Alberta – Canada’s Wild Rose Country (at least according to its license plates).  On one side, you have the majesty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and on the other, the fertility of the Canadian prairie.  Alberta has an abundance of cattle, and is the epicenter of the Canadian oil industry.

And then there are hockey players - lots of ‘em.  And like an oil pipeline ships its petroleum to destinations around the globe, Alberta has a hockey pipeline that runs direct to Superior, stocking the Yellowjacket roster with talent year after year.

“It’s true that Alberta and the AJHL have been very good to our program,” said Yellowjacket Head Coach Dan Stauber.  “Over the years, we’ve gotten some of our best players from there, and right now the pipeline is producing as good as it ever has.”

The 2008-09 roster features nine players (pictured front row L-R: Matt Wiest, Braden Desmet, Chris Wilson.  Back row L-R: Tyler Fletcher, Logan Isley, Chris Berry, Talon Berlando, Rob Turville, Brayden Kolisniak) who are either native to Alberta, or played their junior hockey in the AJHL (some did both).  Included in this group is the team’s captain (Rob Turville – Olds), the team scoring leader (Braden Desmet – Strathmore) and the all-AJHL line of Logan Isley (Bonnyville), Talon Berlando (Drumheller) and Chris Wilson.  Wilson hails from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, but played his junior hockey with the AJHL’s Grande Prairie Storm.

Calgary natives Chris Berry and Tyler Fletcher, along with Brayden Kolisniak (Edmonton) and Matt Wiest (Enchant) round out the 08-09 Alberta contingent.

For those keeping score at home, that’s 33.3% of the roster coming from the land of big steaks (you have heard of Alberta beef, haven’t you?), a bigger rodeo (Calgary Stampede) and the biggest shopping mall in North America (West Edmonton Mall).  But it wasn’t always that way.

“For a very long time, Superior would stock its roster with players from Minnesota and Wisconsin, a majority of which came from the Twin Ports.  It really wasn’t until Steve (Nelson) became the coach that Superior started to widen its recruiting base, and eventually that got us into Alberta,” Stauber said.  “In the early 1990’s you began to see the roster dotted with players from Alberta, and that was all Steve’s doing.

“It was mostly guys from Calgary – the Calgary Connection as it was known.  The players didn’t come from just Calgary, but the majority of them were from that area.”

Those early Calgarians on the roster helped the ‘Jackets reach unprecedented heights.  All-Americans Kevin Sobb, Fred Harbinson, Lindsey Braun and Vance Mattson all came from Alberta’s largest city, as did defenseman Chuck Komisar and grinding forward Jeff Maher, the son of Calgary Flames radio play-by-play man Peter Maher. 

All were fixtures of the Yellowjacket teams of the early 1990’s.  The first of the four-straight NCAA Frozen Four teams, 1993-94, boasted all of the above as well as a pair of high-scoring Albertans from the Edmonton suburb of St. Albert – Brent Shaback and Dustin Fahl.  Both Shaback and Fahl sit in the top ten all-time in games played and Fahl is a top-ten guy in assists and points as well.

“As you recruit you obviously want to find the best players, regardless of where they play.  But I think you also want to have a good balance of players.  You want a balance of Americans and Canadians.  You want a balance of kids who played in Alberta and British Columbia and Manitoba and so on,” Stauber said.  “Sometimes it just works out that the best players may come from the same area, and during that stretch of time UWS was finding great players from Alberta.

“The teams in the mid-1990’s had a good balance of Americans and Canadians, all from different areas.  Our teams that went to four-straight in the late 1990’s and the early part of this decade had a good balance of players from all over.  But some of our most key players came from Alberta at that time, too.  Now today, we again have a good core of players from Alberta.”

The Wiggins brothers came from Calgary.  Steve, against Norwich in the NCAA semifinal game of 1999, scored a hat trick in what ranks as one of the finest individual efforts in school history.  Younger brother Mike was the last Yellowjacket to score 30 goals in a season and is one of only two Yellowjackets to claim NCHA Player of the Year honors.

“That Norwich game was my first year with the program,” Stauber said.  “We were playing them in their building and they were heavily favored.  But Steve put the team on his back and scored a natural hat trick.  He willed our team into the finals.  And Mike had an absolutely magical year in 2004-05.  It seemed like everything he shot ended up in the net.  He was a big part of that 2002 team as well.”

There was Scott Wagner, a consistent player during his four years and a team captain in 1999-00.

“Wags was a kid that worked his tail off every single day and got everything out of himself.  He was an underrated player that gave an awful lot to the program and was an exceptional leader; one of the best captains we’ve had.  He probably could have been a captain beginning his sophomore year,” Stauber said.

There was Jeff Glowa, a member of the school's all-time top ten in scoring and the captain of the 2000-01 team, the team which posted the best record in school history.

“Glowa is one of my all-time favorite players.  He just got the job done, in every situation, every night.  Plus he was my first captain as head coach.  He was a player that I leaned on a lot,” Stauber said.

There were the “Twin Towers” on the blue line from 1998-2002.  Randy Currie and Bruce Leonard, both of whom played an integral part in the 2002 national title, the latter of the two serving as team captain and earning All-American honors.

“Neither one of them was flashy, but they were just solid and steady back there for four years,” Stauber said.  “There’s a reason that they were both captains on that 2002 team.”

There was Colin Kendall, who broke the 100-point mark in his UWS career.  Two of those points were the tying and winning goals in the 2002 national title game against Norwich.  The first coming with 1:26 remaining in regulation and the second coming just 23 seconds into overtime.

“You can’t say enough about Colin Kendall.  Talk about a kid who rose to the occasion time and again.  We played the heck out of him, in a lot of different situations.  He was just an all-around great player for us,” Stauber said.

Currie, Leonard, Glowa and Kendall all came from Calgary, along with Shane Lodhar, forming a more recent version of the “Calgary Connection.”  Those players (excluding Glowa who had graduated) along with northern Albertan Jay Stewart (Fort McMurray) were stalwarts on the 2002 national championship squad.

More recently, the pipeline has kept producing, just reaching out further from the two major metropolitan areas of the province.

“We make it a point to get up into the AJHL every year.  That league just continues to develop good, all-around hockey players that fit well into our system.  They perform very well in our league,” Stauber said.  “Today, we just have to look at a more widespread area than just Calgary.”

Goaltenders, defensemen and forwards – it didn’t matter what position they played, the ‘Jackets took their chances on players from Alberta.  And more often than not, it worked out to their benefit.

“Absolutely it has worked for us.  Look at our roster today.  We have nine kids from Alberta and all of them are contributing.  We have gotten, and hopefully for years to come will continue to get, mileage out of players that come from Alberta,” Stauber said.

Where The Albertans Come From

Please note that the players listed below are Alberta natives.  It does not include players from outside the province that played their junior hockey there, such as Winnipeg, Manitoba native Pat Power (Fort McMurray) and current Yellowjacket Chris Wilson (Grande Prairie).

Bonnyville (1): Logan Isley

Calgary (21): Vance Mattson, Fred Harbinson, Dave Harbinson, Chuck Komisar, Jeff Maher, Kevin Sobb, Lindsey Braun, Steve Wiggins, Matt Holmes, Scott Wagner, Jeff Glowa, Randy Currie, Bruce Leonard, Shane Lodhar, Colin Kendall, Mike Wiggins, Chris Niemiec, Chris Berry, Matt Lamirande, Tyler Fletcher, Steve Colbert

Camrose (1): Ryan Rutz

Drumheller (1): Talon Berlando

Edmonton (3): Tom Branicki, Brayden Kolisniak, Steve Kordyban

Enchant (1): Matt Wiest

Fort McMurray (1): Jay Stewart

Mayerthorpe (1): Rob Ziemmer

Olds (2): Rob Turville, Tyler Rosehill

Redwater (1): Dean Reed

Red Deer (2): Ryan Melbourne, Blair Kambeitz

St. Albert (3): Dustin Fahl, Brent Shaback, Paul Jay

Sexsmith (1): Ryan Quinn

Strathmore (1): Braden Desmet