Hockey is Job 1 for Panthers captain
New teammates, new arena buoys Thomas Young’s confidence
Job descriptions and titles are transferable from one job to another line of work.
Take Thomas Young for example. The 20-year-old Pelham native is in his second season as captain of the junior B hockey team in his hometown.
With the Pelham Panthers committed to finishing well above .500 in their first year playing out of Meridian Community Centre, the new twin-pad, multi-use facility in Fonthill, Young also can accurately be described as the foreman.
His task? Make sure assignments from the supervisor — in the Panthers case, head coach Mark Barrick — are carried out by his fellow workers, the players on the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League team.
Barrick, in fact, used a workplace analogy to elaborate on why there was hesitation on the part of the coaching staff in reappointing Young as team captain.
“He’s a great captain, he has the respect from everyone in the room,” Barrick said. “He comes every night to play, he leads by example.
“There’s time to have fun and time to put the work boots on, and he knows when that time is.”
Young said the message he will be delivering to teammates in the dressing room will be simple and straightforward: “Play to your ability.”
“It’s like you’re going to work,” he added. “Come here, be ready, be ready to play, be focused.
“Once you step through those doors, it’s three hours of hockey. You leave it all on the line every single game.”
Young, who is in his second year enrolled in the renewable energy program at Niagara College, expects the Panthers will have a “big year” in his fifth, and final, season in junior B.
“Our confidence level is definitely well more than last year and all the other years,” he said. “We have a good group of guys.”
The E.L. Crossley Secondary School student feels the Panthers, seventh of nine teams last year, are capable of finishing in the top three, if not the top two, in a now eight-team Golden Horseshoe Conference.
“I’m looking forward to a successful year this year.”
Buoying Young’s confidence that the Panthers will be among the top cats is the new arena. He suggested an expected increase in attendance following the move from the conference’s smallest and second-oldest arena will help the team.
“No one want to sit on those old bleachers,” he said. “This is going to bring in new crowds, more people to play for, which is amazing.
“I think that’s going to energize the whole team just stepping on the ice and seeing 50 to a 100 more people.
“You feel like a big guy, you feel special.”
While he has long been “The Hometown Boy” and as captain one of the faces of the franchise, Young doesn’t feel any pressure
“There’s time to have fun and time to put the work boots on, and he knows when that time is.” MARK BARRICK Pelham Panthers head coach
living up to the arena. Nor, he said, is the team bearing the weight of increased expectation.
“You would think we do, but honestly, with Mark behind our backs, we started working out in August here,” Young said. “I don’t feel pressure at all, I feel like it’s going to be an extraordinary year, but in a good way.”
Another ace in Barrick’s deck, and another reason for the Panthers’ confidence, is the addition of Brandon McCorriston, who last season shared the top goaltending award in the conference with Pierce Charleson while playing with the Caledonia Corvairs.
Defenceman Nathan Ellis, who also was signed by the Panthers after Caledonia opted to take a leave of absence, McCorriston Young were all in Grade 10 at Crossley when the Cyclone advanced to the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations championships.
“He was amazing then, and he was amazing in Cochrane,” Young said, referring to the team’s six-day trip to northeastern Ontario for a pre-season tournament.
Thanks to that trip and exhibition games much closer to home, the Panthers were among the most game-tested teams when the regular season began Sept. 10.
“We started working out three times a week in August, everyone kept going,” he said. “With all those pre-season games, we are almost in mid-season form.”
With the Panthers starting league play 5-0, all that time playing together has been reflected in the standings heading into Week 3 of the regular season.
In his junior career, Young, a 6-foot-1, 196-pound, left-shooting forward, spent all but half a seaon with his hometown team. In 201617 Young played 26 games with the junior C North Kawartha Knights before returning home to finish out the season with the Panthers.
Last year Young had 20 goals and 17 assists in 46 games. He was held scoreless in four playoff games as Caledonia swept the Panthers in the opening round.
He hopes to improve on those numbers this season.
“I think I have to step it up, put more pucks in the net, put some more points up.”