No Cooke in the Dogs’ depleted kitchen, for now
U of S Huskies head to University Cup without two-time goalie of the year
The University of Saskatchewan Huskies now know which team they’ll meet in their quarter-final match at this week’s University Cup national championship.
The big question, now, is who will play?
Josh Roach, yes.
Logan McVeigh, yes. Jordon Cooke, no. “Cooke will not play; he is out,” confirmed U of S head coach Dave Adolph, whose team will open up the national tournament against the Queen’s Cup champion McGill University Redmen on Friday night (4 p.m. Sask. time) in Fredericton, N.B., with former Western Hockey League goalie of the year Taran Kozun between the pipes.
Kozun replaces Cooke, a twotime U SPORTS men’s hockey goalie of the year.
Meanwhile, Canada West conference all-star McVeigh, broken jaw and all, will be playing for the Huskies this week. Ditto for fellow all-star forward Josh Roach, who makes his return after missing the Canada West final against the University of Alberta Golden Bears.
“I’ll be good to go,” Roach confirmed.
If Roach and McVeigh are in, forwards Wyatt Johnson and Mike Sofillas are likely out.
“That’s sport,” said Adolph, whose team will head out early to New Brunswick to get acclimatized to the three-hour time change.
“A lot of people want to know why we have extra players. We carry 26 guys. It makes for some unhappy players during the season and now they’re all happy that they’re playing. Connor Gay and Andrew Johnson did not get a good sniff through the bulk of the middle part of our season and now they’re playing with, arguably, one of the best players in the country in Kohl Bauml.
“It’s not like it doesn’t happen all the time. Our power play lost four real significant pieces for a while, but it happens.”
The team does welcome back its top two scorers, McVeigh and Roach, even if they are not in top form.
“Should a guy (McVeigh) with a broken jaw play? I don’t know,” said Adolph. “Josh Roach, same thing. Is he 100 per cent? Probably not. There are a lot of guys pretty nicked here.”
RED VERSUS GREEN
The Huskies will play McGill for the first time since 2012. That year, back when the tournament still featured a two-pool format, Saskatchewan edged the McGill Redmen 4-3 University Cup roundrobin play in Fredericton only to see McGill got on to win its one and only national championship.
Saskatchewan comes in seeded No. 6 and McGill, as OUA champ, is automatically seeded No. 3 behind AUS champion and reigning U Sports champion New Brunswick and Alberta.
“We have no choice,” Adolph said of the matchup.
“We were all riding a high pretty good after beating Calgary (in the Canada West semifinal) with a really depleted lineup and no Jordon Cooke. And then we went into Alberta and didn’t play very well. That’s been kind of a re-occurring theme for so many teams. They go into Alberta and just get a little off-track and it snowballs. We just didn’t play very well, but, to each one of our guys’ credit, they’ve all bounced back and practised really hard all week.
“I didn’t coach very well on the weekend (in Edmonton). We were disciplined and calm and all the other stuff, but we lacked a little fire — hopefully it comes back.”
U of S captain Kendall McFaull is one of four graduating fifth-year Huskies making their fourth trip to nationals in five years. The others are Roach, Connor Cox and John Lawrence.
“I’ve been trying to take it in all this week, especially practicing for the last time at Rutherford and stuff like that,” noted McFaull.
“I want to go out on top.”