By Jeff D’Andrea

What is a P.A. Minto anyway?

Jun 29, 2016 | 10:24 AM

With the three Telus Cup national Midget AAA championships the Prince Albert Mintos have won in since 2006, they’ve made a name for themselves. The problem is not many know what it means.

When former Mintos assistant coach Wally Lynds joined the team midway through the 2000’s, he didn’t know what the name meant either. But he took it upon himself to solve the mystery once and for all. He dug around the archives and wrote an extensive nine-page report about it.

“It was such a different name and when I started asking around, nobody really knew where it came from and nobody knew whether it had ever been researched,” Lynds said. “But I was told that the Minto hockey team and the name had been around for many, many years.

“As it turns out, the Minto hockey team has been anywhere from a Junior A team to a major junior team, to a midget team, to a senior team.”

He found out that the Minto named had been used in Prince Albert hockey since 1909, but its origin goes back even further.

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It all points back to the village of Minto, which still exists today in the heart of Scotland. Up until the early 1800’s, the land was controlled by a baron without a proper name of distinction. That changed in 1813 when the title of ‘Earl of Minto’ was created.

According to Lynds’ research, the man who ended up bringing the name to Canada was Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, the fourth Earl of Minto and later earning the title of Lord Minto.

He moved to Canada in 1884, was assigned as the chief of staff for General Middleton in the Riel Rebellion of 1885 and was later named as the eighth Governor General of Canada in 1898.

While in Canada, Lord Minto and the Countess of Minto were heavily involved in sports, particularly in ice skating and lacrosse.

In 1901, he donated the Minto Cup to be awarded each year to the best senior men’s lacrosse team in Canada. That trophy is still awarded today for the national junior men’s lacrosse tournament.

As the Governor of Canada, Lord Minto travelled throughout Canada, especially in the western parts of Canada. Lynds notes in his research that he did stop in Prince Albert during his travels.

Seeing as the Minto name was already connected with skating and lacrosse, the local P.A. establishment decided to name their senior men’s hockey team after him.

And thus, the Prince Albert Mintos were officially formed in 1909, marking the first time the name ‘Minto’ was used in the city for hockey.

Just two years after being founded, the Mintos found themselves deep in a Stanley Cup run in 1911.

They fell a round short of the finals, losing out to the Port Arthur Bearcats (part of current day Thunder Bay, Ont.) in a two-game set. The Bearcats then advanced to the finals, losing out to the Ottawa Senators.

Back then, the Mintos both competed professionally in search of the Stanley Cup, and in the amateur ranks hoping to compete for the Allan Cup.

In 1912, they were in the Allan Cup final with Melville, but lost by a single goal in a 9-8 barnburner. To this day, that’s the closest a Prince Albert club has come to winning the Allan Cup.

The team eventually turned themselves into a Junior A team in 1948, playing in the North Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League and later the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League until the 1961-1962 season.

The Mintos ‘Junior A’ run had to stop there as the Minto Arena, which had been the hockey team’s home, had burned down in December of 1961. The Mintos finished that season playing their home games in Dauphin, Man. They were forced to fold the team, as there weren’t enough funds around to rebuild the rink.

A local minor hockey team adopted the name at the juvenile level in 1962 and played in surrounding communities. As the Juvenile Mintos, they won the provincial championship in 1964 over Moose Jaw.

When the Communiplex was constructed in 1971, the hockey team held a contest to see what their new ‘Junior A’ team would be called. Fans actually voted for the team to be called the Mintos used, but could not as there were legality issues with the former Mintos’ senior team, which still held the rights to the name. The Raiders were eventually chosen.

But since midget teams were often used as farm teams back then, the Minto name found a way to be a part of the organization after all. Five years after the Raiders were formed, the Prince Albert Midget Minto Raiders were created in 1977.

Eventually, the direct affiliation between the two clubs ceased, but it wasn’t until 1995 that ‘Raider’ was omitted from the name, shortly after the Prince Albert Minor Hockey Association took over the administration of the team. They’ve been the Prince Albert Mintos Midget AAA club ever since.

After digging deep into the archives to retrieve the long and rich history of the team name, Lynds said it adds a lot of pressure and pride to be a part of the organization.

“It makes you proud to be involved in something that has lived that long, but it also gives you a high sense of responsibility,” Lynds said. “You want to be responsible to the name and the community and carry on the tradition of being a good team—not to the let the community down and do injustice to the name.”

The Mintos didn’t do too many injustices in the four years Lynds was a coach on the team, alongside head coach Tim Leonard and assistant Maurice Lemire. The three led the Mintos to back-to-back Telus Cups in 2006 and 2007.

“We lost a lot of players to junior hockey. Basically, we almost had to rebuild the whole team the next year and again, we focused on developing and getting players that would listen to us. We could train them and teach them and do what we knew what we could do and we won the Telus Cup because of that,” Lynds said.

The Mintos added another in 2014 in Moose Jaw and have a number of Telus Cup records. They were the first team to win back-to-back Telus Cup championships.

They’ve played in the only two triple-overtime games in Telus Cup history, winning both in the finals. The longest was their 2014 4-3 triple overtime win over Les Grenadiers de Chateauguay which Dakota Boutin scored on a two-on-one with Lance Yaremchuk.

Ron Meyers originally set the mark in scored in 2006, with his triple-overtime goal winning the final 5-4 over the Calgary Buffaloes, which featured current Edmonton Oiler sniper Jordan Eberle.

In their last three Telus Cup appearances, the Mintos haven’t lost in 21 contests (19 wins, two ties) which is also a tournament record.

And to think all that started in back in the heart of Scotland.

jdandrea@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @jeff_dandrea