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In what they hope will be an annual event, the Lake Superior State University hockey team will play a Western Collegiate Hockey Association regular season game north of the border this season.
Coming off the program’s best season in over 20 years, the Lakers will host the Alabama-Huntsville Chargers at the GFL Memorial Gardens on Feb. 15, 2020.
It’s the first game played by the school on the Ontario side of the border and the first NCAA Division I men’s game played in Canada since 2012 when the University of North Dakota and Clarkson University played in Winnipeg.
For Laker hockey coach Damon Whitten, the game is an exciting opportunity.
“This has been over a year in the making and keeping it under wraps and working behind the scenes to make it happen has been a good process and shows the relationship between the two communities,” Whitten said. “There’s a lot of excitement. For our campus community, our alumni base over here, it’s going to be an awesome way to showcase our university and the bond between the two communities.”
Lake State director of athletics, Dr. David Paitson, called the game an opportunity to promote the Lakers program, saying it is “much broader than just the game.”
He called it an opportunity to promote the program and having a game at the Gardens was something the school was willing to do to make it happen.
He also called it a chance to bring the communities together as well.
“We see the event as an opportunity for a lot of things and one of them is bringing the two cities together and promoting the hockey heritage,” Paitson said in making the announcement. “This isn’t just going to be a Laker hockey game over here. We want to reach out and involve youth hockey in this event and adult hockey and women’s hockey (as well) and really get everyone involved.”
Some of the other possibilities brought up while discussing the possibility of the event were a potential double-header with the Ontario Hockey League’s Soo Greyhounds and the idea is something that could be considered down the road.
“We kicked around the idea of a double-header and maybe the opportunity for an afternoon and an evening game,” Paitson said. “And that’s something we would love to consider down the road. At some point, it would be cool to bring the product here (the Greyhounds) across the river for an exhibition game as well.”
Because the game stands as a regular season game, the process to have the game itself at the Gardens wasn’t an issue for college hockey’s governing body, the NCAA.
“If it was an international game, it would be a whole lot different,” Paitson said. “There are a lot of restrictions there. This is just a regular WCHA contest and it’s just in a building that happens to be across the border.”
The Lakers finished fourth in the WCHA standings last season after going 16-10-2-0 in conference action. Including non-conference games, which aren’t included in the standings, the Lakers finished the year with a 23-13-2 record.
The team won its opening-round playoff series at home against Bemidji State before falling to the eventual league-champion Minnesota State Mavericks in round two.
“We’re coming off a strong season and we want to eclipse that,” Whitten said. “We’ve got some challenges with a strong senior class (graduating), but we’ll look to our seniors (this year) to replace those guys to step up their production.”
With a veteran group of defencemen, Whitten expects to “be really strong from the back-end out.”
In a prepared statement, WCHA commissioner Bill Robertson called the announcement “a great day for college hockey.”