They’ve gone from Gladiators to Major Midgets, and from red and gold to blue and white, but the result is the same – the team from Dartmouth, N.S., will play for Canada’s National Midget Championship.

For the second year in a row Dartmouth has reached the TELUS Cup – last year as the Newbridge Academy Gladiators, this year as the Dartmouth Major Midgets; it’s the 10th time a Dartmouth team has played in the national championship, tied with Red Deer and Notre Dame for third all-time.

And with seven players back from 2015, the Major Midgets will rely on experience to improve on their disappointing sixth-place finish one year ago in Rivière-du-Loup, Que.

Dartmouth sat at a respectable 10-5-2 on Nov. 25 after a 5-3 loss to the Cole Harbour Wolfpack, the Major Midgets’ third loss in a row. That defeat would be the turning point.

A 17-game winning streak – and 20 wins in 21 games to close out the schedule – put Dartmouth back into the race for top spot in the Nova Scotia Major Midget League, although it would come up agonizingly short.

“We ended up losing first place [to Cole Harbour] by one point because we went on quite a run,” says head coach Steve Crowell. “We won 20 of our last 21 games. Our record this year is 61-9-4 including tournaments and playoffs, so we’ve been on a roll.”

And while the Major Midgets trailed the Cole Harbour Wolfpack in the regular season standings, they got the best of them when it mattered – in the playoffs.

After rolling through Pictou County and Halifax in the first two rounds with four-game and three-game sweeps, respectively, Dartmouth and Cole Harbour faced off in the NSMMHL final.

The Major Midgets opened with back-to-back wins in the best-of-five championship series, but missed out on a chance for a perfect playoffs with a 4-1 loss in Game 3.

Back on home ice with another chance to close out the series, Brock McLeod tied the game with 4:41 to go in the third period, and Matthew Warner got the winner in overtime, giving Dartmouth the NSMMHL championship and sending it back to the Atlantic Regional.

The Major Midgets were the class of the round robin in Conception Bay South, N.L., going 4-0, including a 4-3 shootout win over the Saint John Vito’s in their preliminary round finale.

The same two teams faced off for the regional title the following day, but there was a little less on the line; with the Vito’s hosting the TELUS Cup, Dartmouth had clinched a spot in the national championship just by reaching the championship game.

After two scoreless periods, Warner got the Major Midgets on the board with 8:33 left, only to see Saint John tie the game in the final 10 seconds with an extra attacker on the ice.

The Vito’s netted the winner early in overtime, leaving Dartmouth one goal short of a second consecutive regional championship.

“It was a little bittersweet in the Atlantic final because we knew going into the game that we had already qualified since we were playing the TELUS Cup’s host team,” says Crowell. “I’m not sure if that took a little edge off, but it was a heck of a hockey game nonetheless.”

Crowell, who will be coaching in his seventh national championship, not only knows what it’ll take for his team to win the TELUS Cup, but feels confident he has all the pieces to the puzzle on his roster.

“We have great goaltending, great puck-moving defencemen and great speed up front,” he says. “We have good playmakers and we have six players that have anywhere between 30 and 50 goals and we have another one with 28. So when you have seven forwards with 28 goals or more, you have scoring from every line.”

Dartmouth is looking for its third medal at Canada’s National Midget Championship; it won bronze as host in 1992, and earned silver on the back of a record-setting performance by Sidney Crosby in 2002.

HOW DARTMOUTH GOT TO QUISPAMSIS

Atlantic Regional
Round robin: first place – 4-0 (defeated St. John’s Maple Leafs 4-0, defeated St. John’s Privateers 3-1, defeated Kensington 6-2, defeated Saint John 4-3 SO)
Championship: lost to Saint John 2-1 OT

REGULAR SEASON

PLAYOFFS

NATIONAL MIDGET CHAMPIONSHIP HISTORY

PLAYERS TO WATCH

PETER DILIBERATORE
moves the puck quickly … creative player … leads the break-out with confidence … offensive defenceman … very good hands .. plays with poise … can log a ton of minutes

EVAN MACKINNON
great acceleration … offensive-minded player … playmaking winger … uses speed and skill to put defenders on their heels … never gives up … not afraid to go into corners

QMJHL DRAFTED PLAYERS