BONNYVILLE – The Bonnyville Sr. Pontiacs had a season that they can be proud of.
Although the team couldn’t get together to celebrate the ups and downs of the 2019/20 season, the Sr. Pontiacs announced who walked away with top honours.
“It was extremely hard to decide on some of the award winners, and I think that’s a good thing to have because you know that your team was competitive and you have guys that elevate their name, not only to help the team win but to make sure that our team on the ice was doing everything they could to win the game,” expressed head coach Corey Wandler.
The Sr. Pontiacs finished the season with four wins, 11 losses, and nine points in the league standings. Their eighth-place finish landed them a spot in the playoffs, where they were ousted by the Morinville Kings in the first round.
When the team looked back on their playoff run, it was Lucas Isley who stood out as the top playoff performer. When Isley heard the news, he was surprised.
“There’s quite a few people that played a role into getting us where we were in playoffs, and I thought our goalie was a huge part of that, Eric Szudor, and I thought he would have been the top candidate for that,” the right wing said, who also received the nod for top scorer during the regular season.
Isley wasn’t the only person who thought Szudor deserved some recognition for his work between the pipes. The first-year player was named team MVP and shared the honour of rookie of the year with Coltan Buchta.
The most gentlemanly player was Jared Jorgenson, who only received two penalties during the regular season.
Tayon Metzler received the award of merit, or unsung hero, for the team, while Denis Cadrin and Tanner Corbeil walked away with the most dedicated player awards. Cadrin finished the season with 10 goals and nine assists for 19 points overall, while Corbeil had 14 points from five goals and nine assists.
The coaching staff also had a difficult time narrowing the top defenseman down to one player. Zack Zarowny and Steven Knoblauch were both chosen.
“It was extremely difficult to pick one,” Wandler exclaimed. “We thought both players did tremendous for us in what we wanted to do on the ice as far as defending. With our special teams, both guys played a lot of minutes and on powerplays.”
Although Wandler saw the season as a rebuilding year, he was extremely happy with what the team accomplished.
“I know it took us a while to kind of get up and get things figured out, but we had a lot of new pieces and a lot of new guys playing with each other for the first time. You’ve got to work on relationships, chemistry, and things like that,” he said. “It just took us a little longer than we had anticipated to get our group going, but once we found our stride we were a tough team to play against.”
Wandler hopes the team can continue an upward trend into next year.
“We want to be better than what we were, and we want to add some pieces to make us a little bit better.”
Wandler and Isley stressed they couldn’t have been successful without the help of everyone on and off the ice.
Isley added, “Thank you to all our board members and volunteers, and the coaches and everybody that dedicates their time into making senior hockey possible in Bonnyville.”
