By Jeff D'Andrea

Raiders Hockey

Novak congratulates Montgomery on breaking his all-time Raider record

Feb 7, 2019 | 5:18 PM

For the previous 13 seasons, nobody had played more games in a Prince Albert Raider uniform than Brett Novak.

He played 330 games with the Raiders from 2000 to 2006, including two games as a call-up and the rest in five full seasons.

But for the first time since, that total has been matched. Current Raiders assistant captain Sean Montgomery played his 300th game on Monday, and is poised to break the record on Friday in his hometown as the Raiders travel to the Calgary Corral to play the Hitmen.

“I’m happy for Sean. It’s a great accomplishment for him to play in that many games and to stay healthy for that long,” Novak said. “He must be just a little bit tougher than I was, because I actually got hurt in my 20-year-old season and missed 17 games. So good on him for staying healthy.”

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Although Novak was limited to playing in just 55 games in his 20-year-old season, he missed just 15 games in his previous four years—nine of those coming in his 16-year-old rookie season.

When asked what his secret was to staying healthy, Novak had a crafty answer.

“Staying out of the corners, mostly I think,” Novak joked. “I’ve always been into off season training, I took the workout aspect of hockey pretty seriously. Although, I think I was a little bit lucky to stay healthy.”

Novak spoke to paNOW during a phone interview as he took a break in between teaching classes at St. Thérèse of Lisieux Catholic School in Saskatoon on Thursday—the last day he can say that no Prince Albert Raider has played more games than him.

But even now that he will be second on the Raiders’ all-time games played list, he’ll still look back on his time in the Green and Gold with fondness.

“It’s something that I’m proud of and always will be proud of, whether I’m the all-times games played leader or not. It’s always been an extra feather under my hat, I guess,” Novak said. “It’s always something that seems to come up. It seems like somebody somewhere knows that, so it’s been cool. So 13 years later, it’s kind of hard to believe it’s been that long since I’ve played for the Raiders.”

“It comes up more than you’d think, and I’m super proud when it comes up. I’m happy to talk about it, I’m not usually the one to bring it up but it’s definitely cool.”

Novak was part of the 2004-05 Raiders, who went on to the third round of the WHL playoffs. No Raiders team since has gotten past the opening round.

They swept the Saskatoon Blades in the first round, beat the Medicine Hat Tigers in six games in the second, before falling in the conference finals to the Brandon Wheat Kings in seven games.

Novak had his best season, playing in all 72 regular season games with 19 goals and 41 points, and three goals and nine points in all 17 playoff games as well.

Chicago Blackhawks current head coach Jeremy Colliton played on that team, as well as Kyle Chipchura, who went on to play 481 games in the NHL and is currently in his third year in the KHL. Rejean Beauchemin, Aki Seitsonen and Dane Byers were also on that powerful Raider club.

Colliton and Chipchura were forced to battle through some big time injuries that year, as they were limited to 41 and 28 regular season games respectively. As a result, Novak got a huge promotion in their absences.

“When people get hurt, it opens up the door for other players. They were both centremen, I was also a centreman so it moved me from a secondary scoring role, shutdown role to all of a sudden, a first-line centre,” Novak said. “That helps my offensive output when I got to play with players like Aki Seitsonen. We had Ricky Kozak traded to us… we all came together as a team and we stepped up in the absence of our stud guys.”

In his 330 games, Novak scored 50 goals and scored 116 points. After two years with the University of Saskatchewan, Novak has played senior men’s hockey for the last 10 years, and now playing with the Eston Ramblers of the Sask Valley Hockey League.

Jeff.dandrea@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @jeff_paNOW