The Edmonton Junior Oilers can add the title of national champions to their long list of accomplishments in U18 AAA girls’ hockey.
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In the franchise’s ninth trip to the Canadian championship tournament, Edmonton won its first Esso Cup, topping the Saskatoon Stars 7-3 in April 26 final in front of almost 1,000 fans at the venerable Centennial Civic Centre in Lloydminster.
“It’s just past words,” said Oilers blue-liner Jayde Sansregret, whose sister Sage is one of Edmonton’s assistant coaches. “Just being able to come so far with this team. These people are my best friends. I couldn’t have asked for anything else. I couldn’t have asked for other people to experience this with.”
The milestone 15th edition of the Esso Cup capped the storied history of the Civic Centre, which formally closed after last season to make way for the flashy Cenovus Energy Hub.
The Pacific region champion Oilers were the toast of the Alberta league all season, and they continued that form at the weeklong Esso Cup, posting a perfect 5-0 record in round-robin play. Then came Edmonton’s memorable 1-0 overtime victory over the host Lloydminster Steelers in Friday’s late semifinal, a dramatic night with more than 1,000 fans in attendance.
The Steelers, who had exceeded their expectations in reaching the semifinals, went on to lose 4-1 to the North York (Ont.) Storm in the
bronze-medal game Saturday afternoon.
“There’s no better feeling than this,” Sage Sansregret said as her Oilers paraded the Esso Cup around the Civic Centre ice. “But to do it with this group, it makes it even better. It’s hard not to get emotional about it. They’re just a great group of girls and athletes. It’s been an honour to coach them and watch them come this far.”
Each of them has a story to tell, like coach Sansregret’s journey from small-town roots to become a university hockey player and now a national champion U18 AAA coach. She was born and raised on a farm just outside Consort — an Alberta town of about 600 people — and played elite hockey in Red Deer before climbing the ladder to the collegiate game.
“I grew up as a farm kid and that taught me a lot of work ethic,” said Sansregret, 24. “I’m very happy to have a lot of my family here today to be able to watch me and my sister go through this process.”
Jayde Sansregret, 18, was a force on defence for the Oilers, who lost just one game last season as they marched toward a national gold medal after earning bronze the previous year.
The younger Sansregret followed her sister’s path through elite hockey in Red Deer before joining Edmonton at the U18 AAA level and moving in with her sister/coach. Jayde, also born in Consort, was nine years old when the family moved to Red Deer.
“Just being able to be in the big city (of Edmonton), playing AAA for a team like this, has always been one of my dreams,” she said. “At the time, Edmonton Junior Oilers wasn’t a thing — it was still Pandas’ hockey (in my childhood) — but I don’t think I could have asked for anything better.”
Jayde Sansregret went into the tournament as one of 16 Oilers already committed to university teams. She headed to the University of New Brunswick in September, along with three of her Edmonton teammates in Keira Grant at forward, Madeline Renfree on defence and Taya Christie in net. It’s no wonder that multiple UNB jerseys were spotted among the assorted Oilers garb in the Civic Centre stands for the Esso Cup gold-medal game.
“It’s such an amazing campus and program,” Jayde said of joining the UNB Reds in Fredericton. “They treat you like one of their own and it’s everything that you want in a university. Every one of the girls and the coaches are like a family.”
The Oilers expressed a similar sentiment after their powerful performance in the Esso Cup final, during which they scored two goals on their first four shots and led 3-0 before Saskatoon got on the scoreboard late in the first period.
The Stars cut the lead to 3-2 in the first minute of the second, but the Oilers fired four straight goals to make it 7-2 before that period ended.
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