Kaluzniak recalls Centennial Cup

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/05/2015 (3773 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Gord Kaluzniak figures it was high time for his 1973-74 Selkirk Steelers to pass the torch to another Manitoba Junior Hockey League team.

The Portage Terriers’ victory in the RBC Cup on Sunday ended a 41-year drought for the MJHL at the Canadian Junior A hockey championship. Kaluzniak and his brother Garry, both now Brandonites, were key players for the Steelers when they won the MJHL’s last national title.

“It was great to see somebody win it from Manitoba and it was great to see some of the Brandon guys or the local guys that were involved in it,” Gord Kaluzniak, 58, said. “It’s hard to believe we could go that long without winning it.”

Garry and Gord Kaluzniak were 1-2 in team scoring for the ’73-74 Steelers, with younger brother Gord scoring the clinching goal in overtime of Game 7 as Selkirk beat the Smiths Falls Bears 1-0 to win the Centennial Cup, as it was known then. It was Manitoba’s second straight national title, with the Terriers having won it the year before.

Four decades later, the MJHL is finally back on top, although Gord Kaluzniak said the event, now a five-team tournament that was hosted by Portage this year, is completely different.

“The seven-game thing determines more who the champ is, not that Portage wouldn’t have won a seven-game series,” said Kaluzniak, who gathered with most of the Steelers last year when the team was inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame. “I think Portage was the best team there, and I think they would have won a seven-game series. But like our guys (from the 1973-74 Steelers) were saying, we won our first series in Prince Albert, we won the second series in Kelowna and we played all seven games (of the Centennial Cup) in Ottawa when we won it, and that’s something that will never be duplicated if they stay with this format.”

Kaluzniak, a Selkirk native, also misses the days when teams were built around local players, rather than loading up with talent from far and wide for a title run. He said the Steelers’ championship club featured about eight players who were from Selkirk or the surrounding area, while the Kaluzniak brothers’ father, Peter, was the team’s equipment manager. The Terriers had only two players from Portage la Prairie, including Zack Waldvogel, whose father, Greg, played with Gord Kaluzniak at Brandon University. To be fair, Portage was still Manitoba-heavy, including six players from Westman: Brandonites Tanner Jago and Carson Perreaux, Virden’s Landon Peel and the Elkhorn trio of Bradley and Shawn Bowles and Brett Orr.

There’s one area where Kaluzniak, despite the dissenting opinions of many of his former teammates, doesn’t believe the Steelers would have an edge on the Terriers, and that’s on the ice. The Kaluzniaks were 16 and 17 years old when the 1973-74 season began and both were in the Western Canadian Hockey League with the Brandon Wheat Kings as 18-year-olds. Kaluzniak said at the time the MJHL was largely young players working their way up to major junior or university, while now the league is dominated by 19- and 20-year-olds, some of whom have come back from the Western Hockey League ranks. He said the skill the older Junior A players have developed today would trump the grit of his young teams.

“I wouldn’t be one of the guys arguing that the old guys would have beat (today’s Junior A teams) because … the skill level’s better than when we played, especially defensively,” he said. “We had some big defencemen, they’d go back and wrap the puck around the boards and that was your breakout. They rarely handle the puck the way the guys do now. And I think the goaltending’s better now, although Andy Stoez played goal for us (and) he was exceptional. He won it for us he was so good.”

LOOKING AHEAD: It was barely more than a week ago that the Wheat Kings’ season ended with a loss to the Kelowna Rockets in the WHL final, but it’s already time to look ahead to next season. The Wheat Kings will host their spring prospects camp next week, from Friday to Sunday. Also, check out tomorrow’s Sun for our annual look at the club’s eligible returnees for next season.