By Peter Watts /

It’s been a very good season to this point for the University of Saskatchewan men’s hockey team. In his 20th season as a coach, Huskies alumnus Dave Adolph collected his 400th career win Nov. 8 against the UBC Thunderbirds.

The Huskies had four Canada West all-stars: Steve Da Silva and Steve Gillen made the first team while defenceman Derek Endicott made the second team.

Da Silva and Chris Durand both made the conference all-rookie team.

Da Silva and Gillen both went to the FISU Winter Games in Harbin, China in February and came home with silver medals. Both scored in the 4-2 loss to the Russians in the gold-medal final.
Both led the tournament 
in scoring.

Indeed, there’s only been one disappointment to this point – finishing second behind perennial powerhouse Alberta in the conference’s regular-season standings. But then, the Huskies have been there before.

“We’ve had a pretty good run the last few years,” Adolph said. “We’ve been to the nationals in nine of the last 11 seasons. We’ve always had big, physical teams and we’ve always come close at the nationals. But the last time the Huskies won the University Cup was in 1982 when I was a defenceman on the team.”

“We’ve usually gotten to the semi-finals before we lose. Last year, we lost in the semi-final to New Brunswick. The year before that, we lost the semi-final to Trois-Rivieres. And in 2006, we lost in the final to Alberta.”

Adolph said this year’s squad has what it takes to get over the hump.

“We’re a different type of team this year,” he said. “We’ve got 12 rookies and 11 of them have played a lot. We beat Alberta three of the four times we played them this season.

“But they’re not the problem on the weekend. The UBC Thunderbirds are the team we have to beat to move on to the next round. And we haven’t played since beating Regina in a home-and-home series about three 
weeks ago.

“It’s just one of those funny quirks in the schedule. By finishing second we got a first-round bye in the playoffs. But it’s a long time to be off at this time of the season. So I’m concerned with how we’ll do, especially early in the series, and especially because it’s a short series. In a best-of-three playoff, there isn’t much time to make up for mistakes.”

And UBC has been playing pretty well. The Thunderbirds eliminated Calgary from post-season contention on the final weekend of the season. They then went into Lethbridge, played a three-game series in three days against the Pronghorns, and won the right to move on, thanks to a win in triple overtime in Game 3.

The team flew home to Vancouver on the Monday and headed right back to Saskatoon on Thursday. That’s a lot of hockey and a lot of travel in a short space of time.

“They’re a big, physical team and we are not,” said Adolph. “We’re smaller and quicker this year. In the recent past at nationals, we’ve not been able to score enough goals to give ourselves a chance to win.

“So I addressed that last spring during recruiting. We got six new forwards who can score. But we’ve not got a lot of playoff experience, at least at this level. So we’re going to have to make up for that with our skating, our savvy, and our ability to put the puck in the net. If we can do that, we’ll be fine.”

If they can do that, perhaps there’ll be a trip to Thunder Bay for the nationals in a couple of weeks. And maybe – just maybe – the Huskies can do the one thing they haven’t been able to do in 27 years: bring the University Cup back to Saskatoon.

I dare say they can clear some space in the trophy case if that mission is accomplished.