"Believe In Yourself"

While at the 2010 Allan Cup, I've had the opportunity to meet up with a handful of Spruce Kings alumni that are playing at the tournament. By far the most heavily ladened team, with players that wore the crown in seasons past, are on the host team's roster. There is one other team in the six team tournament featuring teams from across Canada that has three names that drum up memories from their time in Prince George.

The Powell River Regals roster has goaltender Mike Legg and forwards Mike Stutzel and Troy Dalton. Unfortunately Mike Legg was unable to travel to Fort St. John to play in this year's national senior amateur hockey tournament. I did get a chance to talk with Mike Stutzel who spent a pair of seasons with the Spruce Kings and was named the team's Most Improved Player in his first year and went on to earn the regular season MVP award.

As for Troy Dalton, he spent three very memorable seasons with the Spruce Kings including the year they won it all in the Rocky Mountain Junior Hockey League. That is one memory he shared with me as well as some candid thoughts about the game of hockey and what it has meant to him over the years and how his years with the Spruce Kings were instrumental in shaping his future. He talked a little bit about how the game of hockey has changed, not so much on the ice as much as it has changed off the ice.

The interview was conducted a short time after he arrived at the rink with his current team, the Powell River Regals for their quarter final game against the Bentley Generals. I started the interview there asking Troy about he and the rest of the team were preparing for a game against defending Allan Cup champions and a team that they had some history with.


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Troy Dalton and Mike Stutzel played strong roles for the Powell River Regals on this night, but the night belonged to the Bentley Generals who advanced to the semi finals and ended the Regals season. Friday at the 2010 Allan Cup the Fort St. John Flyers with five alumni on the roster will look to move past the South East Prairie Thunder and advance to the Championship game on Saturday.

Alumni at 2010 Allan Cup

As the voice behind the microphone at the Spruce Kings games, I've had an opportunity to watch a number of players show their stuff in the Coliseum and watched them move on to the next level. Sometimes it is easy to follow a player and other times you lose track of them. It is always nice to catch up to them again somewhere down the road. For me this week, that road or roads have led to Fort St. John for the 2010 Allan Cup.

The Allan Cup is the holy grail for senior men's amateur hockey and has been around since before the Stanley Cup. Based around a six team two division tournament, the Allan Cup is more in common with the RBC Royal Bank Cup as teams play a round robin series and then move through an elimination series before going to a single championship game.

Every year a different city is selected to host the Allan Cup with the team playing in that city getting an automatic spot in the tournament while five other regional spots are determined through playoffs and regional championships. The closest the Allan Cup tournament has ever been to Prince George is 1993 when it was held in Quesnel. The 102nd edition of the tournament is being held in Fort St. John with the Flyers the host team.

There are five Spruce Kings alumni on the FSJ team with Chris Stevens, Matt Shuya and Tyler Loney the most recent to have worn the crown. Adam Loncan and Gerard Dicaire are the other three that local fans will remember having played in Prince George. Dicaire, a true defenceman, was with the Spruce Kings for the 1998-99 season. Playing in 51 games, he finished with a record of 6 goals and 16 assists; he also played in 11 playoff games that year and picked up a game winning goal and one assist.

Adam Loncan played two seasons with the Spruce Kings, one in the Rocky Mountain Junior Hockey League and the other in the first year that the Spruce Kings joined the British Columbia Hockey League as a Junior A team. Loncan finished fifth in team scoring in that inaugural season in the BCHL with 17 goals and 28 assists through 58 games. Loncan went on to play for the Prince George Cougars the following year and also had five years of CIS hockey in Alberta before playing as a pro for two seasons in the CHL.

Tyler Loney played three seasons with the Spruce Kings; although he played as a defenceman in his rookie year, he found a great deal of success up front and especially on the top of the crease where it was next to impossible to move him. Loney wore the 'C' in his graduating year and holds many franchise records from his time with the team including the most penalty minutes in a single season with 242 and in a career with 578. Loney wasn't just a physical player though and finished his three years with 156 games played, 45 goals and 68 assists.

Chris Stevens was sixteen when he first started playing for the Spruce Kings and over the course of three seasons found a spot on the team's record books in the categories of games played (9th - 169), goals (2nd - 82), assists (6th - 100), points (4th - 181), power play goals (7th - 21), short handed goals (5th - 5) and game winning goals (2nd - 13). At the end of the 2004-05 season, when the Spruce Kings lost to the Vernon Vipers in the Interior Conference finals, Stevens received a call to finish the season out with the Medicine Hat Tigers.

Matt Shuya played four seasons and the second most games with the Spruce Kings with 208, 17 behind Derek Dinelle. Had it not been for a blockbuster trade at the trading deadline, Shuya would have been eligible to play in twenty more regular season games wearing the crown and may have been able to pass Dinelle. Shuya's name is also in multiple categories for career and single season records including fifth for goals scored with 69, tenth for points with 141 and third for penalty minutes with 374.

Besides these five, the Powell River Regals have another three Spruce Kings alumni with Troy Dalton, Mike Stutzel and Mike Legg. Legg, a goaltender, played three seasons with the Spruce Kings between 1985 and 1988 in the Peace Caribou Junior Hockey League. Dalton was with the team for three seasons as well between the years of 1993 and 1996 which spanned both the PCJHL and the RMJHL. Stutzel's spent time with the Spruce Kings from 1997 to 1999, the team's second and third seasons in the BCHL.

In my next posting, I will take a closer look at the players today and how they are faring at the 2010 Allan Cup. If time permits, between games, I hope to be able to sit down with at least a couple of them and just talk about those days when they wore the crown with pride and played in the Coliseum as members of the Prince George Spruce Kings.

Allan Cup in the Peace

The Allan Cup is the Holy Grail of the senior hockey circuit and this Spring the 102nd edition of the tournament will be held in Fort St. John, BC. Leading up to the event I will be catching up with organizers, players and other people of interest involved with the Allan Cup. At the end of November, I had a chance to talk with Paul van Nostrand, the president of the 2010 Allan Cup Host Committee. What follows is the three parts of that extended interview ...

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3

Catching up with Matt Shuya

I find myself in Fort St. John en route to Vancouver (it's a long story best saved for Facebook) and while here thought I would call up a former Spruce King and let him know that I was in town for the day. This particular player appeared on the team's roster for a total of 208 regular season games. He shows up on a few pages of the hockey club's BCHL record book and is one of those players whose name is automatically synonymous with the Spruce Kings. With those unforgettable dimples, Matt Shuya appears to be in top physical shape and is even more solid than he was in his Junior A days.

A four year player with the team, Shuya was one third of the Prince George side of a blockbuster trade that saw a total of seven players ultimately traded in a deal with the Merritt Centennials back at the January 10th trade deadline day in 2006. The number 19 jersey of Shuya may have come off the player, but the Crown never came off his heart. Still today standing in the warm summer breeze outside the newest arena in his hometown, Matt re-lived many memories that brought out his smile and a sparkle in his eyes.

Now playing for the Fort St. John Flyers senior mens hockey team, Shuya admits that those years he played in Prince George have never left him and he finds himself reminiscing with people he knew from that important time in his life. He spoke in glowing terms about the fans, team mates and a few of the people from the organization that he came to know over his four seasons with the Spruce Kings. With lots of memories to recount, he is especially fond of his third season when the team had all the components to make a serious run at the title.

"That was one of my best years of hockey," Shuya said of the 2004-05 season. "We had a great bunch of guys and we all got along. We had everything to do it, until we ran into some injury troubles. I will never forget that year."

Matt Shuya shows up in the Spruce Kings record book with the second most games played and holds down fifth spot for the most career goals and also appears on the all time scoring leaders list with 141 points. Known more for his hard work in the corners and physical play, Matt Shuya also ranks in the top three for most career penalty minutes ... first place belongs to another Spruce Kings alumni from Fort St. John.

"I'm playing with Tyler Loney," beams Shuya when he talks of his life-long team mate from minor through junior and into senior hockey. "There are also other players with Prince George connections like Tyler Brough and Gerard Dicaire on the team. We're trying to see if Brad Fast wants to play this year too and maybe Chris Stevens. We're hosting the (2010) Allan Cup and it would be nice to get a few more guys up here and win it in front of the hometown fans."

The Allan Cup is the trophy awarded to the national senior amateur men’s ice hockey champions of Canada. The trophy was donated in 1909 by Sir H. Montagu Allan as a trophy for amateur teams, to replace the Stanley Cup, whose tournament had become a professional competition. In a similar fashion to the RBC Royal Bank Cup, the Allan Cup is a six team round robin tournament style championship. This will mark the first time in its 102 year history that the Allan Cup will be played in the city of Fort St. John and over the past three years, the Flyers have been quickly establishing themselves as a serious contender for the title.

When asked whether or not the still-to-be-completed Enerplex would become the new home for the senior mens hockey team, Shuya informed me that the new arena isn't as big as the North Peace Arena. He also explained how the Enerplex will satisfy one big concern for the city of Fort St. John being ice time, but with the smaller seating capacity it will be used by the minor hockey teams and not the senior team or the Junior B Huskies.

The Enerplex has a neat design concept behind it with a total of three levels. The first level will be the rink for ice hockey, above that will be a skating oval for speed skaters and above that still will be a running track. An interesting configuration to be sure but not one that didn't come with some unique drawbacks as well. One of those obstacles that was pointed out to me was how to get a Zamboni from one level to the next - install a dedicated elevator just for the ice resurfacer.

The other drawback of the tiered design is the reduction of seating space for the main rink. Limited to 1,500 seats, the seating capacity is probably the first thing that struck me as odd for a new building. Although I never went inside, I can't help but picture an arena with a much lower ceiling than any other modern facility. Then again I can't think of another project that was ever built with less seating than an already existing facility.

"What the city of Fort St. John desperatey needs is more ice," Shuya said in defence of the new building. "We were only getting one practice time a week, we were lucky to get three ice times a week to play a pair of games and still have that practice ice too."

Even in the middle of the hottest part of the day, you could feel the excitement of this Spruce Kings alumni waiting to get back into a pair of skates and feel the slice of the metal blade on a fresh sheet of ice. At the end of our short time together, Matt obliged my request for a picture with the Enerplex as the backdrop and then headed off to the lake.