By John Humphrey
The Lakeshore Canadiens being at or near the top of the Provincial Hockey League’s Stobbs Division standings leading up to the midway point of another PJHL regular season should be as shocking as Christmas falling on the 25th of December.
With 19 of their 42-game regular season already in the history books, the Canadiens had a stellar 13-5-1 record and were in a battle with the Essex 73s and the Blenheim Blades for first place.
“Yes, we are a contender,” claimed longtime Canadiens general manager Mark Seguin. “When the play-offs come around, we are going to be in the conversation for the Stobbs Division championship.
“We have very strong team and we have a deep roster,” he continued. “We can roll four solid lines and we are are skilled on the blueline and in net too.”
Heading into 2025-2026, Seguin thought that one area of his team that might experience difficulty was scoring goals, but that has hardly been the case as the Canadiens have lead the Stobbs Division in scoring since the opening face-off this season. They have scored 93 goals in 19 games for an average of almost five goals per game.
“We lost a lot of talented scorers to graduation who were with us for four or five seasons and I thought that maybe we would have to score by committee this season,” Seguin candidly admitted. “But we are a hard-working team and we don’t take a shift off and we wear teams down.
“We are spreading our scoring out and we have seven or eight guys who are averaging a point or more per game.”
One of the players who has been averaging more than a point per game so far has been defenceman Mark Kopcok, who notched six goals and added ten assists in ten games enroute to being named the Stobbs Division Player of the Month for October.
The Canadiens did experience a glitch in their usually consistent play in early November when the team lost three out of four games before snapping the streak with a convincing 4-1 win over Mooretown on November 15.
“All of those games were on the road and while it was concerning, we seem to have snapped out of it with that game in Mooretown,” said Seguin. “If we are going to have a hiccup in our play, I would rather have it now than later in the season.”
Two of the Canadiens’ five losses as of mid-November were to the arch-rival and defending Schmalz Cup champion 73s, with the Canadiens coming up short by scores of 5-2 and 4-3.
“It’s something of an oddity in our schedule that we play three games in Essex before they play in our rink,” Seguin pointed out. “They will be coming to the Atlas Tube Centre three times between December and January, and that is going to be a lot of fun.”
The Canadiens, who were to play for the third time this season in Essex on December 2, have been playing the majority of their games in November due to a lack of Atlas Tube Centre availability but will have an extended homestand that starts in mid-December that will run for a month.
The 2025-2026 edition of the perennial PJHL powerhouse has included 15 players from last season’s team. Seguin has made just one trade so far, sending Evan MacPherson to the Amherstburg Admirals in exchange for Dallas Kelly.
Seguin coyly admitted to having another trade in the works but was not able to divulge the details before The Lakeshore News publication deadline.
“We will also be bringing in a couple of high-end goal scorers before the January 10 trade deadline,” he said. “We also have roster spots open for players who might drop down from junior b teams too.”
Among the five first-year players on the Canadiens were forward Vaughan Truppe and defenceman Drew Strahlbrand, both Lakeshore natives, forwards Noah Guidice and Andrew Ward and defenceman Jordan Maine.
Lakeshore’s leadership group has consisted of team captain Aedan Sullivan and assistant captains Kyle Greene, Brendan Leblanc, Nicolas Graniero, Landon Prince and Kopcok.
“League rules do not permit a goaltender to be a team captain or assistant captain,” Seguin pointed out. “But Boe Piroski is absolutely one of our team leaders and he sits in on all of our captains meetings.”
The Lakeshore Canadiens hosted their annual mother’s trip to Mooretown on November 14 and the father’s trip will also head there on February 7. The team’s annual trip to Montreal was still being planned for January when the Canadiens have a weekend without any PJHL games.
