His team is named after strange rituals used to summon otherworldly forces, but there’s nothing mystical about the success Aaron Beauchamp is having with the Powassan Voodoos.
With the Flin Flon native helping to bolster the back end, the Voodoos are among the top-ranked Junior A hockey teams in Canada this season.
The Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League (NOJHL) club has earned a reputation as a balanced, defensively stingy group with the potential to win their league – and more.
“We have a really good coach,” says Beauchamp, 19, when asked about his team’s success.
“He really knows his stuff.”
But as the coach, Scott Wray, would no doubt tell you, a successful hockey team needs good players. Players such as Beauchamp.
A 6-ft, 200-lb rearguard, Beauchamp joined the Voodoos just before Christmas after being acquired from the lowly Espanola Express.
He describes himself as a shutdown D-man who can move the puck, and while he is not particularly big by NOJHL standards, he feels he is able to make the most of his size.
Beauchamp has made a strong early impression with Powassan, earning four points, all assists, in his first seven games.
Currently on the Voodoos power play, Beauchamp says he is starting to gel with defensive partner Eric Allair, a skilled blueliner in his own right.
Beyond his tangible assets on the ice, Beauchamp brings all of the intangibles that come from years of experience.
He began playing hoc-key in the Flin Flon minor hockey system at about age 5. When he was 15, he join-ed the Norman Northstars, a Thompson-based AAA squad.
Beauchamp spent the 2014-15 season in Ontario with the Dryden Ice Dogs and English River Miners of the Superior International Junior A Hockey League (SIJHL), which encompasses northwestern Ontario and Minnesota.
He started this season in the SIJHL, with the Fort Frances Lakers, before joining the NOJHL’s Espanola Express. Then came the trade to Powassan.
The Canadian Junior Hockey League has been ranking Powassan as the 10th best Junior A team in the country. Not bad for a club whose home
community has just 3,378 residents.
Beyond the Voodoos’ championship aspirations this season, Beauchamp hopes to earn a scholarship to play university hockey. So far he has spoken to one school.
He does not plan on making a career of hockey. Instead, he hopes to study kinesiology.
But don’t think for a moment that Beauchamp has lost his passion for the sport.
“To me, meeting new guys and coming together as a team,” he said when asked why he enjoys hockey. “And just bonding all together and whatnot – that’s fun to me.”
