Fort St. John Senior Flyers are Coy Cup champs
Posted on March 28th, 2015
Byron Hackett / Alaska Highway News
MARCH 29, 2015
The Fort St. John Senior Flyers are the 2015 Coy Cup champions.
It has a nice ring to it, and it comes along with a trophy that carries a hockey history that is rivaled by few in sport.
First handed out 97 years ago to the Enderby Hockey Club, the trophy will now rest with the Flyers. It completes a collection of senior hockey royalty, including a provincial Savage Cup and a national Allan Cup.
“It’s a monumental win,” Fort St. John Senior Flyers team president Paul van Nostrand
said.
“As people are aware we had never won a Coy Cup up until this year. Five years ago we won the Allan Cup, and we have won a number of Savage Cups, BC AAA, but we had never won the Coy Cup… It was something we all had in our sights at some point and we are happy that it happened as quickly as it did.”
Their first ever Coy Cup victory wasn’t exactly the smooth sailing they had in mind, with a 4-3 overtime loss in game one against the Terrace River Kings on Tuesday night.
From there, the Sr. Flyers rattled off three straight wins to setup a rematch with Terrace.
In the final, head coach Gerard Dicaire said it was some of the best hockey he’d seen the group play all year, and what a time it was to peak, as they took home the championship with a 6-1 win.
“It was all week, we lost to those guys the first game of the tournament,” Dicaire said Sunday morning.
“The boys held a team meeting without the coaches there after that loss [in game one] and the rest of the week— I haven’t seen them play any better hockey than that all year. Last night was no different, we just carried on with the momentum that we had. They were skating on pucks, chipping pucks— doing everything.”
The Flyers kicked off the scoring on Saturday night in the first period with a short-handed goal from Adam Horst.
The River Kings tied the game at one in the second period, but Joey Massingham and Rick Cleaver gave the Flyers a 3-1 lead after two period.
Fort St. John put the game away in the third period adding three more goals. Cleaver, Brad Fast and Horst had the third period tallies.
“Lots of them didn’t even know that Fort St. John had never seen a Coy Cup before in senior hockey,” Dicaire said.
“After losing that first game they had a little redemption in their eyes. Credit to them, I’m proud of the boys, they put on a good performance and they worked hard all week. They were tired and banged up, five games in five nights isn’t easy, and they made it look easy.”
While van Nostrand has seen a number of winning teams in his years with the Flyers, he is ultimately happy to share this win with both the organization and the community as a whole.
It’s very gratifying,” van Nostrand said. “We put together a wonderful organization here that’s carried on the history of the Flyers for approaching 60 years. We have a great organization, wonderful players, very unselfish and very appreciative and it really means a lot to be able to bring this home to Fort St. John.”
sports@ahnfsj.ca
