McMullan continues to collect titles

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This article was published 07/05/2025 (224 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the Northern Manitoba Blizzard won the Manitoba Junior Hockey League title on May 1, it was just another example of championships following Loughlan McMullan.

For the 17-year-old, left-shot forward from Brandon, it was the third championship in four years after he also won with the under-15 AAA Wheat Kings in 2021-22 and with the U18s last season.

In the 2022-23 season, he lost in the final with the U17 Wheat Kings.

“Going on deep playoff runs my last four years, I think it helped,” McMullan said. “You know that in games you can’t get too high when you score and too low when you get scored on. It was trying to keep an even keel in those big moments. I think I’m good at it and a lot of the guys were good.

“Our 20s really helped with that, making sure that you can’t get too far ahead of yourselves and keeping the team in check.”

In the three previous seasons, McMullan had established himself as a reliable offensive contributor played with the U15s (32 games played, 26 goals, 28 assists, 54 points), the U17s (36gp, 36g, 32a, 68p) and the U18s (44gp, 27g, 17a, 44p).

He was in for a surprise making the jump to junior.

“It was way more physical,” McMullan said. “Hits come quick, in board battles against the wall you’re waiting to get hit. It’s not like U18 where you can just be there doing stick work, you really have to be in front of them and box them out to win. The speed, there’s a lot of really fast guys.

“There is a lot of skill, the goalies are really good. In U18, my crappy little wristers could go in once in a while. In the MJ, not as easy.”

He noted there is a steep learning curve, and it wasn’t until after Christmas in the second half of the season that he began to fully implement everything he had been taught.

But at least he had help.

“Last year in pre-season I met a good chunk of them so I already had a bit of a connection with them,” McMullan said. “This year, my vet Brett Ward kind of took me under his wing. He’s a great guy, a fun guy to be around. Everyone on the team gets along so well, it’s such a good family up here.

“It makes it easy being away from home. They made sure to include everyone when we did stuff. The 20s were so good at that. They didn’t want anyone to feel excluded. It’s awesome.”

With a third of the team coming from Quebec or the United States, and just one local player on the roster, the team bonded closely. In essence, they had to.

“No one can just go home for the weekend and then be back the next day,” McMullan said. “It kind of forces you to really get along with the guys because you can’t of back and just be ‘Oh ya, I’ll be back for practice next week.’ Everyone being here, you have to hang out, so you make friends pretty quick and it’s definitely a big part of why we gelled so well.”

Another big part of the experience was moving away from home for the first time. He said it proved to be a seamless transition.

“It was really good actually,” McMullan said. “My billets in The Pas, it’s very similar to at home. It was very easy for me to adjust.”

The only other Westman player on the roster is Max Collyer of Onanole, who McMullan had skated against a lot growing up but didn’t really know.

Northern Manitoba ended up finishing the regular season with a record of 35-22-0-1, six points back of the Dauphin Kings in the MJHL’s West Division.

They hit a low point in late November, losing seven consecutive games between Nov. 16 and Dec. 3. But they were able to rebound from it, even if it damaged their hopes of winning the West Division title.

“Obviously you want to finish top of your division but second place is not bad, by any means,” McMullan said. “You want to do as well as you can. We came pretty far. We had a skid in the middle of the season and that was pretty hard on the team but that kind of helped us. We rallied together during that and then got some big wins.”

The six-foot, 185-pound McMullan had three goals and three assists in 38 regular season games as he was in and out of the lineup as a healthy scratch, and a goal and six assists in 13 playoff games.

“I wish I had a few more points but I was pretty happy with it,” McMullan said. “For the most part, I played pretty well in all my games. In the first half, it was just so much learning and it all came pretty fast, and I felt like in the back half I took bit of a jump and started playing a bit better and then in the playoffs I took another jump to help the team.”

PLAYOFFS

The Blizzard opened the playoffs on March 21 with a 3-2 loss to the third-place Neepawa Titans, but rebounded with four victories, three of them by one goal. Since the playoffs are reseeded after the first round, that meant the Blizzard had to face the defending champion Winkler Flyers, who had won the regular season crown with a record of 46-8-3-1 over in the East Division.

It was a tall task for Northern Manitoba, but they won the first three games by two goals each, and put the series away in overtime in Game 4 for an unlikely sweep.

“Beating Neepawa, we were pretty hopeful we would do that,” McMullan said. “We did it and then it was Winkler. It was ‘OK, this is a big task, the defending champions they’ve lost only eight games.’ We had to take a big jump and I thought our team really rallied together under our coaches.

“They did so much for us leading into that series and it continued against Dauphin. All the video we did, it was so much, but it helped so much too.”

The final proved to be an up-and-down affair for both clubs, with the Blizzard winning 4-0 in Game 1, and the Kings responding with a 3-2 victory in Game 2.

Northern Manitoba took a stronghold with 4-2 and 5-2 wins, but Dauphin responded with 3-0 and 2-1 victories to send the series to Game 7.

“Some games one team would dominate and it was back and forth,” McMullan said. “It was really nerve racking if you’re on the ice or in the stands watching it.”

McMullan wasn’t in the lineup in Game 7, instead watching from the stands as the game went to triple overtime. Off a faceoff in the Dauphin end, Miguel Bouvier fed Quincy Supprien and the Quebecer fired a shot past Cole Sheffield to give the Blizzard a 2-1 victory and the championship.

“It was unbelievable,” McMullan said. “I was with the other scratches, and Quincy was my guy, and when he scored, we ran onto the ice. All the twenties, it was all they ever wanted. Three of four of them have been up here for three or four years so it means so much to them to bring a championship back to The Pas.”

The championship was the first for the Blizzard since 2003, when they completed a run of five in a row. The team, which began play in 1996, was sold last summer to Rob and Bonnie White of The Pas and the team name was changed to from the OCN Blizzard to the Northern Manitoba Blizzard to better reflect the region.

They also moved their home games from Gordon Lathlin Memorial Centre on OCN to the Roy H. Johnston Arena in The Pas.

All of that made the championship even sweeter.

“We were talking about it going into the finals,” McMullan said. “(The coaches said) ‘You guys have a really good chance to bring something back to The Pas that they haven’t had in a while since that big run.’ We had a parade (on Saturday) and the amount of support we have is unbelievable.”

CENTENNIAL CUP

The title extended the season for the Blizzard, who open today in Calgary as one of 10 teams vying for the Centennial Cup and the national Junior A championship.

The team flew out of Winnipeg to Calgary on Tuesday.

McMullan is a rookie on the club but he’s likely the only guy with experience in a similar tournament after attending the Telus Cup last April in Sydney, N.S. He thinks there are some things he can share from that experience.

“It’s a short turn-around every day so if you win, great, but you have to focus on the next game tomorrow or whatever day it is,” McMullan said. “If you lose, same thing. You flip the page, and make sure you’re eating well and drinking a lot of water and just making sure your body is in the best shape is so crucial.”

The Blizzard open against the Trenton Golden Hawks today at 1 p.m., and then meet the Greater Sudbury Cubs on Saturday, the Kam River Fighting Walleye on Monday and the Grande Prairie Storm on Wednesday.

The quarterfinals are on Friday, May 16, the semifinals on Saturday, May 17 and the final on Sunday, May 18 at 6 p.m.

The last Manitoba team to win was the Portage Terriers when they did it as hosts in 2015.

“It will be good,” McMullan said. “Fourteen days in a hotel doesn’t sound too great but other than that, it should be a great experience with these guys. If we put our mind to it, we can do a lot of things, I think we proved that this year.

“We have a good chance.”

» For a profile of McMullan’s teammate Max Collyer of Onanole, see Saturday’s edition of The Brandon Sun.

» pbergson@brandonsun.com