After setting for silver in 2018 and 2019, the Quebec Region champions hope the third time will be the charm in Okotoks
If there is one team that seems to be a regular at the TELUS Cup, it’s the
Cantonniers de Magog.
The Cantonniers are back for a third-consecutive appearance at Canada’s
National Men’s U18 Club Championship after defending their Ligue de
développement du hockey M18 AAA du Québec (LDHM18AAAQ) once again.
And this time, Magog wants to get the one win that has eluded them – it
fell 5-1 to the Notre Dame Hounds (one of its 2022 opponents) in the
championship game in 2018, and dropped a 2-1 heartbreaker to the Toronto
Young Nationals in double overtime in the 2019 final.
With the 2020 playoff cancelled and the 2020-21 season wiped out due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, the Cantonniers have a new-look lineup and a new face
behind the bench: former NHL defenceman Stéphane Robidas, who played more
than 900 NHL games across a 14-year career with Montreal, Dallas, Chicago,
Anaheim and Toronto.
Robidas took over from another former NHLer, Félix Potvin, who led Magog to
its previous two trips to the TELUS Cup.
“Our team has progressed since Day 1,” Renaud Légaré, president of the
Cantonniers, says of the 2021-22 campaign. “The players understood that
they were at a professional level. From then on, they were intense all year
long.”
The season was not without challenges. In mid-December, the LDHM18AAAQ
suspended its activities due to the increase in cases of COVID-19 linked to
the Omicron variant. It wasn’t until two months later that games resumed.
“There were ups and downs because of the pandemic, the fear that the season
would be cancelled like the year before,” says Légaré. “As soon as
activities resumed, we saw that the players were determined to go all the
way and put in the effort necessary to win the [league title].”
After finishing with a 30-9-0 record, good for second in the LDHM18AAAQ,
the Cantonniers…