Before the last game of the team’s season, Bomber head coach and general manager Mike Reagan was already looking ahead to the playoffs. The Bombers, having had their playoff spot and seed locked up for weeks, have had their eyes trained forward on one thing - Game 1, at home, likely March 6.
“It does seem like forever, to be honest,” he said, referring to the gap between the first playoff game and when the Bombers clinched a playoff spot – all the way back on Feb. 4.
The thing is, there was still hockey to be played after that win – nearly a full month of it.
“It’s been tough over the last three weeks, knowing we locked up second place. As a coach, you want to be playing your best hockey going into the playoffs. As a player, sometimes the mindset is to rest and maybe not go as hard as you would if you were fighting for a spot,” Reagan said.
“That’s been the biggest challenge for us as a team, but we think we’ve got a good group of players that want to win and we feel they’ll be able to elevate their play.”
So if your team has already achieved guaranteed success, a home playoff game and a division title, how do you stay focused? Reagan said rallying the troops has been a unique challenge.
“We’ve talked about where the team goes down in history. We’ve had an opportunity to challenge the Royal Bank Cup year (2000-01) for most wins on the road, for the highest winning percentage. We’re looking at all different types of goals,” he said.
“One of them was the most goals scored by a Bomber team in the last 20 years – that sort of thing. We’ve been trying to use records and goals as motivation for the guys. Whether it’s worked or not, I’m not sure – we definitely feel like we’ve dropped some games because we haven’t had that killer instinct over the last little bit.”
The Bombers entered the stretch run of the season with momentum, but a series of injuries and off-ice matters put the kibosh on a flawless run into the postseason. Before their final game in Melfort, the Bombers had gone 4-4-2 in their last 10 games – not bad, but not as good as their play earlier in the season had shown.
“The biggest concern is to make sure that we’re going enough into the playoffs. The difference between winning in the regular season and winning in the playoffs is huge,” he said.
Defenceman Jaxon White has headed home to Warman, Sask. for what Reagan has called “personal reasons”, adding he still has his spot on the team. Gritty forward Billy Klymchuk has missed several games near the end of the year with a bout of mononucleosis.
Elsewhere in the dressing room, the Bombers were hit by a nasty flu bug that caused several players to sit for games down the stretch. The bug is not yet fully gone from the dressing room,
“I think the worst of it is over,” Reagan said of the illness bug.
“That has been a huge challenge, to be completely honest with you. On any given day, we have two or three guys miss practice or not come to the rink. As soon as they get back, another two or three guys would go down. I’ve never seen it go through a dressing room like this. It’s played a huge factor in who we can sit and who’s playing.”
One of the players affected by the flu bug, goalie Jacob Delorme, has sat for most of February in favour of the younger Cal Schell. Reagan said Delorme was in full health and would start Game 1 of the Bombers’ first round series.
“He just got healthy the other day, healthy enough to get in. He got the start because we have to shake some of the rust off of him,” Reagan said.
Matchups
As of press time, it is unknown which team the Bombers will face in the first round of this year’s playoffs. The lone game remaining on the SJHL schedule as of the Reminder’s press deadline, a Tuesday night matchup between Humboldt and Melville, would decide the Bombers’ opponent. A Humboldt win would mean a series against the Broncos, while a Humboldt loss would mean a series against the Nipawin Hawks. Out of the two clubs, whichever one doesn’t draw Flin Flon will face the league-leading Battlefords North Stars.
The lack of concrete knowledge means the Bombers have had difficulty planning ahead. Reagan said the team would be ready, no matter who comes north.
“We have an idea. It’s tough to prepare for them, I guess in our minds we have an idea of what each series will bring and what challenges we’ll be faced with by each team,” he added.
Humboldt
Despite a hot start to the season, the Broncos, boasting one of the league’s youngest rosters, floundered down the stretch but finished strong.
Humboldt made themselves known to the Bomber faithful with a 9-3 rout at the Whitney Forum in September, but in six games this season against Flin Flon, the Broncos proved less than stellar. The Bombers went 4-2 in the season series against Humboldt but haven’t played the Broncos since Dec. 12.
Humboldt, with results from their last game against Melville still pending as of press time, had won each of their last five games. The team had the SJHL’s third-most potent offence, behind only Flin Flon and Battlefords.
Leading scorer Logan Foster has been the straw that stirred Humboldt’s drink this year. The former Melville Millionaire was his division’s MVP this season after a 20-year-old campaign that saw him pull down 76 points in 57 games. Sidekicks on the scoring front include Tristan Shewchuk, whose performance against the Bombers may be something to monitor. In his six games against the Bombers, Shewchuk has six goals and eight points, including a hat-trick in the aforementioned 9-3 September win.
One of the calling cards for this year’s Broncos team has been their reliance on youth. The Broncos have the youngest roster in the league, with a number of underage players playing big roles. A trio of junior rookies - Karter McNarland, Logan Kurki and Braiden Koran - each have at least 30 points on the season, with McNarland flirting with nearly a point-per-game pace. Only two 20-year-old players - Foster and forward Graysen Cameron - will enter the playoffs for the Broncos. Out of the Broncos’ top 10 scorers, only Foster is ineligible to return next season.
Along with that youth comes a lack of SJHL playoff experience. Only five players on Humboldt’s presumptive playoff roster have played an SJHL playoff game, with the most experienced playoff player - Foster - having played only 10 postseason matches.
The biggest question mark for the Broncos, aside from the youth, is their goaltending. None of the Broncos’ three goalies - Noah Decottignies, Brendan Forman or Michael Harroch - have a goals-against-average below three on the season, with the highest save percentage of the lot being Harroch’s .906 in 21 games. Forman and Harroch, both rookies, will be the likely contenders for play in a Bombers-Broncos series, with Harroch, who started each of the team’s last three games as of deadline, the likely starter.
Nipawin
To say the Bombers and Hawks have history together is a massive understatement. The Bombers’ closest geographic opponents have arguably been the maroon and white’s biggest rival over the past decade.
The pair last met in the playoffs in 2017, when the Hawks dispatched the Bombers in five games en route to a league title. That result was turnabout in a way - when the Bombers won their last league title in 1993, the team eliminated the Hawks in the league semifinals first.
Flin Flon also took down the Hawks in the 2016 playoffs, grinding out a hard-fought seven game series win after narrowing squeaking out a division title over Nipawin on the last night of the season.
The Bombers and Hawks played each other six times this year. Flin Flon won five of those six games. The only thing separating the Bombers from a season sweep was a face-saving win for Nipawin at home Jan. 25, the last time this season the two teams played.
Nipawin head coach and general manager Doug Johnson is known for icing teams that smother their opponents on defence, adding in a strong goalie as insurance. The Hawks only gave up 170 goals this season, an average of less than three goals per game.
One of the Hawks’ top offensive weapons will be very familiar to Bomber fans - former Flin Flon forward Dawson McKenzie. The Winnipeg product, dealt to Weyburn in the Cade Kowalski trade last season before a pair of other trades brought him to Nipawin this season, has 49 points in 47 games, including 29 points in 29 games with the Hawks.
In eight games this season (including four with his former club in Kindersley) against his old club, McKenzie has one goal and four assists.
The main star for the Hawks this season has been netminder Ross Hawryluk. Playing his first-ever season of junior hockey, the Lloydminster, Alta. goalie has sparkled at times, wrestling the starting job away from both 20-year-old Ethan Slobodzian and fellow 20-year-old Dalton Dosch. In 32 games this year, Hawryluk has a .920 save percentage and a 2.52 goals-against-average.
Nipawin’s defence, spurred by players like Bronson Adams, Jack Lenchyshyn and youngsters Cole Beamin and Evan Bortis, cannot be overlooked, along with offensive contributors like Jake Tremblay, big Jordan Simoneau and midseason acquisition Riley Bruce.
