‘Really special’ 1980-81 BU hockey team inducted into Sports Wall of Fame

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This article was published 16/10/2017 (3174 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Never before had a Brandon University Bobcats men’s hockey team achieved the No. 1 ranking in all of Canada.

The 1980-81 BU squad, coached by Souris’s Andy Murray, did just that on its way to an appearance at the national championship.

BU went 0-2 at the University Cup in Calgary, falling 6-3 to the host Dinos and 10-3 to the eventual champion University of Moncton Aigles Bleus in its pool games.

Despite a tough end to the season, those Bobcats left their mark as the greatest hockey team to ever hit the ice in program history.

On Saturday morning, that team was inducted into the Dick and Verda McDonald Sports Wall of Fame.

“We had really good veteran players, they were high-character guys,” said forward Vaughn Karpan, who was the youngest player on the team at age 19. “It was probably the first team I was involved with for a long time that expected to win every day and it was kind of the mindset of the guys that we had.

“They were just competitive guys, but they were leaders and they were very good players.”

The 56-year-old Karpan, who played 26 Western Hockey League games with the Brandon Wheat Kings in the prior season, is now the director of player personnel for the National Hockey League’s Vegas Golden Knights.

The two-time Canadian Olympian (1988 and 1984) was one of several former players and coaches who were on hand at the Victoria Inn Hotel and Convention Centre for the induction.

Former athletic director George Birger and assistant coach Rick Piche flew in from Arizona and Ohio, respectively, to be part of the honour.

Players Kit Harrison, Rich Little, Tim Morrison, John Tresoor (class of 1997) and Brad White (class of 1999) were among those who also attended the ceremony.

Doug Hedley went into the Wall of Fame with the 1980-81 team as well as an individual, but his duties as head coach and general manager of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League’s OCN Blizzard prevented him from attending.

Karpan spoke highly of Hedley, who grew up in Sandy Lake.

“We called him Gunner and he was a goal-scorer,” Karpan recalled. “He had a great shot and was deceptively strong, deceptively tough and ironically I played with his brother Kevin in the Manitoba Junior League, so I’d known him forever.

“He was a power guy before we talked about power forwards. He was exceptionally big and strong at that time.”

BU opened the 1980-81 season by knocking off the defending NCAA Division I champion University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux 7-5 in an exhibition game, but it was after an early-season loss to the host University of Regina Cougars that the team had a meeting and went on an incredible run.

The Bobcats aired whatever grievances they had and didn’t

lose another game in the regular season, finishing atop the GPAC standings at 23-1.

They also took a trip to Finland and played against Finnish Division 1 and 2 teams over the Christmas break, and captured a holiday tournament hosted by the University of Concordia in Montreal upon their return to Canada to cement their status as the No. 1 team in the country.

“Our team had the mindset that if you don’t plan to win, then don’t play the game. That’s the way that we went in and I think you get from people what you expect of them,” Murray said in a pre-taped video interview supplied to BU. “We had high expectations for that group and they came to practice every day to compete hard and they knew that not everybody was going to play on the weekend, so you had to get yourself in the lineup first.”

The Bobcats advanced to their third University Cup by knocking off the rival University of Manitoba Bisons 6-3 and 7-4, sweeping the best-of-three GPAC final.

Goaltender Vernon Mott and Little were named all-Canadians, while White, Morrison, John Swan, Rod Winkler and Garry Kaluzniak earned GPAC all-star nods. Murray was tapped as the conference’s coach of the year.

“The ’80-’81 group was really special just because of the balance,” Murray said. “We rotated units, we played short-shift hockey. At that time you were restricted to a certain number of players, so we only had five defencemen allowed to play.

“Our guys competed, we had great speed, great puck-movers, we had size and physicality as well.”

As much as Murray pushed the Bobcats, Harrison believes the players pushed their coach.

“It was quite an experience and I think the amount of talent that was on that particular team that year, I think, we should all take a little credit for taking Andy to a new level,” Harrison said as laughter rose from the crowd. “We challenged him as much as he challenged us. He spent all night drawing drills and coming up with new tasks for us and he would tell us that on the bus … and we would do them and say, ‘What is next Andy?’

“The passion that lasted with us through our experience with him has been everlasting.”

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