NEWS FILE PHOTO
The South Alberta Hockey Academy celebrated back-to-back Circle K Classic championships with a win at the 2023 tournament last January.
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The South Alberta Hockey Academy men’s team has held the title of Circle K Classic champion for two years and aren’t looking to relinquish it any time soon.
The SAHA men are gearing up for their third straight Circle K Classic tournament, entering as defending championship for the second year in a row. Last year’s win made them the first repeat champions since Shattuck St. Mary’s won the 1999, 2000 and 2001 tournaments.
They enter this year with the goal of tying Shattuck for the most consecutive tournament wins with three, it’s a result head coach Brayden Desjardins is their only focus heading into the tournament.
“No one thought we could do it last year and obviously we proved a lot of people wrong with a really young team,” Desjardins said. “With an older team (this year) we just play extremely hard and it’s definitely not out of the question. We haven’t given up more than three goals since the start of October so it’s a testament to how good our goaltending has been, the way we defended and the way this team has bought into the defensive structure we’ve put in place.
“We’re obviously not the team who’s going to win 6-4 like we were last year, we’re a team who will win 2-1 or 3-2. If you can get a team to buy into that idea, you’re going to have some success and we’re starting to get that from our group. We’re not going there to just hang out that’s for sure.”
There are only four returning members from SAHA’s championship team last year, forwards Josiah Jackson and Noah Derouin and defencemen Julian Laqua and Kolby Gapter. Desjardins says those four, especially the two defencemen, will be crucial for them and the team navigating the tournament.
“We got really short handed last year, we were playing with four defencemen and we had a forward, Elias Eisenbarth who was playing defence. So obviously Laqua and Gapter will be big, big pieces to this year’s team just having played the amount they did last year. Josiah and Dewey will be big pieces up front, Josiah had an unbelievable tournament with three points in the final game so he’s no stranger to big moments. It is really important that we have those guys.”
SAHA opens their tournament in Calgary on Dec. 27 with a 6:45 p.m. contest against the Chicago Mission. They face the South Kent School on Dec. 28 (1:15 p.m.) and finish the round robin against the Edmonton Jr. Oilers Blue on Dec. 29 (4 p.m.).
There’s been a lot to take away from their first two tournaments, besides both championship banners hanging up at the Big Marble Go Centre. Desjardins says the ability to ride the emotions of the tournament, not get too high or too low, was a lesson they’ve learned and look to apply.
“The first year we gave up a goal late against that Vancouver team in the round robin that almost cost us the tournament, we ended up tying them and we were pretty down coming out of that game but able to rectify quickly,” Desjardins said. “Last year in the St. Louis game, we’re down 6-3 to the last place team in our pool, just being able to ride the emotion and not let it affect us too, too much. It’s a testament to what our leaders will do. Obviously last year, our leadership group was extremely solid with (Zach) Zahara and Eisenbarth and those guys stepping up in extremely big situations. So I expect it to be no different this year.”
SAHA also enters the tournament riding a high from the regular season in the Canadian Sport School Hockey League. They have a 7-2-1 record in their last 10 games, a rise from a slow start to their season where they dropped four of their first seven games.
Desjardins says they’ve had to navigate an early shift in focus with their players but he has been happy with their play over the last month.
“We had a lot of guys come back from Junior A teams and they maybe weren’t super ready to be here mentally and it reflected in our record early,” Desjardins said. “But if you look at it as of late we’re definitely trending in the right direction. We beat some really good teams in Edmonton, Yale and Shawnigan are extremely good teams and they’re both at the Circle K Classic. So to take those two teams down going in definitely gives us a lot of confidence. I’ve honestly been really happy with the way we’re trending.”
