Family ties loom large for promising Bearcat
Truro junior A forward Matt Gordon plays in same town where his father won the Allan Cup
It’s fitting that Truro Bearcats forward Matt Gordon wears the No. 10 jersey with the junior A hockey team.
Nostalgic fans might remember that Gordon’s father, Stephen, sported the same number as a member of the Allan Cup national senior champion Truro Bearcats in 1998.
“Yeah, it’s one of his old numbers,” said Matt Gordon, an 18-year-old forward in his first Maritime Hockey League season. “I used to wear it, too. It’s my first time going back to it since I was living in Prince Edward Island.”
The younger Gordon was born in Halifax but grew up in Mermaid, P.E.I., before his family moved to Ontario in 2016. He was a third-round draft pick of the major junior Kitchener Rangers in 2017 and skated with the Ontario Hockey League team for parts of the past two seasons. He otherwise played Ontario junior B with the Cambridge Redhawks and Kitchener Dutchmen.
In search of a fresh start this season, Gordon tried out with the Halifax Mooseheads in August but was a final cut of the QMJHL team. His Maritime homecoming, however, took another turn when he joined the junior A Bearcats and also signed with the Quebec major junior Cape Breton Eagles as an affiliated player. He was called up to the Eagles in late November and played one QMJHL game in Sydney, not far from his father’s native Sydney Mines.
Gordon had family in the stands in Sydney, just as he usually does in Truro. His mother,
Shelley (formerly Brown), is originally from Shubenacadie, where one of his two sisters resides with their grandmother.
Family and hockey ties were most pronounced as Gordon chose to play in Truro with an organization linked to his father’s playing days. Bearcats owner Stu Rath, who operated the senior franchise before shifting to junior A, spoke with Stephen Gordon this summer about the possibility of a new hockey home for Matt.
“My dad thought it would be great, because he’s very familiar with everything around (Truro), and so am I,” Gordon said. “It’s a good league. I heard there was a good team here, too. Guys were texting and calling me. I already knew (Bearcats teammates) Bryan Laureigh and Jack Mcgovern from the Halifax camp. In the end, it was pretty easy to make the choice. And (my father) knew it, too.”
The Bearcats soon became a comfortable fit for the entire Gordon family.
“It’s the same owner there,” Stephen Gordon said of the respected Rath. “That was definitely one of the deciding factors in (Matt) going to Truro, just the familiarity that we had with Stu and how he ran his organization back in senior. He was assuring he does it the same way in junior. It kind of made sense from our perspective. I thought it would be a place where Matt would get a good chance and be well-adapted. He’s having a great experience in Truro.”
In recruiting Gordon, Bearcats coach and general manager Shawn Evans had received a tip from one of his former players, Shayne Campbell, who was the goaltending coach with the Cambridge junior B team with which Gordon finished last season. Campbell, who recently moved back to Truro, was the starting goaltender with the Bearcats when they won the Fred Page Cup Eastern Canadian junior A championship in 2013.
“We knew that Matt was looking for a place to play and that he had a lot of skill,” Evans said. “A few conversations later, we got his commitment to come and start his 18-year-old season with us.”
Gordon has scored eight goals and 20 points in his first 28 games with the Bearcats, who have regrouped of late after a rocky start this season.
“We forget he’s only 18,” Evans said. “Matt is highly skilled in a long frame. My hope for Matt is for him to become a 200-foot hockey player, which he can be. Matt is very driven skill-wise. He can play wing (or) he can play centre, whatever you want, but my goal is to make Matt a more rounded hockey player. I’d like Matt to make the choice to be a little more grittier in his game, and when he does that, he’ll be a better-rounded player than just (capable) skill-wise.
“We’re glad to have Matt. As he gets more comfortable, especially in the second half of the season, offensively he’s going to have more of an impact on the game for us. But, at least for me, if you want the premium ice time, 200 feet is where it’s at, and Matt certainly has the ability to do that.”
Still hopeful of a full-time promotion to the major junior level, Gordon has some of the attributes that his father showed in impactful fashion while playing junior A with the Halifax Lions, university with the Cape Breton Capers and senior with the Bearcats.
“He always tells me that I’m him, but more skilled,” said Gordon, a Calgary Flames fan who models his game after Flames centre Sean Monahan. “I’m kind of more (finesse) than rough on the ice. (My father) was more of a hard worker. Like, the hardest-working player and in your face, and he could always score goals.”
Stephen Gordon, a former Nova Scotia Senior Hockey League scoring champion who coached Matt in minor hockey, recognizes the comparisons between father and son.
“Matt is probably a little bit more dynamic offensively,” he said. “It looks a little more natural to him. I look like I’m working a lot harder to accomplish the same thing.”
Matt’s parents still reside in Ontario, where they follow the Bearcats games on the Internet. They visited Truro this fall to watch their son play in the same town where the senior Bearcats won their Canadian championship 21 years ago.