UNB's 42-0 season is hockey history, but also a hope for the future of the game's grassroots
Whoever solves the “too much hockey” problem in Canada should study Gardiner MacDougall’s model in Fredericton, and what Julie Chu is doing with her Concordia Stingers dynasty in Montréal.
Something coach Gardiner MacDougall shared while his UNB Reds wrapped their perfect season in Canadian university men’s hockey stands out as much as their deed.
So, the relentless Reds are the champs again in Canadian uni men’s hockey, AKA Uni Puck. They finished a 42-0 campaign by defeating the Trois-Rivières Patriotes 4-0 on Sunday in the David Johnston University Cup final at Maple Leaf Gardens in downtown Toronto. In a luck-dependent sport, they have won 47 games in a row. At the nationals, goalie Samuel Richard pitched three shutouts, taking a 298-minute, two-second scoreless skein into next season.
All told, UNB has won nine of the last 16 national titles. MacDougall also guided the host team Saint John Sea Dogs to a Memorial Cup win in ’22. One of his UNB defencemen, Colton Kammerer, was captain of the Hamilton Bulldogs team that the Sea Dogs beat in that final. If you can’t beat Gardiner MacDougall, you join him.
Someone with a bigger platform needs to start pushing for MacDougall to be in the Hockey Hall of Fame along with Clare Drake and Brian Kilrea. For this bit of esoteria, this is a good time as any to wax pointless that Uni Puck is part of the ideal for the strata of Canadian hockey that feeds up to the NHL. One that focuses on people, not the profits, and keeps hockey-playing humans on the vine a little longer. And it would be better for fans. Continue de rêver, je sais.
It is a shame I haven’t figured that all out. The Reds’ perfect season is a more beauty setup than the one Austen Keating gave Cody Morgan for the 2-0 UNB goal. Or the finishing move Brady Gilmour made to slide the puck under the blocker of Trois-Rivières goalie Alexis Gravel for the icebreaker goal, shortly after an early penalty kill.
The Reds’ historic season yet, of course, comes amid speculation U.S. college hockey might lift its four-decade embargo on players from the pro-format Canadian Hockey League. The CHL stocks the 35 men’s teams in U Sports.
If I wanted to be antagonistic, I’d suggest to the NCAA that if it had any testikulär styrka, it would invite Canadian universities to join as complete teams. Instead, it might just try to slant-drill into their feeder pool. America!
The UNB formula might be unduplicable, but it is worth studying. After all, when it comes to declining youth player registration and climate change, winter is coming for the sport in Canada.
There is too much local hockey in Canada. What is on offer doesn’t necessarily work for the 99.9 percent of high-level players who are not the next Connor McJesus, and fragmentation from too many teams on not-on-linear-TV leagues hampers fandom. Put it right on the line: I enjoy going to an AHL game on either side of the border more than OHL, more often than not. Canadians feel entitled to hockey, and don’t watch it if it’s not The Show.
There are 94 high-level male teams in Canada between the AHL, and ECHL minor pro teams, CHL, and U Sports. The top tier of Junior A pushes that figure into the 100s. That’s too much for our population. Thirty-five female teams in U Sports deserve attention and support.
The Red Machine
That 94 figure should come down by about a third, the 35 should rise, and a lot of arena infrastructure should be converted for basketball and general fitness, thanks for attending my TEDTalk. And yes, I’m aware I participate in society. The climate change aspect is for smarter people, who probably know better than to spend Sundays watching university hockey.
MacDougall is running a masterclass. You might have seen that the Reds are the first undefeated team since 1973 when a university hockey season was barely half as long as today. It’s not just a page in hockey history. It might also be part of a future that does not suck.
The real comp to UNB, to scale albeit, was the vintage Russian teams. These Reds, in my three viewings, had that kind of alacrity with hemming in their three U Cup opponents, all from the Ontario conference. Give Richard and UNB defencemen such as Kade Landry all the accolades, of course. But UNB showed defence starts with the forecheck. In the 7-0 semifinal win against Toronto Metro, they potted their third goal before Richard was called on for his third save!
Anyway, so what did MacDougall say that piqued my interest? A key number, not available in any scoring summary, points to how UNB and “Uni Puck” are special. MacDougall highlighted it for Ben Steiner at 49-Sport during the lead-up to the final.
Via Steiner, MacDougall noted that his Reds reached the century mark in practices during the nationals. Scheduling 100 practices around 42 games, a better than 2:1 ratio, comes a lot closer to the ideals preached in long-term athlete development but seldom put into practice in the Canadian hockey-industrial complex.
Assist to Dave Branch
Why can’t it be like that at earlier ages? Everyone knows ‘the kids are playing too much hockey.’ It leads to overuse injuries, burnout, and it is unclear whether it is getting results for Canadian hockey players.
Fact: the Canadian Hockey League doesn’t boast the share of picks in the NHL’s 18-year-old draft that it did 12, or 15 years ago. There are proofs — Europe, the NCAA — that it is completely unnecessary to play an NHL-style schedule at 17 years old. The average NHL rookie is 21, and goalies are even later maturing, so the focus ought to be on keeping young players on the vine? That’s where Uni Puck has a role to play.
If the CHL is ebbing as a major pipeline to the NHL, then what is it?
Now, it’s not as if the CHL and Uni Puck are opposed. The CHL education package, which is made possible by the revenue generated by teams of teenagers playing up to 90 regular-season, league playoff, and Memorial Cup games, is the best thing to ever happen to university hockey. Almost all UNB’s players are from the CHL. The same went for Trois-Rivières, and the other six teams who competed at nationals.1
The ed package has improved the stock of players for university hockey. Getting schooling covered, plus the chance to earn a bursary or scholarship money, gives university hockey upside over the bus leagues. With no slight to the namesake of the U Sports championship trophy, it ought to be named after David Branch. After all, the longtime CHL and Ontario league executive had the foresight to push team governors to pay for education packages and give players a stake to build equity, which is a rare privilege for anyone born since 1976. (It’s not an entirely satisfactory explanation for provinces and states exempting CHL teams from labour laws, but so be it.)
But why can’t someone design something better? Again, put other, better people on this.
Being player-first will be paramount to the survival of local hockey. Making it about being present and in the moment, which UNB surely had to be to never ease off the throttle. A great team will have a bad game and take an L, but UNB never did.
I am no Ben Steiner, but I dug out some stats. The Reds allowed four goals in a game only thrice all season — never more than once in a month, and never again after Nov. 18. They trailed in the third period for a total of 22 minutes 19 seconds all season.
I’m not trying to persuade someone who lives in Ontario to stop watching the local OHL team and start watching the OUA. The former is more popular and the letter has older vintages of the same players, minus the NHL first-round picks. Marketing and tradition explain why 5,000 to 9,000 people go to an OHL game in a comfy clone rink with padded seats and why 300 to 500 might go to a university game in a community arena with benches. C’est la vie.
Yet those Reds really tie the issue together. Effin’ A. They play fast, they are a dynasty, and keep the stock of games tight. That is a refreshing contrast to the NHL’s prime directive to make every hockey team seem the same while still carrying deadweight franchises.
Anywho, UNB rates all the accolades for what they are, and it should be treated as more than a footnote. It could be a future.
That’s my wild stab at some radical honesty. Figure out what elements of the CHL, U Sports, and minor pro below the AHL are worth preserving, and fusing.
That wider conversation may never happen until it is far too late. It’s nice to imagine it starting in a coach’s office in Fredericton, New Brunswick, though.
Concordia could run it back next season, unless Chu has her Waterloo
Scary stat: the Concordia Stingers, who regained the Golden Path Trophy at the U Sports women’s tournament, are losing only five players. The CBC crew related that during the Stingers’ 3-1 win against the U of Toronto Varsity Blues in the gold-medal game in Saskatoon.
Coached by the U.S. national team alumna Julie Chu, the Stingers were borderline untouchable across their three wins inside Merlis Belsher Place. Concordia drew first blood before the midpoint of the first period in each game. It was barely a minute into the final before Émilie Lussier scored after wing Justine Yelle forced the classic high-in-the-zone turnover inside Toronto’s blueline, leaving goalie Erica Fryer in a very lonely end of the rink. By the 8½-minute mark, when all-name team candidate Jessymaude Drapeau had scored from below the goal line, Concordia was well on its way. After all, goalie Jordyn Verbeek allowed just two goals in the tournament.
The Stingers are just really, really, really good, and I promise not to reach for false insights. They just as easily could have been playing their city rivals, the Montréal Carabins, for all the marbles on Sunday, but Fryer was a perfect 6-of-6 in squelching shootout tries during Toronto’s semifinal win against the Carabins.
If not for an overtime defeat against the Mount Royal Cougars in the 2023 final, Concordia could have a three-peat. All told, the three Montréal teams have claimed 10 of the 25 national titles since women’s hockey’s first sanctioned Canadian university championship in 1997-98. Concordia and McGill each boast four, and Montréal has won a pair.2
The entire OUA has four national titles from as many schools. So that brings up some spicier subtext.
Ontario: fearful of Québec since whenever?
It was announced over a year ago, so it is not news that two border-region schools, Carleton and uOttawa, are moving from the RSEQ for women’s hockey to OUA. It leaves Québec with a four-team league, and Ontario will grow to 14.
The upshot is this a bad for the experiential part of university sport. A compact league has great rivalries, but it gets repetitive playing the same opponents, especially if a student-athlete is not on a team that advances out of conference play.
There are administrative concerns that are above my paygrade.3 One can respect that and say they disagree with a move. It might be my eastern Ontario-grown geography. For Queen’s, the farthest-flung Q team, Bishop’s, is only a 4½-hour drive away. Depending on GTA traffic, there are two, if not three OUA opponents who are farther away from the Gaels.
Waterloo is the host team for the 2025 natties. Picture Concordia and Montréal showing up mad, if they haven’t worn each other down to nubs by then.
Not figuring out some sort of partnership for the regular season just seems like shorttermism, sorry. In my lifetime, I’ve seen OUA pull back from regular-season football with Québec, basketball with Québec, and women’s hockey with Québec.
Anyway, it is quite a medal haul for la petite conférence. Between basketball and hockey, the winter team sports dearest to me, Québec teams claimed 6-of-12 medals. That includes Concordia and Montréal on the women’s hockey podium, Laval’s national title in men’s basketball and women’s hoops bronze, Trois-Rivières and McGill taking men’s hockey silver and bronze. Plus title-winning Carleton in women’s basketball and the bronze-earning uOttawa men’s team are bolstered by Québécois athletes.
Seems like OUA would want to be enriched by that, n’est pas?
That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind, especially to yourself.
Trois-Rivières is a second or third rooting interest for moi in this level of hockey. Since only three Québec universities offer men’s hockey, they play as associate members of Ontario University Athletics. I don’t know if there is resentment, but it’s just quite the conundrum to have a team of native French speakers repping Ontario.
Canada West leads with 11, including eight from the dynastic Alberta Pandas teams, whose last title was in 2017. Calgary, Manitoba, and Mount Royal have each won once.
Everything is above my paygrade right now.