Reds celebrate University Cup with trip to legislature

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It was a day of official celebration for the University of New Brunswick Reds men’s hockey program Friday in the provincial capital.

First, the national champions visited the provincial legislature and then enjoyed a brunch at UNB president’s Paul Mazzerolle’s home to salute the team’s undefeated season and another University Cup championship.

“When you’re in the middle of a game during the national tournament, it is about the next shift or during the season, it’s about preparing and getting for the next game but my mother always said to stop and smell the roses,” said head coach Gardiner MacDougall of the accomplishments celebrated formally on Friday.

Smell the roses indeed, with a program that is now tied for second place with 10 national hockey crowns with the University of Toronto, behind only the University of Alberta. UNB’s run started in 1998 and is showing no signs of slowing down.

The Reds were unbeaten all season, a slate of 43 games that included 30 regular-season contests, five more in the pre-season and post-season and then three straight shutouts at the University Cup in Toronto last week.

Now armed with a few days of perspective at the end of an intense season that also included more than 100 practices, there is still work to be done.

MacDougall is working with graduating players to try and find them professional hockey homes in the coming days and weeks and he is already looking forward to securing more recruits for next year and another run at a title in 2025.

For a team that now has consecutive crowns, the unbeaten season will undoubtedly draw the most attention of any they have won because of that perfect mark.

MacDougall said the players were committed and found their rhythm early.

“We were a target, even from Game 1 when we played a couple of exhibition games and the other teams prepared the whole off season to play us,” MacDougall said. “How well you prepare for Game No. 1 is not that much different than how we prepared for Game No. 43. When you do that, the players are used to the routine and they know they just have to be a little bit better. The stakes are higher at the national championships, but the guys want to be successful every time they are hit the ice.”

Getting out to an early lead, which they did in each University Cup contest before the midway mark of the first period, was an important component of the final three wins.

“It allows you to play the way you want to play,” MacDougall said of early leads. “When a team gets down, sometimes they change the way they play. Our mentality has always been to attack. Even with the lead, you still want to attack.”

It led to unprecedented levels of overall success and while the team’s streak was discounted by the players in sight of the national prize, it did play a role on the mental preparations for each game.

“It’s a pretty crazy feeling, honestly, but when you go through the whole process, we never really thought of it much,” said UNB blueliner Kale McCallum, the national defenceman of the year. “It was just something that happened because of all the preparation and all of the hard work that we were putting in.”

“It was late in the season when we all were realizing what could happen and it got to a point where we said we can’t lose any of these games because it would mess it up. It was a little extra motivation to get the job done.”

McCallum was one of the team’s 25 graduate from the Canadian Hockey League on the team, a graduate of the Saint John Sea Dogs and Val d’Or Foreurs programs before joining the Reds. MacDougall has maintained a close connection to the major junior ranks and was on hand in Saint John on Wednesday watching the Dogs tangle with the Moncton Wildcats.

“He’s one of the hardest working coaches I know, the effort he puts in,” McCallum said. “Every morning, he is out running or he’s doing an absurd amount of pushups. But when you have a coach that is that hard working and that driven, it makes a lot of guys want to play for him.”