The University Farewell

No center ice logo, barely any rink board ads, just a couple of concession stands open but to fans who came to Northlands for possibly the final time, it mattered not.

On Saturday, the U of Alberta and NAIT’s men’s hockey teams squared off for the first time at Northlands since 1991 for FaceOff 2017.

The NAIT Ooks of the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference and the U of Alberta Golden Bears of U Sports used to be a holiday fixture at the mecca of Edmonton. This match up at Northlands was revived to help give the arena one of it’s final send offs before it shuts it’s doors  on New Years Day 2018.

It wasn’t a sellout but the three thousand or so strong gave the night a fun atmosphere with hockey fans young and old, some with their first memories of the arena being watching Gretzky and Kurri others being of Weight, Salo, Smyth and McDavid. The game itself it was at first a goalie duel between the Ooks Nathan Park and Golden Bears Zach Sawchkenko but it saw NAIT get the best chances early with shots off of the post and crossbar.

Alberta would break on through in the second with goals from Luke Philip and Steven Owre as the bounces the Ooks struggled to get went the way of the Golden Bears.

The Ooks in the third would taper off with the pressure from earlier in this one and Alberta would take advantage with two in the frame past Patrick Gora courtesy Lucas Nickles and Stephan Legault to seal this one with a 4-0 win when the final buzzer sounded to end an era of university hockey in Edmonton.

After this one Alberta head coach Serge Lajoie was pleased with his teams’ effort especially with the fact that all of his lines were rolling to put up 40 shots in the victory.

“It’s always our objective, we want to make sure that we have a shoot first mentality and we fire a lot of pucks to the net. I think for the most part it’s very easy for guys to kind of fall into some bad habits and maybe over-handle the puck so I thought maybe we kind of felt the game out a little bit in the first but I thought we settled into the game in the second and third”.

As someone who also played in the original FaceOff series back in the late 1980s and early 90s the arena truly held a special place in Lajoie’s heart and even while coaching he took a little bit of time to reflect on being in Northlands over the years.

“I took a couple moments to look around the rink, there’s some special memories for me I grew up watching the Oilers, there’s a lot of fond memories of the success that they had at this rink. I was here for the 2005 championship (Alberta’s U Sports title) I was apart of the coaching staff for the 06 championship, I got to dress in the in old Oilers dressing room when I went to one of the Oilers training camps it’s been apart of my hockey playing and coaching journey. It was nice to be on the bench and be on the Oiler side this time, I was on the other side when we played the Oiler rookies when they had McDavid and Draisaitl, it was fun it was good”.

Even though this game was billed as an exhibition it sure didn’t look like one as the pace was strong but to Ooks head coach Tim Fragle it tapered off as the game went on with the Bears as they maintained their intensity.

“Just the way they play they force you to play that way, so from our standpoint we have to match that intensity and that was what we didn’t do in the third period, I thought we did that better in the first period but they force you to play with that pace”.

Learning from this game is key as the Ooks are the top team in the ACAC and not resting on their laurels will be big when the team returns from their holiday break for the second half of the season to Fragle.

“We played the best team in Canada West and potentially in Canada, ranked #1, we were with them for two periods but we didn’t play the full 60 (minutes), we have to take that back to our league after Christmas after we get a little break for exams”.

There’ll be one final hockey game to send the barn off when the Spruce Grove Saints and the Okotoks Oilers of the AJHL hold their first ever regular season game at the barn on December 15th. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make that tilt so Saturday’s game was essentially my farewell trip the arena.

I’ll never forget my first NHL game as a fan and as a media member covering the National Lacrosse League, Briers, rodeos and other events at Skyreach/Rexall/and finally the return of Northlands.

I hope to one day pass down the stories of this place to the next generation who’ll grow up with Rogers Place as their sports shrine along with Commonwealth Stadium.

Thanks for being a part of my journey in the sports world, Northlands.

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”