Wild enjoying another great year
Moncton visits Kensington tonight for showdown of league’s top two teams
The Kensington Monahan Farms Wild is having another great year in the New Brunswick/ P.E.I. Major Midget Hockey League.
The Wild won the prestigious Monctonian AAA Challenge tournament last weekend and beat some of the best teams in Eastern Canada in doing so.
This team has enjoyed tremendous success in its six years in Kensington and is the defending Island champions.
One would think that they may have an off-year one of these years and be ordinary, but the program that owner Mike Gallant, head coach Kyle Dunn and assistant coach Duane Richards have built breeds success and will continue to do so.
This end of the Island has always turned out an abundance of good hockey players, and proof of that comes with the success of the Wild.
That fact, combined with such an attractive program, has helped attract talent from all over P.E.I., which in turn leads to success on the ice.
Moncton in town
The Moncton Flyers are always a league contender and sit in first place with a 14-1-0 (wonlost-overtime losses) record, with their only loss in league play coming at the hands of the Wild – a 7-2 shellacking in Moncton a few weeks back.
The Wild also edged the Flyers 4-3 in overtime in the quarterfinals of the Monctonian last Saturday night, which was Kensington’s third game of the day. Kensington was scheduled to take a 12-2-1 record into Friday night’s home game against Charlottetown, and a win would leave
the Wild only one point back of Moncton.
The Flyers are in Kensington tonight at 7:30 p.m., for what could be a possible first-place showdown.
With no junior A game in Summerside, a very large crowd and electric atmosphere is expected at Credit Union Centre, formerly known as Community Gardens. The Wild is playing great hockey and hopes that continues right through to next spring’s Atlantic major midget championship in Charlottetown. There is a lot of hockey to be played before then, but one has to like the Wild’s chances of contending for a berth in the national final.
Dan Maloney
Dan Maloney passed away this week at the age of 68. He played 12 years in the NHL with Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit and Toronto, scoring 192 goals and 451 points. He coached for five seasons with Toronto and Winnipeg.
He was traded from Detroit to Toronto in 1978, for St. Eleanors native Errol Thompson and three draft picks, including two firstrounders.
As it turned out, Detroit got the best of the deal as Thompson went on to the second- and thirdbest years of his career – 54 and 48 points in the 1978-79 and 197980 seasons, respectively, including 34 goals in 1979-80. Thompson played three seasons with Detroit after the trade and was then traded to Pittsburgh for Gary McAdam. Thompson played in Pittsburgh for one season and retired. Maloney spent five seasons in Toronto where his best season was in 1978-79 when he had 53 points. His highest goal output in Toronto was 20 in the 1980-81 season.
NHL
The NHL season is at the quarter pole, and a look at the standings shows just how close the teams are. Going into Friday’s action, there was only a 12-point difference from top to bottom in the 16-team Eastern Conference. Take out the top three – Tampa Bay, Toronto and Buffalo – and there is only a seven-point difference with the remaining 13 teams.
It is a little more spread out in the Western Conference as no one team stands out as the power of the conference. Picking a clearcut favourite to win the Stanley Cup has never been tougher.
Poor schedule
The NHL schedule caters to the American viewers and teams, and there is no excuse for penalizing Canadian fans as a result. There was only one game on Tuesday and it was an 11 p.m. start. Fourteen games followed on Wednesday, and there were none on Thursday – the American Thanksgiving holiday. One would think that some of the Canadian teams could play on the holiday. In fact, four games were played last month on the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday. There were 15 games played Friday night, with six of those starting at 5 p.m., Atlantic Time or earlier. This past week’s schedule best suited American fans, with very little consideration given to Canadian fans. Have a great week.