process.
Meantime, the Jr. Greyhounds have been doing off-ice training at the KBX Performance facility and both Gagnon as the head coach and Thomsen as the GM are saying they like what they see.
“We love all of our kids,” relayed Thomsen. “We love our goalies … we love the potential of all of our players.”
