With a recurring injury and a key departure thinning the Lloydminster defence, it’s no wonder the junior A Bobcats have circled that position as a priority leading up to the trade deadline Saturday (Jan. 10).
Read more: AJHL’s Bobcats make multiple moves leading up to trade deadline
The AJHL’s Bobcats are down to six healthy defencemen, with Noah Smith back on the sidelines in his recovery from shoulder surgery last year. Lloydminster lost a mainstay on the blue-line as Esteban Cinq-Mars joined the QMJHL’s Val-d’Or Foreurs just as the Christmas break began.
“That’s obviously what we’re looking for,” coach Eric Labrosse said about the Bobcats’ search for defensive help. “But, as we stand right now, it’s not as easy as it seems, because everyone is looking for the same thing across the league. It feels like it’s a little harder to find a defenceman this year, as it could have been at other times in other years.
“But yeah, we do realize that, as an organization, we’re short right now in that situation and we are trying to add in that position.”
In Sunday’s game at the Hub, the Bobcats posted 51 shots but lost 4-2 to the Whitecourt Wolverines.
John MacNeil – Meridian Source
SMITH RECUPERATING
Smith, 18, is back home in Brooks, Alta., rehabbing his ailing shoulder. The second-year Bobcat played his first game of this season Oct. 31 and appeared in eight games before being forced to sit out since late November.
“Noah tried to play through it for a bit,” Labrosse said. “It was a little too painful to bear with, so it’s more caution now to leave him out and make sure he heals properly, and to bring him back when he’s healthy.
“Because you don’t want a young player to drag on an injury into (another) season and maybe make it a career-ending injury over time, so we’re taking our precautions with him and we’re following the doctor’s guidelines in how long that we have to keep him out of play. He’s going to be out for probably still another minimum of six weeks.
“He’s rehabbing with the medical people back home that took care of him a few months ago. He’ll be back here in the next few weeks when he’s going to be feeling a little better.”
NEW BOBCAT ON BLUE-LINE
On the final weekend of action before the Christmas break, the Bobcats added former Drayton Valley Thunder defenceman Tafari Chingwaru, most recently of the BCHL’s Salmon Arm Silverbacks. Chingwaru, who turned 17 in September, is an Edmontonian who played 28 games in the AJHL last season and 10 games in the BCHL this fall.
Now, he has four games under his belt as a Bobcat.
“Tafari is a very young defenceman still,” Labrosse said. “Even though he was playing in the BCHL, we’ve still got to keep in mind that he’s a very young defenceman. He played last year in Drayton for half the season. It was a learning process for him. And this year, starting in the BCHL, it gave him a look at a different league.
“Now, we brought him in because we felt that his play with the puck was what we needed. We needed a defenceman that could move the puck and transition the puck. Also, he’s a player that has a lot of upside to his game. Now, it’s all about developing his game and making sure that it’s a consistent, steady game, not just an offensive game. So, we do have to work on the defensive aspect of the game with him, but he has a lot of good upsides to his game, and we want to make sure that we utilize him to the best of his ability for our team right now.”
CINQ-MARS IN THE Q
In just four months with the Bobcats, the 19-year-old Cinq-Mars made a lasting impression in Lloydminster. The big blue-liner from Longueuil, Que., contributed offensively and defensively and was an assistant captain despite being a newcomer.
At the World Junior A Challenge this December in Trois-Rivieres, Que., he was named an all-star defenceman in captaining Canada West to a silver-medal finish. His teammates with the select West team included Bobcats forwards Matthew Hikida and Raphael Messier. One of their assistant coaches for that tournament was Labrosse.
When he returned to Lloyd in mid-December, after the tourney, Cinq-Mars was courted with pitches from major junior teams and U.S. colleges.
“The traction that he was getting after that tournament was more college teams, actually,” Labrosse reported. “He had five (NCAA) Division 1 teams reach out to him that week, and a few of them reached out two or three times that week. They had a lot of interest in him.”
Ultimately, Cinq-Mars decided to sign with Val-d’Or and realize his longstanding dream to play in the QMJHL. Of course, he remains eligible to later play in the NCAA under the new rules governing junior and collegiate hockey.
Methodical in his approach to the game, Cinq-Mars earned his stripes as a Bobcat in short order.
“I’m really happy for Esteban,” said Labrosse, who also coached Cinq-Mars last season with the MJHL champion Northern Manitoba Blizzard. “He’s worked hard for it, since I’ve known him. He’s done everything off ice and on ice that needed to be done to make it to the next level.
“He really had a pro attitude in his approach to what needed to be done in preparation off ice, whether it was in the gym or in scouting the opposition before we played them.
“Esteban has earned everything that has happened to him right now. He’s going to be greatly missed on our D squad, because he would defend really hard. He was probably one of the best defenders in the AJ when it came down to the D zone and to play hard on opponents. Now, it’s going to be up to the (other) guys to step up and fill that role as a committee here and take up those big defensive minutes that he used to have.”
THREE GOALIES IN TOWN
The Bobcats’ seven remaining defencemen were 19-year-olds Jaxan Hopko and Quinn Keeler, 18-year-olds Smith, Brady Gamble and Xavier Normand, and 17-year-olds Chingwaru and Dylan Deets.
While the defensive depth was depleted, Lloydminster continued to carry a plethora of goaltenders.
Even after the departure this week of the team’s youngest netminder, 18-year-old Sam Madgett, to his hometown Halifax Mooseheads of the QMJHL, the Bobcats still had three goalies in town.
LLOYD WELCOMES SHARMA’S PLAYOFF PEDIGREE
Two of those goalies are 20-year-olds — Ty Matonovich and Jaiden Sharma — and the other is 19-year-old Ben Polhill.
Sharma, formerly of the BCHL’s Surrey Eagles, became a Bobcat in December. Matonovich arrived in Lloyd in November, after Polhill suffered a knee injury that has sidelined him for the past two months.
Labrosse said Sunday that Polhill was ready to resume practising with the team this week.
“We hope to see Ben in action maybe a few weeks from now,” the coach said. “He will come back with us this week to try to step on the ice and see how he’s doing.
“It’s at the early stages of him trying to go out on the ice and see how his injury reacts. Hopefully, we’re close to a comeback, but we’re still uncertain about how far he is from playing with us.”
Sharma netted his first win as a Bobcat last Saturday night in Lloyd’s 5-4 victory over the Grande Prairie Storm.
As they gear up for a playoff run, the Bobcats hope Sharma can provide critical post-season experience from his two-and-a-half seasons with Surrey in the BCHL.
“He had a full playoff run where his team went to the championship,” Labrosse said of Sharma and the 2024 league-champion Eagles.
“That’s always valuable experience, when you have a player that’s gone down that road and knows what it takes to win, and to go through a long (playoff) process, going through a few different series where it can be gruelling at times. But when that happens and you win, you learn how to win. It’s important to have guys on the team that have won.
“Jaiden became available (in December), and it was also in the sense that Ben (Polhill) was injured, so we wanted to have another goalie with experience that could hold the fort in the meantime with Ty Matonovich. That’s why
we got Jaiden in that trade at that time.”
U18 PREP FORWARD COMMITS TO BOBCATS
Stockpiling for the future, the Bobcats announced Monday that Okanagan Hockey Academy U18 prep forward Landon Nagle has committed to Lloydminster for the 2026-27 season. The Post Falls, Idaho, native has scored six goals and 26 points after 16 games this season in the CSSHL.
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