It wasn’t the ending the Crushers had in mind.
For months, the junior A club had been chasing down a playoff spot and were primed to get into the Maritime Hockey League post-season before they ended with a four-game losing streak, snuffing out their chances.
Give credit to the South Shore Lumberjacks, who won eight of their last nine games to earn their way in, getting it done when they absolutely had to.
The Crushers will lose some key players to graduation, as happens every year. Captain Evan MacLennan is done after three workman-like seasons with his hometown team, Barrett Dachyshyn’s only season as a Crusher was marked by his team-leading 56 points in 50 games (19 goals, 37 assists) and a willingness to help provide leadership to a youthful Crushers squad. Michael Fradette was a solid presence on the blue line for two years and Sam Meisenheimer, acquired in a January trade, was impactful offensively in his brief time in Pictou County.
On paper, the Crushers shouldn’t be battling for a playoff spot 11 months from now, they should be angling for playoff position.
Their young defencemen got some valuable experience this season, thrown into the fire of a junior A playoff race, getting toughened up for the future. Malcolm Genge, for one example – and he isn’t the only one – won’t even turn 18 until this coming June and he’s already starting to establish himself as a physical force.
They also have a lot of skilled offensive players coming back, guys who, in theory, will improve with experience and another valuable year of development. One might wonder how much more production the Crushers will get from Kevin Mason, Kaden Mason and Evan Gallant, all of whom have two seasons of junior remaining.
In the big, long-term picture, it was a successful season, one of development.
The Crushers got off to a bad start in September and didn’t begin to get their act together until November; they had a sudden change in ownership (effective April 1); saw two of their best offensive players traded in January (Jacob Hickey and Dylan Riley) and yet, in spite of all that, they made things interesting the last few weeks of the season.
It could have been more, but things didn’t turn out that way.
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Non-Sports Thought of the Week
• I don’t know what Justin Trudeau is doing. I don’t know what his plan is, or if there even is a plan. He just seems to keep cruising along, like a college kid who does just enough to get by, costing his parents money and wasting everyone’s time.
I want my Liberal politicians to be small-L, just like I want my Conservative politicians to be soft-C, because the hard left is just as scary as the far right – maybe more so. At least the hard conservatives can make a decision, the ultra-lefts can’t make a tough call because they don’t want to offend anybody. They seem, sorta like, kind of back bone deficient, uncomfortable with concepts such as truth and common sense.
I suppose Trudeau might, by default, win a minority government this fall (PC leader Andrew Scheer really isn’t impressing anybody and the NDP is close to being put on life support), and if that proves to be the case, we can expect a couple more years of blah governance.
Plenty of selfies, though.
Kevin Adshade is a writer with The News. His column appears each week.
