Major peewees look to join Redmen elite

Over the past few years, a handful of Copper Cliff Redmen AA hockey teams have carved out a solid reputation on a provincial scale. Only time will tell whether coach Kevin Beauchamp and his major peewee crew can join this elite level group.

The Redmen ruled the competition at the Northern Ontario Hockey Association (NOHA) playdowns in Timmins, outscoring their opponents 28-4 and securing a berth at the upcoming OHF (Ontario Hockey Federation) championships in London next month.

Not that this wasn’t in the plans for Beauchamp and company from the outset of the 2009-2010 campaign.

“I was excited – I knew we had very strong players, and I knew we had players who could be very impactful at a AA level,” Beauchamp said of his pre-season assessment of his team.

“(But) I knew we would have some challenges in trying to bring the team together quickly.”

In fact, the engineer by trade readily acknowledged the nature of the minor hockey system in Greater Sudbury is not always ideal in trying to build a team through the critical early development years on the ice.

“I think it’s true for most Nickel District teams, that there is quite a bit of disruptive player movement year to year,” Beauchamp said. However, he was quite thankful that the Copper Cliff squad has seen more players coming than going.
Now in his third year with a core group of players, Beauchamp wistfully thinks of what could be if that core group could be maintained over a period of three to four years. Not that he opposes player movement, as long as it’s for the right reasons.

“I think player movement can, in essence, be a positive – if it’s done in a systematic way based on the merit or the abilities of the players,” Beauchamp said. “If not, it becomes disruptive to forming teams, developing cores of talent, and keeping them all together. It’s not that easy, given the way we are organized here (in the Sudbury area).”

Despite the challenges, Beauchamp and the remainder of the Redmen staff (assistant coach Andre Bertrand, goalie coach Patrick Greasley, trainer Jerry Sutton and team manager Natalie Beauchamp) were not about to sell this team short.

“Our goal was obviously to win the NOHA’s and have a team that could compete at the OHF, which is a big undertaking for a single season,” coach Beauchamp stressed.

Success came quickly for the Redmen within the Nickel District Minor Hockey League, finishing second only to the Sudbury Minor Peewee AAA Wolves.

While the Wolves and Redmen ended the season only four points apart, there is a drop of another 17 points before one runs across the Blind River Thunder in third place. This lack of parity allowed the Copper Cliff crew to get rolling early, both in league play and in tournament action.

Capturing the Sudbury 80s tournament title in October, the Redmen were ravaged by the flu bug roughly one month later, playing in a couple of tournaments with anywhere from eight to 10 skaters at their disposal.

“That really set us back a lot,” Beauchamp said. “It took our club about four weeks to recover, to get all the bodies back.”

By the time the Silver Stick Tournament was staged in December, the Redmen Peewees were just beginning to bear semblance to the team that would eventually roll to a northern Ontario championship.

The locals dropped a close 3-1 decision to the eventual Silver Stick champion TNT Tornadoes — a clear disappointment to a group with lofty goals. But the sting of this mid-season defeat would only help to motivate as Copper Cliff gradually emerged as a cohesive unit, capable of playing through a variety of styles while still picking up the wins. “We have a big club, we can skate, we have some good finishes,” Beauchamp said. “I find we play different styles with equal intensity, and they have as much fun playing either way.”

Despite the impressive results his team has managed to date, the thoughtful bench boss is keenly aware of the jump the all-Ontario championships will present.

“The challenge for many northern teams is that we don’t play at the level of the OHF all season,” Beauchamp said. “We (play that level) for a few games here and a few games there, but not consistently.”

Add to that the fact that after winning the NOHA banner on March 7, the Copper Cliff major peewees must wait just over a month before taking to the ice for the first time against some of the best AA peewee hockey players in the province on April 9.

Based on what he knows of his kids, Beauchamp still holds out hope. “They don’t give up and they’re not afraid of anything – they won’t take a backwards step.”

That resolve may come in quite handy as the Redmen Peewees attempt to step up with the previous elite of the Copper Cliff Minor Hockey Association.

Randy Pascal is the voice of Eastlink Sports and the founder of SudburySports.com.