Ron Valentine is profiling the 10 teams competing in the 2024 Centennial Cup, the national Jr. A championship tournament, in Oakville May 9-19.
BY RON VALENTINE
The Greater Sudbury Cubs will be the representative for the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League at the 2024 Centennial Cup.
The franchise was founded in 2000 as the Northern Wolves and has had many monikers, including the Rayside-Balfour Canadians, before becoming the Cubs in 2021.
The Cubs play out of the Gerald McCrory Countryside Sports Complex built in 1993. Capacity is 1,100.
There has been junior hockey in the Sudbury area since the NOJHL formed in 1962. One of the award winners that season was a goalie from the Soo Greyhounds named Tony Esposito.
The Centennial Cup was held in Sudbury in 1991 and the host team lost to Vernon 8-4 in the final. The Rayside-Balfour Sabrecats lost 2-1 in the final to the host Oil Barons in Fort McMurray in 2000.
The Cubs finished the 2023-24 regular campaign in second place in the West Division with 89 points, two behind the Blind River Beavers and six ahead of the Soo Thunderbirds. The Cubs recorded 43 wins, had 12 losses, one overtime loss and two shootout defeats. They scored a league-high 285 goals and allowed 167 and had the best penalty-killing percentage in the 12-team loop at 85.9%.
In Round 1 of the playoffs they got past the T-Birds 4-2 and in the second round they topped the Beavers 4-1, before qualifying for the Centennial Cup with a 5-3 victory over the East Division champion Powassan VooDoos. Powassan scored all their goals within a 42-second span in the second period of Game 5 in Sudbury. The Cubs are league champions and winners of the Copeland Cup-McNamara Trophy.
During the regular season, co-captain (with CAMERON WALKER), OLIVER SMITH reached the 102-point mark, including a club-best 45 goals. He had six game winners and scored twice shorthanded. HUDSON CHITARONI, 16, younger brother of defenceman Mason, had 77 points including 31 goals. They’re from Marathon, ON. on Lake Superior.
Little Current’s SAMUEL ASSINEWAI, an ex-Flint Firebird, ended with 64 and NOLAN NEWTON had 62 points. Rookie HUDSON MARTIN, from Midhurst, ON, led the blueline corps with 37 points. NOAH METIVIER and NOAH BEAULNE shared goalie duties for a combined goals against average of 2.81.
In the team’s 16 playoff games, Hudson Chitaroni and Newton had 22 points, each with 10 goals and 12 assists. Assinewai and ETHAN LARMAND, who will be attending Queen’s University in Kingston this fall, put up 14 points while Smith and blueliner MASON CHITARONI, who played briefly for the OJHL’s Cobourg Cougars in the 2018-19 season, ended with 13. MARSHALL McCHARLES, who notched the game winner in their final playoff game, had 12 points. In goal, Metivier played all but 59 minutes and posted a 1.89 GAA with three shutouts.
The club’s head coach is DARRYL MOXAM who started coaching junior in 2001. From 2013-16, he was an associate coach at Laurentian University and between 2016 and 2022 was behind the bench for the OHL’s Sudbury Wolves.
He was the captain of the Rayside-Balfour Sabrecats, NOJHL champions in 1996-97 when he was named league and playoff MVP. He had 100 points in the regular season and 21 more in nine playoff games.
Darryl also suited up for the OHL’s Peterborough Petes, Oshawa Generals and his hometown Wolves before three seasons at Acadia University in Wolfville NS. He also had a sojourn in England with the Nottingham Panthers and London (UK) Knights.
DAVE CLANCY is the general manager and associate coach. He has coached and managed teams in the Sudbury area since 1998 and was the head coach of the Espanola Express between 2018 and 2020, being named coach of the year there in 2019. He’s looking forward to an honest showing at the Cup: “We had a little lull in our final playoff game, which the VooDoos took advantage of, but it speaks to the determination of our players that we were able to come back and win the game. Powassan has a strong team and I knew they would be tough to play against. We have a good mix of local talent and players we recruited. It’s a balanced, older club with players like Metivier and Mason Chitaroni, who played at the Centennial Cup two years ago with the (Soo) Thunderbirds. It was a good playoffs for us because we beat the Soo, who knocked us out last year, and got past Blind River where Kyle Brick has done a great job with that team. Our club is a good mix of skill and grit. We can play a quick or a heavy game. The players just go in there and work their hardest and that’s all you can expect. Our co-captains work very well. Oliver has played for the Barrie Colts and has a lot of offensive skill while Cameron is a vocal guy who has been in the league for five years. He has played over 200 games in the NOJHL. We play on Olympic-size ice so that will be no problem in Oakville. What we’ve been preaching is not to get too high or too low.”
The Cubs start off the Centennial Cup on May 10 with a game against the OJHL champs, the Collingwood Blues or Trenton Golden Hawks, at 4 p.m.
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