NEWS PHOTOS JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Cubs captain Kyle Woolridge and goaltender Marlo DeRosa captured league awards announced Thursday by the HJHL. Woolridge was named the league's leading scorer and regular season MVP. DeRosa was named the top goaltender.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Two Medicine Hat Cubs were recognized with league honours ahead of the South finals getting underway.
The Heritage Junior Hockey League announced their regular season awards Thursday, with Cubs captain named most valuable player and Medicine Hat net minder Marlo DeRosa named goalie of the year. Both Woolridge and DeRosa represented the Cubs at the HJHL all-star game in January.
Woolridge had 36 goals and 58 points in 36 games this season. His goal tally was tied for the HJHL’s top goal scorer with Red Deer Vipers Mason Hastings. Head coach Trent Derzaph says the MVP honour is a well-deserved recognition for the 21-year-old forward.
“He’s the leader in our room as the captain of our team and deserves all the recognition he’s receiving, he’s just a well-rounded player,” Derzaph said.
The Medicine Hat product – in his fourth season with the Cubs – set a pair of franchise career records this season, sitting first in goals scored with 134 goals and games played with 147. He is second all-time in points with 222, 10 back of franchise leader Kyle Funk.
Derzaph has enjoyed working with Woolridge this season, getting to see how he leads the Cubs on and off the ice.
“He’s a special guy, and don’t get me wrong, I’ve got lots of special guys in the room, but he’s not afraid to say something when he needs to,” Derzaph said. “He’s good at sparking the team and it’s just a pleasure to work around. The guy’s always smiling, we could be down three goals and he always stays positive, that’s the kind of leader you want.
“So it’s been special for me to work with Kyle, he’s just a special guy, a special player and a special human being.”
DeRosa had the lowest goals against average in the HJHL at 2.35 and had the fifth best save percentage at .917. He finished his first HJHL season second in wins with a 14-3 record, leading the league with four shutouts.
“Marlo deserves it as well,” Derzaph said. “As much as I love giving credit to our goalies and it’s well deserved for Marlo, I look at that award as a team award. On one side of it he owes it to the team, too, but it’s those stops that he needs to make that put him in the spot that he’s at, so it’s well deserved. He does what it takes to be right in there and he’s another great, young man.”
The league honours come a day before the Cubs get their South finals series underway tonight, hosting the Cochrane Generals for Game 1 of the best-of-five series. Derzaph says they feel ready to go with a series under their belt, beating the Okotoks Bisons 3-2 in the second round.
From the start of the playoffs Derzaph has spoke about finishing what they started, capturing the first South division title since the 2001-02 season and award-winning performances. Derzaph says they earned the right to play Game 5 of their series against Okotoks at home and he says they’ll look to carry over their efforts from the year.
“Just build from the habits that we created over the winter, over the regular seasons and now let’s put them to task, really show people what we’ve got,” Derzaph said. “Everybody’s got a job to do, I’ve got buy-in from everybody and that’s the plan. We’re going to go at them as hard as we possibly can.”
Game 1 gets underway tonight at the Kinplex at 7:30 p.m.
