THUNDER BAY – Where has all the offence gone?
During their heyday in the mid-2000s, the Lakehead Thunderwolves would routinely clog up the OUA scoring charts, the likes of Joel Scherban, Jeff Richards, Brock McPherson, Dan Speer and Matt Caria competing for most points in the league.
This year, not a single Thunderwolves player cracked the OUA’s top 50.
Not one player hit the 20-point mark, unheard of dating back to the team’s earliest years, when five, six or seven guys would routinely cross the mark each season. In 2002-03, the team’s sophomore campaign, albeit in 31 games, 10 players scored 20 or more points, led by Richards’ 49.
This year, rookie Scott Gall was the top point-getter on the team, collecting 12 goals and seven assists for 19 points, tied for 51st in the OUA.
While his first-year performance bodes well for the future, along with those of fellow freshmen Daniel Del Paggio and the promise of Josh Laframboise, who missed all but four games with a badly broken wrist, it begs the question: why has the scoring disappeared?
And will it ever return?
The Thunderwolves averaged a paltry 2.46 goals a game in 2017-18, their 69 goals the fewest in the team’s 17-year history.
Just three players – Gall, Del Paggio and Sam Schutt – scored as many as eight times. All but one of Schutt’s came in the second half.
Shut them down and it wasn’t tough to stop the Wolves this season.
They were awful on the power play, scoring just 12 times in 103 chances, their 11.7 per cent rate the second worst in the entire country. They scored a single shorthanded goal.
This is a team that needs to do a significantly better job convincing quality major junior graduates that Thunder Bay is the place for them to continue their hockey careers.
In 2009-10, the last year the team competed for the University Cup, the Wolves had at least 16 players with major junior experience on their roster. This year they had six, all but two of the remainder coming from the Tier II ranks.
There’s no question Lakehead is at a disadvantage when it comes to the recruiting process. The top guys are always highly sought by top programs like UNB, Alberta, Western and other southern Ontario schools.
Thunder Bay is isolated, another point in the negative column for many players.
Coach Bill McDonald faces the similar challenges scouring the Junior A ranks, the best players often choosing to turn professional or test their luck south of the border in the NCAA (admittedly not an option for major junior players).
Lakehead is left fighting 34 other U Sports teams for the scraps.
But they've been successful at it in the past, and with crowds dipping at Fort William Gardens, they'd better learn to be successful again.
It’s been four years since the Wolves were a .500 team, and they only got there this year on a technicality, awarded a pair of wins when UQTR was forced to forfeit 13 games as a result of using an ineligible player, including a pair of October wins against Lakehead.
It’s been almost four years since the team sniffed the national top 10 rankings, their most recent appearance a ninth-place slotting on March 11, 2014.
This is also a team facing possible wholesale changes after next season, with 10 players eligible to graduate, including both remaining goaltenders, captain Dillon Donnelly and forward Billy Jenkins.
Lakehead opens the 2018 post-season at home on Thursday night against the York Lions in a best-of-three first-round series.
