Twenty years ago, Miro Skovira, a forward for the Olds Grizzlys, crashed the net with under a minute left to play in the Centennial Cup final.
Twenty years ago, Miro Skovira, a forward for the Olds Grizzlys, crashed the net with under a minute left to play in the Centennial Cup final. His host team was down by one and the Kelowna Spartans goalie just made the initial save off a frantic Grizzlys rush. Fortuitously, the rebound found its way onto Skovira's stick in front of the net and the Czech player fired the puck upstairs to tie the game.
"It was a very important goal in my career, maybe my best," said Skovira, who played professional hockey in the Czech Republic after his AJHL career.
That goal allowed the Grizzlys' Dave Kirkpatrick to score in overtime, giving Olds national junior A hockey supremacy in 1994.
It was the pinnacle of the team's history and on April 5, current and former players, Grizzlys administration, volunteers and other stakeholders gathered in Olds to mark the 20th anniversary of the team's Centennial Cup victory during the 1993-94 season at the Pomeroy Inn and Suites for the Olds Sportsmans Recreational Association’s dinner.
Festivities started with an alumni game at the Olds Sports Complex, where Team White defeated Team Grey, which had nine Grizzlys from the 1993-94 team.
The score was 12-11.
About 200 people attended the game. They were charged either a donation to the team or to the food bank.
Lucas Grundy had four goals for Team White while Spencer Dorowicz recorded a hat trick for the Grey side.
"It was so much fun," said Tyler Graham, who was captain of the Centennial Cup-winning squad. "It was just fun to get out there and see if we still have the connection and had a lot of fun."
For Dorowicz, playing with some of the Centennial Cup champions was an experience he enjoyed. It also allowed him to take in some of the team's history.
"It's pretty awesome, that video we watched of them winning in '94," he said of a tribute played before the game and later at the dinner. "Hopefully sooner than later the Grizzlys can win another one. I think that was pretty cool. Watching that and being on their team, that was kind of a special day for me."
The game brought to the rink many who remembered watching the Grizzlys hoist the Centennial Cup.
Kevin Rowland was a camera operator during the tournament, televised on a community television network at the time. He recalled the packed Sports Complex, the noise and atmosphere of the town.
"At that time it was a buzz. Every game for that tournament, it was deafening. Particularly the Grizzlys games, of course. But they were loud, people were proud. It was unbelievable … you couldn't help but get caught up in it," Rowland said. "It was a fever all over. It was great."
For that to have happened, work needed to be done beforehand.
Carol Bodmer joined the team's board of directors in 1989, where she served for more than a decade.
Bodmer, her husband Hugh along with Bob Clark, the Grizzlys general manager at the time, helped draft the application to host the Cup seven years before Olds was awarded the tournament.
She said lighting at the Sportsplex needed improvement to accommodate TV broadcasts.
According to Dave Becker, the assistant general manager of the 1994 team, 500 volunteers were needed to pull the event off.
"It was a culmination of a great community effort and I was just lucky enough to be the general manager, sit back and help things move along," said Clark, who is now chairman of the board of governors at Olds College.
As the GM, Clark assembled a team he described as high-scoring but physical and defensively-sound.
"No team looked forward to coming into our barn," he said.
Clark said he was lucky to have a core group comprised of local boys and a sharp coach in Chris Stewart. With the help of Rich Winters, an NHL agent from Edmonton, he acquired Miro Skovira and Jan Dlouhy from the Czech Republic, two players who wound up playing pro.
The 1993-94 Grizzlys team was guaranteed a berth in the Centennial Cup as host but finished the entire year with a record of 72-8-2, setting a record for the fewest losses ever in an AJHL season.
The team had already won back-to-back-to-back AJHL titles.
"The talent was unbelievable," Rowland said. "I remember talking with buddies, what they would do in the WHL. They wouldn't win it, but they'd be very competitive. It was an exciting, talented hockey team. They could do everything."
On Feb. 20, Hockey Alberta and the Hockey Alberta Foundation announced that the Cup-winning Grizzlys would be inducted into the Alberta Hockey Hall of Fame on June 7.
"The whole organization should be very indebted to Kevin Watson," Clark said. "Kevin was the voice of the Grizzlys when we won the Centennial Cup and he was the person who put the nomination together and we were delighted, astonished and very, very honoured to be the first Junior A team to be inducted to the Alberta Amateur Hockey Hall of Fame. It’s a great honour and it’s a real tribute to the quality of the team at that time."
Other accolades were handed out during the alumni dinner, MC’ed by Grizzlys broadcasters Jamieson Brown and Galen Hartviksen of 96.5 CKFM.
Clark delivered a speech, recognizing supporters of the team and sharing his memories of that season.
Skovira, who flew back to Olds from the Czech Republic, was also scheduled to speak. But he was at a loss for words, and Tyler Graham joined him on stage and took over the microphone, sharing anecdotes from their days as junior A players.
During the dinner and afternoon game, guests bid on items such as sports memorabilia and other merchandise on silent auction, with the money benefiting the hockey club.
The event brought in more than $25,000 while the Grizzlys are hoping to dig themselves out of more than $100,000 in debt.
Grizzlys alumnus Tyler Rosehill served as the auctioneer for a live auction in the evening and sold getaway trips, a signed Calgary Flames jersey as well as the stick that scored the game-winning goal in the 1994 Centennial Cup final.
For many Grizzlys on that team, the anniversary celebration was the first time teammates had seen one another in two decades.
They were barely out of their teenage years when Clark was their GM. Today, they are grown men with wives, careers and families – a sight that moved him.
"It brings a bit of tears to your eyes because you’d like to think that some way, you might have helped those guys a bit along the way, help learn the lessons of life," he said. "Because the number of these guys that get a chance to play in the NHL is very small but these people, I think, are much better citizens because (of) the experience they had in Olds.
"That’s worth the whole effort, isn’t it?"
[email protected]
