YORKTON - The Yorkton Junior Terriers are celebrating 50 years in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League this season.
To mark the milestone Yorkton This Week is digging into its archives and pulling out a random Terrier-related article from the past five decades of reporting on the team, and will be running one each week, just as it originally appeared.
This feature will appear weekly over the entire season in the pages of The Marketplace.
Week #22 comes from May, 1999.
Shawn Skiehar wears the captain’s ‘C’ for the Yorkton Terriers. He says the team is ready for the Royal Bank Cup which the team begins hosting tonight.
“Definitely we’re ready. We’ve been practising hard for about a month now. All the guys are itching to play,” he said Tuesday afternoon prior to the team’s daily skate.
Skiehar said he believes Terrier coach Wade Klippenstein did a good job of trying to keep an edge on the Terriers in spite of their early exit from the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League playoffs – the team lost in the opening round to Notre Dame.
“He (Klippenstein) lined up as many exhibition games as he could. They were a good learning experience for us to get ready,” said Skiehar.
“I think the guys are in shape and ready for the games.”
Skiehar said as a veteran of the club, in his last season of junior hockey, he understands this may be his only shot at a national crown. Most players recognize that fact, he added.
“We’ve got to make the best out of our opportunity for a national championship,” reasoned Skiehar, who hails form the city he now represents on the ice.
“We talk about it in the dressing room. Everybody knows what’s on the line … what we have to go out and do.”
Asked what he expects the team has to do to be successful, Skiehar said the entire team needs to be ready.
“From the goalie up, everybody’s got to come ready to play and play 60 minutes,” he said. “We got to play tight defensively. If we play well defensively the offensive will come to us.”
Asked if starting the RBC tournament against the familiar Estevan Bruins was a benefit to the Terriers, Skiehar said the team can’t rely on familiarity to win the game.
“Even though we’ve played them six games we can’t be comfortable with them, or any team we’re playing,” he said. “We’ve got to go out there and work our butts off every game.”
Personally, Skiehar said the tournament is big, since he gets to play it on home turf.
“It’s going to feel great. It will be a big adrenaline rush, not just for me, but for everybody,” he said.
It’s the culmination of a season in which Skiehar, always noted as a tough, no-holds barred kind of player, found himself used in different situations, including both the power play and penalty kill.
“I’ve added a little more offence at times than I did in previous years,” he smiled.
And while the penalty minutes did decline, Skiehar still led the team.
“You can’t afford to lose any player for getting kicked out,” he said in reference to the SJHL rule where a fight comes with an automatic game misconduct, “but there are certain times when it happens. You’ve go to pick your spots.”
For Skiehar the season also marked his being handed the captain’s role shortly after Christmas.
“I really didn’t like to think of it as added pressure,” he said of the promotion. “More as an added responsibility. It’s a big honour to have the ‘C’.”
So does the ‘C’ mean he’s trying to be an inspiration leading into the RBC? Skiehar said that is not the role he has chosen to assume.
“I’m kind of letting it happen on its own. Each guy knows what’s going on … what they need to go out and do,” he concluded.
