After successful year two, Nordiques aim higher for 2022

After a promising debut as an NAHL expansion team in 2019-20, the Maine Nordiques returned as playoff contenders in year two and made it as far as the Robertson Cup semifinals.

Under the guidance of head coach Nolan Howe, the Nordiques finished the season with a record of 35-19-2 and won a pair of playoff series before falling to the eventual league champion, Shreveport Mudbugs, in a two-game semifinal sweep.

According to Howe, it wasn't much of a shock to see his second-year expansion team go on the type of playoff run that it did.

“You know what, in all honesty, it really was (something we thought was possible going into the season),” he told New England Hockey Journal. “If you speak to any of our players or any of the guys in our organization, we all really felt like we had a special group assembled.”

The son of Hockey Hall of Famer and director of professional scouting for the Detroit Red Wings Mark Howe, and grandson of Mr. Hockey Gordie Howe, Howe grew up playing youth hockey in the Detroit area. He credited his team’s near-instant success in the Tier II junior hockey league to the chemistry it formed at the height of the pandemic during training camp.

“We spent a lot of time really trying to bond all the guys together,” Howe said. “We were deep, we were talented on the back end, and we had two great goaltenders, so we were excited to get the season going. There certainly was a lot of uncertainty with COVID and all the protocols, but our guys bought in 100 percent to being responsible and being respectful to one another. It really was a group that was a lot of fun to work with.”

After junior leagues across North America had to either postpone or cancel their seasons altogether, the NAHL began Oct. 9, one month later than its originally scheduled start date. Once it began, the Nordiques got off to a rousing start, going 8-2 in the first month of the no-fans campaign.

“That was a testament to how hard the guys worked in camp,” Howe said. “We implemented our structure, but more importantly we really got them to bond as individuals and as a group. It was really about getting them to care for one another and put each other first, and I think once you do that with any team, the sky’s the limit. If you want to have success in this game, you have got to play for the guy next to you.”

The Nordiques’ core was based around several 2000-born players who were in their final year of junior eligibility, including former South Shore Kings goaltender Tyriq Outen, who posted a .920 save percentage and a pair of shutouts in 35 games played.

Perhaps more importantly, however, were the players the team relied on in their second seasons with the fledgling organization — guys like ’02 forward Stefan Owens, who joined the team during its inaugural campaign and returned for year two with a goal in mind to put himself and the Nordiques on the map.

After a red-hot 56-game campaign, the Midlothian, Va., native did just that, as he led the team in scoring (51 points) and earned a commitment to UMass Lowell.

2000 birth-year captain Jack Strauss, ’00 LIU commit Isiah Fox, ’01 Maine commit Tyler Gaulin (Kingston, N.H.), Maine commit Luke Antonacci and ’00 forward Makem Demers (Wilbraham, Mass.) were other players that enjoyed key roles in their second seasons with the team.

“Those guys were huge,” Howe said. “From our captain, Jack, being a fourth-line guy and doing whatever it took to have success, to our first-line guys like Cannon Green, Owens, Fox — those guys were huge up front. On the back end, we were a bit new. We had some veteran guys, but they were new to our program, so it was really the returning guys that helped carry us. At the end of the day, you have to have great leadership on any team, and we certainly had that.”

Sacred Heart committed forward Aidan Connolly (Marshfield, Mass.) and former Taft forward Tristan Fasig (Sherman, Conn.) were a few of the local players that successful campaigns in their first season with the team.

After riding the wave of their upstart first half, the Nordiques hit a bit of a snag as the season wore on. It just so happened their slump coincided with fans returning to the building.

“That was not the way we wanted to introduce them back into our season,” Howe said with a laugh, “because we’d been having a lot of success up until that point. But you know what, I think that was actually a catalyst for our playoff run. All the guys looked around the room and said, ‘We’re better than this, and we need to be better than this if we want to have success.’"

In the end, after going 4-7 in the month of April and winning the final three games of the regular season, the Nordiques earned a second-place finish in the NAHL East Division.

After the 2020 playoffs were canceled due to the coronavirus, the team was raring to go once the 2021 tournament rolled around. In a five-game East Division semifinal battle with the New Jersey Titans, the Nordiques came out on top after earning a 3-2 series win.

They then proceeded to sweep the Maryland Black Bears in a three-game East Division Final set, setting up their Robertson Cup semifinal matchup with the Mudbugs. Against the eventual league champion, the team that went on to win its second NAHL title in the past three years, the Nordiques just didn’t have enough in the tank.

“It was a war every night,” Howe said of the playoffs. “New Jersey gave us everything we could handle, and once we got through them, we felt really confident against Maryland and were able to get through them.

“Shreveport was a bit of a different animal once we got out to Blaine, Minnesota. They were talented, they were deep, they played with great structure, and we gave them everything we had, but it just wasn’t enough to get the job done.”

While this past season didn’t end in storybook fashion, the future is bright for Howe and the organization as a whole. They made a considerable jump from year one to year two, and now, with the 2021 NAHL Entry Draft out of the way and training camp for the 2021-22 season on the horizon, they are once again looking to make a leap going into year three.

“I think we have exceeded some expectations, but not within our own building,” Howe said. “The NAHL is a great league, and we want to be a consistent contender within the league. We want to continue to put kids in opportunities to continue their careers in college hockey, so, in that regard, it’s been a success, but we want to keep the ball rolling.

“Like I was telling some of our returners during their exit interviews, the hardest thing to do is re-create success. So, we certainly can’t rest on our laurels. We have to get back at it, and we’re looking forward to doing that.”