Cougars are on pace for their best season in 3 years
author: konstantin kharitonov | sports editor
He shoots, he saves? / Arthur Ward
Men’s hockey team 2 wins away from highest total since 2015-16
When it takes only five wins to have your best season since before the Trump inauguration, then maybe your hockey program is severely lacking . The Cougars men’s ice hockey team currently sits a Canada West conference record of 3-16-1, good for a points percentage of .196, which simply is not good enough to get the team anywhere even remotely close to being respectful, though it is higher than both last season’s and the season before.
It has been a steady decline for the men’s team for a few years now, as its team hasn’t even sniffed double digit wins, let alone a playoff appearance, since the 2013-14 season. There was some hope that the team might see some success heading into the season with some new WHL additions, but even that has not been able to turn around the fortunes of the team. With the news that the Cougars shutting down the men’s volleyball and wrestling teams, its almost unfathomable that the men’s hockey team survived.
Is it on the players for just not ever being able to perform? Maybe it’s the coaches, not being able to coach even semi-competently? Or maybe it is on the program for not being able to attract proper talent and not properly develop the talent that they already have?
Wherever the fingers point to during the blame game for the team’s ineptitude, the fact of the matter is that the university has been seeing this team struggle now for going on five years and there doesn’t seem to be any hope in sight. Perhaps it will take a generation for the team to see actual depth be developed properly.
Perhaps the team just can’t ever attract proper talent because Regina is not a school or city that many want to go to (even though Saskatchewan produces hockey players like they are going out of style). The University of Saskatchewan might just offer that much of a more entitling program. Yet, the women’s hockey team has taken significant strides in recent years and have been playing better this year, improving as they go along. That’s not even mentioning how good the basketball teams are, who seem to develop some of the best talent in Western Canada. So, what gives?
The University of Regina handles the men’s team extremely poorly and have been for the past five years, with no particular reason as to why it is. It is a systematic failure for the Cougars as a whole, and if they are truly planning to invest more into developing their sports programs (I mean, that is why they axed three teams from the program), then they haven’t been doing a good job at all with their hockey on the men’s side.
