Prince Albert's Midget Triple A team is having an active off-season (File Photo/paNOW Staff)

By Michael Joel-Hansen

Prince Albert Mintos

Mintos not sitting idle

May 8, 2019 | 12:18 PM

While much of the local sporting world’s attention has been on the Prince Albert Raiders and their run to the Western Hockley League Finals, another of city’s hockey teams is staying busy.

The Prince Albert Mintos, P.A.’s Midget AAA hockey team has been quite active according to General Manager Don Fauchoux.

“As we speak we’re still dealing with hockey, we had all our new guys come to the Art Hauser last Sunday and we showed them around, did some school tours,” he said.

The Mintos brought through a contingent of nine new players. The team is expecting to welcome between 11 and 12 new players to their ranks for the upcoming season. This is down from last year when the Mintos had 18 new players on the roster.

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“They’re coming from pretty well all corners of the province,” Fauchoux said.

Heading into the coming season, Fauchoux said the Mintos will bring an experienced team to the ice, which is quite the change from last season.

“We had some growing pains last year with probably our youngest team, maybe ever, but the plan was to be better this year because of it,” he said.

When the puck drops for the 2019 season the Mintos will have a new face behind the bench in Danton Danielson, who is moving up from the Bantam AA ranks.

Danielson has already led the team through spring camp along with bringing through players last weekend. The coach is pleased with how things have been going so far and was especially happy with how things went this past weekend.

“It was good, it was really interesting, you know I looked at it as an opportunity for some relationship building,” he said.

The new bench boss said his transition has been helped along by the team’s administration, who have been handling getting everything organized leaving him to focus on the hockey side.

“The Mintos are second to none in Saskatchewan as far as the backing of the organization,” he said.

Overall the coach said the team returning a healthy core from last year will be helpful, especially given the fact they enjoyed success last season.

Last month the team handed out awards at its annual year-end banquet. One of the big winners was Gabe Klassen, who took home the Rookie of the Year Award along with the Most Valuable Player Award.

Meanwhile Alex Ozar brought home the hardware as the top defenceman and Spencer Welke was named the team’s Most Valuable Player of the Playoffs. Gavin Ingram was given a scholastic award along with the Jacob Leicht and Heart and Hustle Award. Jake Huska was recognized for dedication and Carter Woodside was given a scholastic award.

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MichaelJoel.Hansen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @mjhskcdn