By Peter Watts /

Canada’s top 16- and 17-year-old hockey players will compete for the Telus Cup next spring in Selkirk Manitoba. The decision, announced recently in Winnipeg, has been pending for nearly a year.

“I knew about the possibility last November,” said Winnipeg Thrashers head coach Kevin Benson. “At the time, our team was on a roll and I didn’t want to have any distractions. So I asked the minor hockey people to keep things quiet until after we finished our season.”

Some season!

The Thrashers went undefeated through the regular season and the provincial playoffs.

They finally lost to Notre Dame Hounds in round-robin play at the Western Canada tournament. But they came back to beat the Hounds in double overtime in the final and earn a trip to the Telus Cup.

They lost to Sudbury in the championship final of that event. And they have no fewer than eight players returning to compete for the national championship this season.

“We get into the Telus Cup as the host team,” Benson said. “But we’ve talked about it as a group and we really want to qualify through the front door, and not sneak in through the back.

“We don’t want to lose out in March and then sit around for a month before the nationals. And we’ve got eight players who had a taste of the title last spring and who want to come back and finish the job this season.”

Seven players from last season’s squad are playing in the Western Hockey League this season. Seven others who are playing for the Thrashers  are listed by WHL teams.

Another player, 16-year-old defenceman Nolan Zajac, is the youngest of four brothers who went through the program.

The oldest, Travis, plays for the New Jersey Devils. Two others are at NCAA schools in the US — Darcy at North Dakota and Kelly at Union College in New York State.

Nolan is a likely candidate for Team Western for the world U-17 tournament at Christmas and hopes to parlay that into an NCAA scholarship of his own.

“We’ve got three returning defencemen and five returning forwards this fall,” said Benson. “We’ve picked up Brett Gagnon to play goal. He nearly made our team last season and he played a couple of games for Everett Silvertips in the WHL as an affiliate.

“We draw our players from the north side of Winnipeg which is the blue-collar part of the city. So our players are hard working and competitive. We can also draw from a really good bantam program coached by Neil Chow. He and I have worked together for years and I know when I get one of his kids that I’m getting a good player.”

Benson himself is much like his players.

He started coaching as a favour to a friend while he was still in university. Twenty years later, he’s in his 11th season with the Thrashers and has become a student of the game. He’s had to work hard to get better.

The Thrashers’ record shows the hard work has paid off.

Speaking of the NCAA…..

Ste Anne Manitoba’s Jocelyn Larocque is into her second season at Minnesota-Duluth and is adding a chance to play for Canada to an already impressive hockey resume.

She’ll suit up for the Four Nations tournament in Lake Placid, N.Y. Nov. 4-9.

The 20-year-old defender played minor hockey in Winnipeg before moving on to the Calgary Oval X-treme of the Western Women’s Hockey League for three seasons.

Last season, her first at Minnesota-Duluth, turned into an NCAA championship year, where she played for former Canadian national team coach, Shannon Miller.

She’s been part of Canada’s national U-22 program for four seasons and is in the mix to be an Olympian in 2010 in Vancouver.