The CBR Junior Renegades went into last season with an aim towards making the Mary Brown’s St. John’s Junior Hockey League playoffs. They accomplished that, and more, winning the President’s Cup league championship in one of the most exciting finishes in junior league history.
After beating the Mount Pearl Blades 3-2 in double overtime in Game 7 of the final in front of a large crowd at Jack Byrne Arena last April, the Renegades return to defend their title with many of their key players back in the fold.
The junior circuit opens its 40th season this weekend.
“Our goal last year was to just make the playoffs,” coach John Baldwin said. “The whole plan was to build towards this year.
“And I like our team,” he said. “We’re pretty strong from goal, to the back end right through to our forward lines.”
The Renegades did lose four players from last year’s roster — Tyler Hennessey, Ryan Day, Andrew Barron and Nick David — but Baldwin quickly added he has six players ready to step in and replace the four.
“Their loss will hurt, but not as much as it would hurt other teams if they lost four regulars,” Baldwin said.
Goaltender Jordan Blackwood, the playoffs’ MVP, returns, along with the Renegades’ top forward unit of Nick Gosse, Blake Fudge and Tyler Wall.
The Blades, finishing first in the regular season after losing only three games in regulation time in 28 starts last year, lost a large part of their offence to graduation, including league scoring champ and MVP Michael Broders, Colin O’Neil, who was third overall in league scoring, and Grant Thompson, who was 10th in the scoring race.
On top of that, Mount Pearl lost its starting goalie, Mitch Rogers, to graduation.
However, the team does have Jack Keough (20 goals in 27 games) back and highly-skilled defenceman James O’Brien.
“He’ll log big minutes,” Blades coach Adam Collins said of O’Brien. “He could easily play away in he wanted to. He’s an incredible talent.”
One player who returns to the local junior circuit is Nick French, who heads to Mount Pearl following a brief stopover in the Maritime junior ‘A’ circuit.
As for the goaltending situation, Collins admits that’s up in the air.
The league enters the 2019-20 season with an expansion team, the Paradise Warriors, which will play out of the Paradise Double Ice Complex, which recently played host to the Toronto Maple Leafs’ training camp.
The Warriors are coached by former pro Andrew McKim. Paradise landed its own minor hockey association in 2015.
As an expansion team, McKim is well aware the Warriors will probably take their lumps this season.
“We’ve got eight or nine (graduated) midgets from Paradise, and a few kids who were picked up in the draft,” McKim said. “After tryouts, Mount Pearl, St. John’s and Avalon sent me a few players.”
Paradise will be a young team, McKim said. He has 10 first-year juniors and one kid who is still in Grade 11.
“This will take time, so it will require patience,” McKim said. “It will probably take us two or three years to get our feet wet.”
Joining CBR, Mount Pearl, Paradise, St. John’s and Avalon are Northeast, Southern Shore, C.B.N. and Trinity-Placentia.
Each of the nine teams will play a 28-game regular-season schedule — 14 home and 14 away games. All nine teams make the playoffs.
One other noticeable change this year will see all players wearing full facemasks, which has been mandated by Hockey Canada. Every level under major junior and junior 'A' will be required full facial protection starting this season.
The first three games of what will be a 126-game schedule are set for Saturday night. CBR plays host to Northeast 7 p.m. at the C.B.S. Arena, Paradise and Avalon tangle at 8 p.m. at the Goulds Arena, Avalon’s home rink, and St. John’s plays host to Mount Pearl 8 p.m. at Twin Rinks, the Caps’ home arena.
