Reds' University Cup win the perfect end to a perfect season

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It wasn’t the fact that they did it but in many ways, it was how the University of New Brunswick accomplished the final act of its perfect men’s hockey season, one that must go down as the greatest single season run by the greatest team in the long history of the Canadian university game.

Already riding the crest of 40 straight exhibition, regular season and conference playoff victories (44 if you look back to their loss a year ago), the 2023-24 Reds, if it was possible, saved the most emphatic statement of their excellence for last on the grandest of stages.

At the national championship tournament, with everything on the line, the Reds posted three consecutive shutouts against the country’s best opposition in the face of extreme pressure associated with finishing an unbeaten run, recording a truly perfect end to a perfect season.

The collective score at the University Cup – Reds 15, Opposition 0. UNB led for 161 minutes and three seconds of the 180 minutes they played.

The perfect bow on the perfect campaign came in the form of a 4-0 triumph over the 2022 champions from the Universite du Quebec a Trois Rivieres on Sunday at the old Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

In some ways it amounted to an all or nothing weekend in terms of the season’s legacy, (remember the 2007 New England Patriots at 18-1) and now rates as a moment in provincial sports history that will never be forgotten in terms of dominance, determination and will to win among the collection of players, staff and sure to be Hockey Hall of Fame head coach Gardiner MacDougall.

“It’s incredible,” MacDougall said after the win on Sunday, which tied him with Tom Watt of the University of Toronto atop the list of most coaching titles with nine. “I don’t think a person would dream this up in their wildest dreams.”

If you go back, the Reds wrapped up the season with a shutout streak of almost 300 minutes over five games, a span in which they outscored their opponents 21-1.

And stemming back to a devastating setback in the opening round of the 2022 championship in Wolfville to then Ryerson, now Toronto Metropolitan University, the Reds are 6-0 at the University Cup since, outscoring their opposition 26-4 in a wild run that includes four consecutive shutouts by Samuel Richard in the crease.

“What the group has done is historic,” MacDougall said.

On Saturday, they avenged that setback directly with a 7-0 blowout over TMU that left little doubt from its earliest moment.

“Guys don’t go to UNB for regular-season accomplishments,” UNB captain Jason Willms told Brunswick News earlier in the campaign. “We go to UNB to win national championships.

The recent past suggests just that.

Dating back to 1997, when they narrowly lost the championship game that was also at Maple Leaf Gardens, the Reds have skated in 15 of 26 national finals, winning 10. That places them tied with the University of Toronto for the second most all time victories behind the University of Alberta’s 16 titles.

There were difficult losses prior to that run and even during it.

Yet no other squad in this recent run of two and half decades is close to UNB’s success and the perfect season capped by a complete tournament shutout was icing on the championship cake on a year that will be recalled for its greatness.

It’s an interesting dynamic that reflects the Fredericton market’s focus on the program after the departures of a pair of American Hockey League franchises that called the city home in the 1980s and 1990s.

There were a few seasons of good AHL playoff runs but nothing sustained like this, one where the Reds are the top puck ticket in town as the No. 1 attraction.

The 23-24 roster consists of a mix of players who are graduates from the Canadian Hockey League including 14 from the Ontario Hockey League, nine from the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League and two from the Western Hockey League.

It includes six NBers, including Kale McCallum of Quispamsis, the U Sports defenceman of the year and a University Cup tournament all star, Adam McCormick of Woodstock, Nicolas Savoie of Dieppe, Nick Blagden from just outside of Saint John, Tanner Somers of Miramichi and Sam King of Hampton.

Savoie was a member of the Memorial Cup champion Quebec Remparts a season ago, where his squad defeated the Seattle Thunderbirds 5-0 in the championship game, and Blagden was a member of the 2022 Memorial Cup champion Saint John Sea Dogs – a squad MacDougall coached to the title in an interim role from May to June that year.

That win for the coach came shortly after the setback to Ryerson in 2022 and ignited a celebration in the Port City and ultimately two more in the capital city.

Earlier this season, MacDougall became the all-time winningest coach for men’s hockey with his 489th regular season triumph and prior to the University Cup tournament, was named the U Sports coach of the year. His win Sunday was his 37th at the U Cup, another record.

The victory will be difficult to top but there are other goals to shoot for – a three-peat would be the team’s first and just the second in history – U of T won five straight from 1969-73.

For now, however, the celebrations continue. The colour of the medal tells the story of history in the present, one that reflects the current golden age of university hockey in Fredericton with five University Cups in the last seven played.

Yet this one, this perfect one, will undoubtedly be the one they’ll talk about most.