Kings reflect on Turnbull Cup win

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This article was published 12/05/2022 (1423 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the Dauphin Kings arrived at Credit Union Place at 4 a.m. Thursday, they had an extra passenger with them from their trip to Steinbach.

The Kings captured their eighth Turnbull Cup and the first Manitoba Junior Hockey League title since 2010 on Wednesday night with a 2-1 triumph over the host Pistons in Game 7 of the league final.

“Everyone’s still on cloud nine,” Kings netminder Carson Cherepak said.

“It was a little weird to be celebrating on a bus with everybody, but we’re not going to complain about that.”

Although the game wasn’t in Dauphin, a sizeable group of Kings fans travelled to the T.G. Smith Centre and made their presence felt throughout the evening.

“The support they gave us tonight was incredible,” Kings head coach and general manager Doug Hedley told Darnell Duff after the game. “When we came out on the ice for the warmup, I wasn’t quite sure what rink we were in with how loud they were.

“When they were all chanting for us at the end of the game, you would have thought that we were playing in Dauphin,” Cherepak added. “They really came through for us and that was awesome to see.”

The Pistons, who were looking to win their third league title and their first since 2018, opened up the scoring at the 12:08 mark of the first period just as they were finishing a penalty kill.

Following a face-off in the Kings’ end of the ice, Bryce Kilbourne took a shot from the point that bounced off Cherepak and onto the stick of Dawson Milliken, who backhanded a shot into the net.

The Kings responded with a shorthanded marker of their own 81 seconds into the middle stanza.

Logan Calder — who was a member of the Portage Terriers team that won the last Turnbull Cup title in 2019 — pounced on a loose puck that had bounced into the slot following an errant pass by Pistons forward Davis Fry and wired a shot by goaltender Will Hambley.

“‘Spills’ (Terriers head coach and GM Blake Spiller) was so bang-on about Logan from when we talked about him in January,” said Hedley, who brought Calder to the Kings from his hometown team at the trade deadline.

“He’s a good player on both sides of the puck, he comes up with big goals and he never quits. Logan leaves it all out on the ice and he’s absolutely relentless.”

Calder would also play a key role in the game-winning goal, which came with 8:27 to go in the third period.

After beating out an icing call, he threw a pass out into the slot, where it was received by Pistons forward Zach Power.

As Power tried to corral the puck, Kings rookie Brayden Dube swiped it away and slid a shot by Hambley to move his team out in front 2-1.

The Pistons fought, however, as Travis Hensrud ended up with a breakaway opportunity with 72 seconds to go.

Cherepak came up with his biggest stop of the season as he made a glove save to preserve the Kings’ lead.

“It honestly came out of nowhere,” Cherepak said. “I remember thinking to myself ‘Are you kidding me? A breakaway right now?’”

“I was pretty confident though that I had him picked out before he shot the puck. You have to make timely saves like that sometimes in those close games and I was pretty happy to have come up with one there.”

Cherepak — who was named the MJHL’s top goaltender for the 2021-22 campaign — turned aside 33 shots on Wednesday to finish the post-season with a 12-4 record, a 2.32 goals-against average, a .923 save percentage and a shutout.

The 19-year-old from Winnipeg also received the league’s playoff MVP award after the game, becoming the first netminder to earn that honour since Byron Spriggs of the Winnipeg Blues in 2014.

“It’s a great accomplishment and a nice feather in the cap, but the way I look at … I was a small part of a much bigger picture,” Cherepak said.

“A lot of the things that were the key to us winning are the stuff that doesn’t make the highlight reel. It was the big blocks, the timely hits and the plays we made to get the puck out of danger that really made the difference in the tight games we had against Swan Valley, Winkler and Steinbach.”

After a couple of days of rest, the Kings will get back on the ice to prepare for the Centennial Cup, which runs from May 19 to 29 in Estevan, Sask.

They will open up their Group B schedule on May 20 at 1 p.m. against the Central Canada Hockey League champion Ottawa Jr. Senators.

That will be followed by a meeting with the Maritime Hockey League champion Summerside Western Capitals on May 22, a May 24 contest with the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League finalist Flin Flon Bombers and a matchup against the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League champion Soo Thunderbirds on May 25.

All three of those games will take place at 5 p.m. CDT.

“I know it’s a cliché, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for all of us on the team,” Cherepak said. “We’re going to do our best to make the MJHL and the entire province proud out there.”

Also competing at the event are the tournament host and SJHL champion Estevan Bruins, the Alberta Junior Hockey League champion Brooks Bandits, the Quebec Junior Hockey League champion Longueuil College Francais, the Superior International Junior Hockey League champion Red Lake Miners and the yet-to-be-determined champions from the Ontario Junior Hockey League.

The top team in each group will earn a bye to the semifinal round on May 28, with second- and third-place squads advancing to the quarterfinals on May 27.

The championship contest — which will be played on May 29 at 5 p.m. — will air nationally on TSN.

ICINGS: Power was the leading scorer in the MJHL playoffs with 27 points (eight goals and 19 assists) in 18 games. That’s the most points a player has put up in the post-season since 2009 when Blair Macaulay recorded 28 points in 10 games for a Winnipeg Saints side that was eliminated in the semifinals.

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