A Yukon player has hoisted the Coy Cup after winning the B.C. Provincial Men’s Senior AA Hockey Championship.

The Dawson Creek Canucks defeated the Terrace River Kings two games to one, taking the deciding game by shutting out the River Kings 3-0 on March 27.

Whitehorse native Alex Hanson was one of the victorious Canucks. According to him, the Canucks aged in range from 21 to 40-plus.

“We had a few guys who were I think 40, or at least pushing it and then one guy that just jumped over from the junior team finishing up his 21-year-old season. So he was our youngest fella.”

Hanson explained how he ended up playing for Dawson Creek.

“I ended up moving there for work. Originally I played for the NEBC (Northeast B.C.) Trackers when I was 15 – the Midget AA team in the Dawson Creek area, so I lived in Dawson Creek for a year, made some good connections there. And then I decided to move back for work for a little bit and joined the senior team once I did that and that was last October.”

Hanson said it has ben a “funny year.”

“Usually there’s a tournament for Coy Cup, but this year they just decided that the winner of the CIHL, the senior league in the northern interior, would host a challenger. And then the challenger was determined through a series of playdowns between us, the Powell River Regals, and the Rossland Warriors,” recalled Hanson.

“We also had to play six games before January to qualify, so we played a couple teams in Alberta, played a couple of games in Quesnel (B.C.) and played a couple games against the Junior B team in Dawson Creek.

“So once we got those six games completed before January, we started playing playdowns. We played two games against Rossland down in Trail (B.C.) and then one game against Powell River and then the team with the highest winning percentage got to play against the winner of that league and then as it turned out, we had the highest winning percentage, so we qualified for the ... Coy Cup final.

“It was a strange process this year, but just how they decided to do things,” he added.

Hanson said the final was “pretty tight.”

“We lost the first game 4-3. It was about a 12-hour bus ride, so there was definitely some bus legs in that first game and we only played a handful of games to that point. Usually you play a full season and playoffs, as the Terrace team did, before playing for Coy Cup. But we’d only played ... eight to 10 exhibition-type games, so it was definitely a big adjustment jumping into playoff hockey. So (the) first game was a little tough. They got up on us early and then stayed ahead.

“But second game ... we got a 2-1 win. It was a good game. It was super-tight. It definitely could have gone both ways, but we came out on top.

“And then the third game, we won 3-0. Kind of found our legs, and got a couple fortuitous bounces and finished it off.”

Hanson played a key role in the victory.

“I kind of had a pretty multi-purpose weekend. I had two goals in the first game, set up a goal in the second game and then played a lot of defensive minutes in the third game, defending the lead. So I got to be a bit of a utility guy this weekend.”

Hanson said it was great to win the championship.

“It’s always nice lifting a trophy over your head, so that was pretty cool. It was definitely something I kind of wanted to do, especially since Whitehorse won the Coy Cup – it was a little while ago now. I was playing Junior when they did, so I thought it was definitely something I wanted to do myself and got the opportunity to.”

The Whitehorse Huskies won the Coy Cup in 2017. That was the last Senior game played in Whitehorse.

Speaking of which, there’s a rumour of a men’s senior team starting up in Whitehorse.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that,” said Hanson.

“That would be awesome. I think that would be great for the community. It was pretty cool when there was a senior team. I know it’s nice for younger players to have something to look up to and just everyone in general, it’s nice to have hockey to go and watch to make people really look forward to it and I think Whitehorse is a good hockey town, even though it’s a little further removed from what you would see as the traditional hockey area and it’s away from all the leagues, but I think it really did great support throughout the community for the teams that Whitehorse does have, and I think it would be great if they had a senior team playing games again.”

As for his own Coy Cup victory, his first, Hanson added “it was Dawson Creek’s third Coy Cup in a row, so they’ve won the last three. I guess you could call it a three-peat.”

The Dawson Creek Canucks won the Cup in 2017-18 and 2018-19. There was a two-year absence from the Coy Cup being contested in 2019-20 and 2020-21 due to COVID restrictions.

Fort St. John Huskies win Alberta Junior B Championships

Meanwhile, the Fort St. John Huskies, featuring two players from the Yukon, have won the Alberta Junior B Championships. The Huskies, including Yukoners Cole Cowan and Oscar Burgess, defeated the Cochrane Generals 6-0 Sunday afternoon in Wainwright, Alta.

The Huskies coralled the Okotoks Bisons 5-2 in Saturday’s semifinal.

They had beaten the St.Paul Canadians 5-3 earlier Saturday.

On Friday, they edged the Beumont Chiefs 4-3.

The Huskies suffered their only loss of the tournament at the hands of the Coachrane Generals on Thursday by a 5-4 score, therby exacting their revenge in the title game.

The Star will have more on the Yukoners’ big victory in Alberta in the near future.